No more overtime...

Yeah, so take the month then. Or take a little 99 cent calendar into a quick meeting with your boss and tell him, "OK, let's map out these comp days I'm going to take." When you hit Dec. 31 and there still is time owed to you, then you request cash.

Or try this: Let the comp time build up, so you can have a nice cushion when you leave the business, walk out with a bigger check than you otherwise would have and use part of it to buy a few suits for a real job.

 

The bottom line is everyone should look to get out of the business.

It's not a 9-to-5 job and it never was. Never will be.

 

either stop breaking labor laws and pay overtime or lower your standards.

 

You need to be a flawless planner from this point forward. If you have a big ball game coming up on Friday, be sure to pace yourself Monday through Thursday so that you can still do the Friday game and still have hours available to do whatever needs to be handled over the weekend.

Make sure your boss knows that you're working out these weekly plans. Then, when an all-hell-breaks-loose happens and you've already reached 40 hours by Thursday night and the state ice hockey final is on Saturday, ask your boss how he/she wants to handle it.

Boss can't possibly say skip it, so either:

-- You get paid OT
-- You get comp time/slide time
-- The paper doesn't cover the game at all
-- The M.E. assigns the features editor to cover the game. Said editor dutifully writes about three points being scored in the third quarter to clinch the win.

Readers will not assign the blame to you. Trust me.

 

THat one might get you blamed.

 

I've been through this at an old paper. My advice is to give them what they want: Work your hours and then go home. It'll last a week or two and then they'll give you your OT, albeit tacitly.

The truth there is no way they can stop OT altogether. This is just their way of limiting it or getting people to eat their hours out of pride.

When my old job pulled this, they had me working 60+ hours a week easily. The no OT mandate was like a vacation. My week was over in three or four days. They'd try to load something else on me as I was walking out the door and I'd just grin, shrug and tell them I was out of hours.

They give in. Trust me.

 

I always have found the OT situation interesting because when I was hired I was told you will have overtime and you will be paid for it. The company would rather pay fewer people overtime than give more people benefits. They said "the base pay may not seem like much, but you'll make up for it in overtime."

Overtime makes up about a third of my pay. I still get a kick thinking back - "Your pitch for me to come work here is long hours and low pay?"

For pretty much everyone in the sports and news departments here, 50-52 hours a week is the norm. This week we've got a big holiday basketball tournament going on, and I'm looking at 60+

 

holiday basketball tournaments are why they created capsules.

 

I wish every paper had that mindset.

 

I counted five grammatical errors in that Heartland ad, which I read only once. If it's going to be cheap and heartless, can a newspaper company at least abide by the tenets of the language?

 

Perhaps they should have outsourced the ad production to India.

Wait. Nevermind. That's another thread.

 

I've never worked at a place that offered comp time, so will someone please explain it to me?

If I understand correctly, if I work 60 hours under a normal overtime situation, I get paid my regular wage for 40 hours, and time-and-a-half for the extra 20.

If I work 60 under a comp time plan, I get 40 hours of regular wage, nothing immediate for the extra 20, and then 20 hours of time off to use later. Is that right? Am I not getting screwed out of the "half" in time-and-a-half? Or do I misunderstand the system?