Traveling to events - Are you on company time?

@MonsterLobster: Your editor, too, is an asshole.

 

Thankfully I no longer work there and am grateful for it every day.

 

well the photog is a moron. You don't put mileage from your home to destination. You should be counting it from the parking spot at work to the locale.

 

Disagree. If I'm leaving the house at 8 a.m. for a 10:30 assignment in a town two hours away, I'm counting the mileage from the spot where I started. If that's my driveway, so be it.

 

Wow...that's crazy...your editor is expecting you to spend 10 unpaid hours to go cover a game he's going to pay you 3 hours of work for?

Of course drive time is on the clock. This guy is wrong both in a legal sense and in a decency sense. Definitely fight it...if that was the policy, I wouldn't cover anything more than 5 miles from the office. Make it a home games only policy, then direct the angry parents his way when they wonder why your paper wasn't covering the state tournament six hours away.

I've elected to put a two-hour radius in place at our work...it covers most of the events. But we seek a freelancer for the rare playoff events/games that take place farther away. It's just not worth paying a reporter to travel that far in our case. But if they are asking you to travel that far, yes, you can demand those work hours.

 

I think Red is trying to say that if the office if farther away than your driveway, you should credit yourself those miles.

 

Nope. At my company, it specifically says on the mileage report that mileage is to be taken from the office.

 

Run across this policy often. I found it usually evened out for me, anyway.

As for the question to start this thread, well, yeah, enough people have said it -- you're definitely on the clock. No doubt about it. Definitely keep us updated as to what happens!

 

Driving to an assignment is no different than paginating a page, writing a story, interviewing a coach or covering a game. It's a requirement of the job you've chosen to have and, as such, you have to do it whether or not you want to.

And that's why it's paid time. You're not doing this for shits and giggles. You deserve to be compensated for your time.

That being said, when I chart out my hours for the week, I include drive time if I'm going from the office somewhere or if I'm going from my house to somewhere more than a half-hour away. I figure it's not a big deal if I drive from my house to Podunk High and it's 20 minutes away.

But in this case? Yeah. Clock it. If your editor doesn't want to pay you to go, tell him you'll gladly stay at the office and call the coach after the game for a recap.

 

A reporter once explained it to me like this: "If I can't mow my lawn, I'm working." or something like that. Point is, you are required by your job to be away from home, so you are on the clock.

That said, I've never been an hourly employee*. I don't understand how you'd even do that as a reporter. There are so many little issues that arise and you want to be treated fairly without appearing to be nickel and dining the company for every extra minute.

*Technically I was an hourly employee at my last job, but we all just filled out time cards exactly the same each week: 7.5 hours/day M-F, regardless of how much time we actually worked. Mostly took comp time instead of OT.

 

I have had conversations on this topic a few times over the years, and I've struggled with an eloquent way to explain the concept that, if I'm not cut loose to do my own thing, I'm on the clock. Saying, " If I can't mow the lawn, I'm working," is spot on.

 

You're on the clock. Period.

I'd cite labor laws and put in for the time if you're driving to an assignment. I wouldn't tell him publicly to shove it up his ass.

If you told me to shove it up my ass as your boss, I'd shove your ass out the door for insubordination.