Traveling to events - Are you on company time?

If that's the specific rule at your shop, then I guess that's the way it goes on the mileage report, although to me it's tantamount to filing a false report if I didn't travel to the assignment from the office. At any rate, my shop doesn't specify so I do it from wherever I start. And, yes, you are on the clock from the moment you start en route to an assignment

 

If you live 30 miles on the east side of the office and drive to a game 30 miles to the west of the office, the mileage should be from the office.

If you live 30 miles on the east and drive from home to a game 30 miles farther east, and they want you to put down 60, well, OK.

 

Mileage should be from the office. When I was in sports, I built a list of mileages to each high school in our coverage area, plus the other conference schools outside of our coverage area.

If your trip starts at home, you're going to win some and lose some with the mileage, depending on what direction you're driving. The way I figure it, it all works out in the end.

When I would get to a school, I'd write down the odometer mileage and work backward and forward from there for the total on my mileage sheet. That was the most fair way to do it.

 

I agree with the others who have posted. It's a dilemma I am facing this very week.

I certainly should be entitled to the drive time. However, if I put down those hours in addition to the OT I am already working, I know I am going to hear the "Well, you didn't HAVE to go. You could have done phone interviews." Technically, that is true. But years of experience have taught me that the material I get is Sooooo much better doing face-to-face interviews, especially with people I don't know well who don't know me. So, to me, the drive is worth it. To management, probably not.

Like many other places, we've cut back so much that we rarely go out of town for anything other than a state championship or major college event. That, along with many other things, have greatly reduced the enjoyment of the job.

 

Reporters are now looked down upon if they leave the office when the opposite used to be the sign of a great reporter in the eyes of editors.

 

That's stupid.

 

Mileage and drive times are both tricky.
I live 35 miles north of the office. When I cover a game 5 miles from my house. I whack the company mileage from the office and back, but don't hit them with much driving time. When I have to cover a game near the office, I count when I leave my house and don't hit them with much mileage. It's a win win for both sides,
- but when it's playoff season, I win because most of the state's playoff games are at a local college that takes me five minutes to drive to and accrues like 80 miles from my office and back.

 

We had this come up a while back because everyone had put down mileage from their starting location forever. We got a new financial guy who insisted it be logged from the office. One guy, who literally lives across the street from one of his weekly assignments, asked in good faith why he should log it from the office because that would be cheating the company out of 15 miles worth of round trip.

The answer was "Oh, in that case log that from your house." His response "Hell no. You don't get it both ways."

I'm about 99 percent sure most of us write down "office" on the sheet for the bean counters then log the actual miles whatever they may be. In my case, I live 2 miles from the office and because there are about 20 different routes you can go anywhere, it's never going to be questioned.

 

After years of working in journalism, I spent this summer as a summer associate with a law firm. When we left the office to travel to court or a deposition, we billed the client from the minute we left the office to the minute we got back. If you left from home? Same thing. Your mileage was paid from home or work - wherever you actually left from.

If you traveled out of town? You billed for every travel hour en route, such as when you were on the plane, driving to the airport etc. (I'd have loved to have seen my SE if I actually billed him for every travel hour, lol).

Very different from journalism. Much more honest IMO.

Why do the clients pay? Because they value the service. Why don't newspapers pay employees that way? Because they know they've got enough leverage that they don't have to.

 

This was a number of years ago now. But one of the papers I was at, the other sports writers would always do interviews over the phone, even for features. Now, a couple of them had been there forever, so coaches did know them.

But I would always try to go out for interviews (especially for features). Game previews could be phoners, but you get so much more from face to face feature interviews.

You might even find someone else to interview about the subject that makes your story that much better.

 

I'm actually a little floored people carefully log their hours and request overtime.

We're forbidden from overtime at my shop. Thus, most of us work -- at most -- 45 hours, compensate for working "over" by working less other weeks and otherwise don't worry about it.

If stuff gets missed, we don't really worry about it because our bosses aren't pricks, and we don't make enough money to care.

Maybe I'm jaded, but if you're in community journalism, I don't think most readers notice a difference between a "good" job and an average one.

And to answer the question, I'm always on company time when I'm traveling to an assignment.

 

What your doing could get the company in hot water.