Today starts my vacation! I’m not officially working again until March 31st.
This vacation isn’t voluntary (unlike the involuntary vacation I got in 5th grade… but that’s quite another story). I have to use up 5 more days of vacation left over from last year, or else I actually get paid less. And I’m not allowed to accrue more than 200 hours of overtime (actually, at 150 hours accrued, alarm bells are supposed to rouse us out of our slumber meetings and inspire us, together with our management, to develop a short-term overtime reduction plan). And I’m not allowed to average more than 180 hours worked per month on a quarterly basis (I’m fudging the numbers here a bit, because the HR coordinator in our department read me the riot act and then gave me the 13-page “work time law” on paper for my reading pleasure , but it’s something like that). What’s the big deal? I’m risking my bosses’ status as free men.
Wie bitte? This is about as weird as not being allowed to call Dr. Tammy “Frau Doktor”, which I very much enjoy.
If I work too much, cause some kind of accident (or maybe go postal), guess who gets in trouble? Well, practically, of course, I do (not to mention Sarah). But also the guy signing my time sheets.
This of course is not good for the company; it is unacceptable for people whose titles include the terms “Vice President” to be open to prosecution like that. So I’m taking pretty much the rest of this month off (with thanks to the Easter holidays as well). And it’ll be tough, but it’s better for the company if I just don’t work on Fridays during the month of April.
Re: enjoying the use of titles – our mailman, the chucklehead, likes to ring the bell and personally present letters addressed to Herr Prof. Dr. Rainer – to me. He makes a little ceremony of it. Sometimes I want to slap him. Of course, maybe I should put part of the blame on Rainer’s aunt and uncle, who feel the need to address his birthday cards this way.
hello
if you do the work you are entitled to the pay. if they don’t want you working all the overtime to get the work done they should hire some more people to spread out the work. this is all assuming that you are not faking it. welcome to the world of big business where the only ones making the big bucks are the elite top. sounds like Generous Motors or ford to me. ask your father grand father and uncle