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Anyone else encountered employees (salaried) who work 8:30 to 5:30 shifts (pretty normal hours, imo) and who feel like, if they skip the lunch break they are given, they can just leave at 4:30? Business hours are from 8:30 to 5:30 - you'd better be there at the start and close of the day. I don't care if you don't want to take the hour for lunch you are given, you work until 5:30, unless you have an appointment and truly need to leave. Leaving an hour early everyday just because you sat at your desk while you ate lunch? Makes my head spin how entitled people are these days.
Why?
My normal schedule is 8-5... Most days I work from 730-530 and eat lunch at my desk to get everything done, sometimes I stay even later. If I want to leave at 330 or 400 on Friday or another day during the week, I do. My boss has told me to do that, actually.
I remember having a petulant obsession with everyone else's adherence to the rules when I was about six years old. Then my character evolved. So there's hope.
Rarely do I get upduring work. I like to come in and leave only once a day. I bring food from home or I don't eat. I don't even use the restroom until it's time to go home.
As others have mentioned, this is not healthy. It's a fairly strong risk factor for various bad health outcomes.
Besides, it wouldn't kill people to work nine hours a day. What do you do that's so important that an extra hour at work and another 30 minutes added onto your commute means the end of the world?
An extra hour of work and another 30 minutes added to the commute per day adds up to seven and a half hours per week and amounts to 390 hours per year. That is almost two and a half weeks of time given up per year. I'd rather save that two and a half weeks for the times when mandatory OT comes around and not give it up to the employer voluntarily.
In my opinion there are only three scenarios where mandating assigned hours to salaried people is justified.
(1) Manufacturing/production where employees must be onsite during specified hours to keep the facility output going.
(2) Client facing employees who must be onsite as customers can arrive any time the business is open.
(3) Employees for whom answer calls from clients any time the business is open is a significant portion of their duties.
It is my understanding that assigned hours is one of several criteria the government uses to determine if an employee should be salaried versus hourly and eligible for overtime. I don't know how your entity stacks up against the other criteria but I would tread lightly. One complaint by a disgruntled employee could lead to an investigation. Those investigations can be a royal pain in the arse.
(4) Education. You can't leave kids in the school by themselves, and even if high school teachers have the first or last period off, they are expected to be at the school.
(4) Education. You can't leave kids in the school by themselves, and even if high school teachers have the first or last period off, they are expected to be at the school.
Very good point. The teaching profession specifically did not cross my mind when I wrote that reply, however one could consider the students as customers/clients and then the teachers would fall under (2).
If the employee is salaried and exempt I'm not sure what the problem is. I've never had a salaried position where anyone cared when or even where I did the work so long as the work got done.
The thing is, as an employer I wouldn't want employees skipping lunch. A hungry worker is a worker that will make mistakes.
To be fair, how would you ensure that people consumed a meal worthy of being called "lunch" at a certain time of the day, for which they were not being paid? Surely you couldn't force them to eat, could you? Would you prevent them from eating between arrival and "lunch" in order to make sure their appetites were sufficient to consume enough food at "lunch"?
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