Making up time

If you're an exempt employee (otherwise known as "salaried" or "enslaved"), you know the pleasure of putting in more than 40 hours per week and not getting paid overtime. It's one of the "perks" of being an exempt employee. The general idea is that you stay until you get your work done, and if it takes you longer than 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week, then you're just not working hard enough and you need to stay late to get it done and you don't get paid anything to do it. You are essentially volunteering your time to the company out of the kindness of your heart to make sure shareholders get maximum value.

Once in a while, an event will occur which causes a hiccup in the normal 40 hour work week. Most of the time, at least in northern states, this is due to a major snowstorm. Either the storm is so bad that the business decides to close for the day (rare), or the business is open, you are expected to risk life and limb to get there, and then later in the day it's decided that you will be let go early because the geniuses in management realize that it's not even safe for plows to be on the roads.

In my company, this has happened a couple of times over the last few years. Usually, the employees are notified around 1 pm that the business will be closing at 2 pm. This means different things to different people. For people who normally leave at 3 pm, this isn't that big a deal. For people that leave at 5 pm or 6 pm (or later), this is like getting half a day off.

Most of the time, employees are not expected to make up the time that they missed due to being dismissed early for a snowstorm. It was a company decision, and the employees generally are not asked to come in on the weekend to make it up (hourly and salaried employees alike). By the way, this is one of the few things companies can do to NOT kill employee morale, so it's nice when it happens. However, not all companies have this policy, and some companies do force their employees to make up the time.

My company is one of the companies that does not require its employees to make up the time for early release due to snowstorms (at least as of today - you never know when this will change). However, my company does have a curious policy when other circumstances force the early closure of the business.

A few months ago, a major computer problem caused one of the most-used computer programs to be shut down, with no immediate ETA on when it would be fixed. Most employees in the company cannot do their jobs without access to this program, that's how vital it is. So most of us tried to keep busy with other work, though truth be told, there wasn't a whole lot to do without access to this program.

An hour went by with no update. Then another hour. Finally we heard from IT - they would get back to us within an hour to give us an update on when they would get back to us. Thanks guys, big help. By now, it was nearing lunch time - people were getting hungry, work was piling up, people were frustrated. We got our next update, which stated that the system MIGHT be fixed within four hours. Well, many people were scheduled to leave work before then, and they sure as heck weren't going to be happy if they had to stay late just to see IF the systems would come back up.

Eventually, rumors started circulating that other departments were being sent home. People in my department started wondering if this would happen to us. We heard another rumor that our managers were having a meeting to discuss this. Finally, about half an hour later (it's about 1 pm by now), management announces we are being sent home, however, all salaried employees MUST make up the time being missed, and all hourly employees must either make up the time or not get paid for the hours they will miss.

So, let's get everything straight. When a snowstorm causes people to get released, no one has to make up the time, but a computer glitch which causes people to get released is treated differently? And salaried employees, who often times put in more than 40 hours in a week as it is, have to make up this time? Really? Even though they would likely be at or over 40 hours worked even if they get released 2-4 hours early? And to top it off, the time had to be made up by Saturday (this happened on a Wednesday). That means, your options were to come in early or stay late on Thursday and/or Friday, or work on Saturday. Doesn't matter if you have kids or a second job, or were going on vacation, this HAD TO BE DONE.

When people brought all this up with management, they were given the excuse that salaried workers are expected to make up this time no matter what. As you can imagine, the result of all of this was improved employee morale, increased productivity, and a desire to continue to work extra hours for no additional benefit. Oh, wait - I mean the exact opposite of those things, that was the result.

Look, I can understand that management didn't want to pay hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of salary for time that wasn't worked, but look at the situation; they demanded that employees who regularly put in extra hours each week come in and make up time. Even if you had worked 50 hours the prior week (10 hours of "free" work for the company), you were expected to make up 2-3 hours for this incident. And management wonders why employee retention is always one of the things that tops the list of "Must Improve" year after year.

Has this, or something similar, happened at your company? Share your story with us. Misery loves company!