In my annual review my boss pointed out that I only worked 40 hours per week. He stated that he’d really like to see me there for 45-50 hours per week. I asked if I was getting all of my work done. He said yes. I asked if there was additional work that I needed to get done that was waiting in the wings. He said no. I asked why the 10-20% increase in my hours were needed. “I’d just really like to know that you are spending more time in the office.” My response, “okay, I’ll work on that.” For the record, I didn’t work on that and several months later my hours dropped to 0 as I found a different employer.
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Certainly not a bad thing to show your boss that you’re doing more than the work required, but if he’s measuring it by the amount of time you’re spending in the office then he’s doin it rong. If it were me then those extra 5-10 hours per week would likely have involved a lot of GoActuary time.
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This story was a rollercoaster, was mad at first, but enjoyed the conclusion.
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Yikes!
I once had an employee who did all his work (and worked a normal-for-us number of hours) but who had grossly irregular hours, and sometimes showed up after 10, and other days left before 3, without any obvious rhyme or reason. That was a problem for me as his manager, because I never knew when I could talk to him. So I thought that’s where that was going. But yikes.
(I had another employee who “worked” exactly 40 hours, and left on the dot every day. He also took 2 hour lunch breaks but treated it as an hour, and had a lot of “errands” he “had to run” during the work day, so really, he worked a lot fewer hours than anyone else. He was also my most productive employee, and did really good work. He mentioned to me once that he felt he could do more work if he got enough breaks. I didn’t feel I could officially condone his shorter hours, but I studiously pretended I didn’t notice. Why kill the goose who laid the golden eggs?)
that is some straight up Linderbergh shit. He’s gonna need you to go ahead and waste more time in the office, ummm kay?
I wonder how that employee’s “40-hour” week compared to those of us who were spending a lot of time on the AO…
An HR lady at a former company said that salaried employees can determine their own hours, but that didn’t stop the president from saying that employees had to be in the office from 8:45-4:30.
This is where I would just walk out. If my manager dares to look at me in the eye after I point out the ridiculousness of it all, then s/he no longer deserves my respect.
I had managers that monitored how often I was on my phone when I worked in the office, I even had skip levels and managers who weren’t even in my direct chain of command talk to my manager about my phone use at the desk.
When my manager(s) (yes, this happened across several rotations, over different manager periods) confronted me, they were always apologetic, saying I should cut back on my phone use because “perception” matters, even if I still did good work.
Ha! More reason for me not to ever go back into an office setting.
Now I’m on GoA all day, youtube all day, and spend 50% of my work time playing video games, and still get above average performance reviews.
Yes it’s the perception thing, and managers get sensitive to it because it gives other people the perception that they are not getting enough work out of their employees. That could bite them in the ass whenever RIF decisions are made. Glad this was never an issue at my current company. One of my co-workers was watching soccer matches on screen at his desk and AFAIK nobody complained.
Yeah, and I was always a rebel, which didn’t help. Well it helped in the sense that it made me want to leave the company and I’m definitely making a lot more than if I were to stay there.
yep, it’s the perception. It’s also politics. That’s why wfh is so problematic. It’s not just the bosses, it’s the coworkers. Esp. mediocre coworkers who put it in the time and expect everyone else to do the same. If you want a job where strictly your productivity matters, do sales or start your own business. Until then, get comfortable working with the masses
Huh? WFH appeals to people like me, who do like 10 hrs of work a week and still get good reviews, why would I wanna be in sales where productivity is objectively measured and doesn’t even necessarily scale with the amount of work you put in
no i meant it’s probelmatic to management and the whole politics of work thing
It’s problematic to managers stuck in the last century. Remote work has been around for quite some time, COVID just accelerated the trend. Managers that get stuck with the old way end up losing a lot of workers.
wouldn’t hold my breath. These managers will be around for about another 20 yrs
The guy had lost my respect quite some time earlier. Story #2: We had to track all of our time which is how he knew I was only spending 40 hours at work since he never walked around by our desks. My entire work life revolved around one project so I was logging 8 hours every day to this one project. I say logging, but it was filling in rows on a spreadsheet for the week so it wasn’t really tracked time but whatever I filled in. After a little, he asked me if I really was spending eight hours everyday working on Project X. I said yes, it’s the only work I have. He said, “No. What I mean is don’t you take breaks to go to the restroom or get some water.” I told him, of course I use the restroom but I didn’t think he wanted that kind of logging. I was then informed that he really only expected 6 hours a day of the log to be work related because nobody works 8 productive hours and that it was okay to log that extra time as something else. In particular, he knew that I spent a lot of time relationship building with our IT staff as it was important to our project.
Since I am always one to follow the letter of pointless rules, I began logging six hours of project time and getting creative with my logging. Of course the first month I began including a record for bathroom breaks. I was averaging 32 minutes a day. At our monthly 1-on-1 he had two comments about this. First, he didn’t really want me labeling my time as bathroom break (or restroom break or latrine or head break, I asked) but that it should be called “Breaks”. Second, he thought I was taking too long. I pointed out that it was a three minute walk to the restroom so a minimum of six minutes. I averaged about four visits to the head a day. That meant just 2 minutes to do my business and wash up. Didn’t seem that unreasonable to me. He then suggested that I drink less coffee and water. I told him that I’d try that and see what happens.
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LOL
There’s no way I could work for that guy. Ohmygawd!
It was pretty awful. He is why I am adamant that I pick who my boss is. I learned a lot about myself and what my needs are in a job from that position. Most days I felt like I was on an episode of The Office.
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