Work Hours: Perception is Reality

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I'm having a problem and hope you guys might have some insight because I "feel" that I may be inwardly overreacting.

I live in the USA Mid-West, which is every bit as bad as you may have heard. This is a culture of get up early, go to work, stay late. Once, I worked for a medical company - harder than anyone else by more than a small factor (many of you can relate!) - and have a manager come up to me and say, "We don't understand what you do, so all we have to go on are the number of hours you work." Another manager told me it was an "unwritten rule to work fifty-five hours a week". I told him to write it down and I'll do it.

I was young.

Anyway, I work on a team that is out of the office at their own remote locations. I am the only person that comes into the home office regularly, every day, simply because I do not have a laptop to work with and I like getting out of the house so I don't associate work with home life (I used to do at-home work and hated it). Because the rest of the team is not on what I call the "local social network" because they are distributed elsewhere geographically, they have evolved a later starting time. So, instead of coming in at the mid-west social upper-limit of 8:00 am, I've been coming in at 8:45 am. Then, I take a half-hour lunch out of the office at 11:00 am to avoid people and come back at around 11:30 am. A half-an-hour. Somedays, I might go over, sometimes I might go under by five minutes, but I know I come out having worked more than 40 hours a week so I don't watch time too closely.

Today, I didn't have a task to do so I decided I would leave ten minutes early, figuring I easily have the time "banked". I'm a contractor, so I work hourly and may not work more than forty hours a week without approval and time-and-a-half. As I was leaving, another co-worker remarked about how I never leave at 5:00 pm. Then, another co-worker started talking to me in the hall, insinuiting that I make my own hours.

I have had to justify these hours too often. I explain that my team works later and that it is better if I work later so that I am available later. I mentioned, very angry but trying to make it sound flippiant, that I should just start coming in at 8:00 in the morning so people would stop wondering.

I think I made the mistake of mistaking reality for reality on this: that I AM working the time, and that I am way more productive than anyone else (that is never measured in the mid-west, though, so I'm not naive to the fact that it doesn't matter how hard I work). But, perception is reality: because I'm coming in later, and then leaving when they do, they assume I'm doing less work. Because some of them are salaried, I AM there less than they are; this is a typical mid-west culture of work all day and all night and carry a pager (which I don't as a contractor). Some of them take hour lunches instead of half-hour lunches, so our leave times collide.

Anyway, I've decided to do a strict 8:00 am to 5:00 pm day and take a one-hour lunch every day. I know people will perceive that I am working more because of the time I come and leave and they do not pay attention to during-the-day time. It really bothers me, though, because these people should mind their own business and stop clocking me. And, I'm tired of the questions about it.

Am I overreacting? I think the local social network is warning me that they are unhappy with me and consider me doing something socially unacceptable. It is just burning me up because I exhaust myself all day working my butt off to compensate for the idiocy of others. Thankless, but I choose to live here in the mid-west, USA, for family reasons, so I have made a choice and know I must live with it.

Why do you want to live there?

I understand where you're coming from. It gets to be really irritating. I just quit caring and said to hell with these stupid unwritten rules. If the time card says 40 hours, then I worked 40 hours, regardless of anyone else's say so. I go in, I do my time, and I leave. If I thought I could get away with it, I would probably pull a Peter Gibbons and just quit going to work altogether.

The social network is sending up warning flares, and no, I don't think you're overreacting.

I had the same problem when I worked for a non-profit with a staff of 6 - I worked from 9am to 5pm every day and everyone else came and went as they pleased - but if I wanted to schedule a doctor's appointment during the day it was like I was asking permission to take a week off and then, God help me, if I asked when someone was going to be in . . . becuase that was none of my business - even if I was scheduling for them . . .
I didn't realize how stressful it was until I got this job I have now - which is paramilitary - I work 1030am to 1830 (630 pm) with 2 30 minute breaks - there is no 'I'm going to be a few minutes late' or any of that - if I'm not there then I get in trouble - and I know where everyone else is - I like it better this way . . .
(not that there isn't any flexibility in the system - this is the job where my supervisor gave me a day off to take care of my dying cat - but without a MAJOR problem there is no flexibilty and it gives me much less to think about)

I had a job like this once. I liked it for exactly the same reasons: structure, routine, and adherence to rules. And the job I have now is SUPPOSED to be like that, but no one in management enforces the rules so unmitigated chaos reigns.

I have to be with my family for as long as they are alive. The only people who have gotten to know me well enough to get through the AS layer live here. It is also extremely important to my mother that I stay here. If I left again (I lived in Atlanta for a while), it would "devestate" her.

This is pretty much true of everyone I know in the mid-west. Family.

I always find myself wondering how hard other people are working themselves if they have so much time to observe how hard you are working and comment on it all the time...I have had similar problems

Great point! I think people think socializing /is/ work. In an environment without objective measures of performance (which is basically ALL in the mid-west I've worked for), I guess it is.

PS: I love the golf-swing social cue. The guys who walk around practicing their golf swing all day. I think they are saying, "I am hanging with the big boys so you better respect my authoritah!". I'm sure there is more to it though. Some invisible thread between air-golfers.

This sounds like something out of a Dilbert comic. How in the world can any company think that they can measure productivity by the number of hours you work. That would be like determining the value of a computer programmer based on the number of lines of code that the person writes. Besides, who is more productive, the person that completes task A in 30 hours or the person that completes task A in 60 hours (assuming task A is identical for both people).

I live in the upper mid west and I have never worked for an employer who only measures productivity based on the number of hours you work. Granted, I have only worked for one employer based in the mid-west ( the others are directed from high in other parts of the country).

Maybe I can get my boss at the bus company to determine my productivity based solely on the number of hours I drive.

This hasn't been every place I've worked (I've lost count; it must be around 15 places now; as a contractor, it changes often and that isn't a bad thing). But, many of them. The reason they judge on time is because they do not understand what we do. Remember: managers understand people, not computers. So, they don't know at all how much discipline, effort, and creative energy goes into writing software. Because most managers are what I call "assertively uninvolved", they don't even know what you've produced half the time. So, they go with what they know. Usually, because they refuse to interact with you directly, it is based on what they've heard from others.

As a rule, it is bad for your manager in the mid-west to hear about you in any way, including positive. If you are heard of negatively, it means you are a bad employee (incompetent people know this and use this trick a lot to weed out threats). If you are heard of positively, it means you might gain influence, and influence is the only thing that matters to your boss, so the boss will see that as a threat. The only people who survive in mid-west corporations are people that either do nothing, or are so good at using the grapevine to hurt others that they divert attention from themselves. This is easily observable.

Here are some examples. Once, I finished a documentation system for a company and, because my software was stable, robust, and easy to use, the entire organization of about 4,000 people eventually wound up wanting to use it and got on board. This caused both situations. First, I had extra time and, since I had the knack for getting things done, I was assigned to help another project for a while. The incompetent person running the project technically, felt threatened and would go to his boss constantly telling him things about me that weren't true. Like, "I'm not a team player," which was meaningless because: a. there was no team; it was him and I and my part was isolated from his and did not require any interaction with anyone else. It was simple stuff that he knew he should have been able to do. I committed the sin of coming in without even knowing the language flavor (it was MFC C++), learning the language, and implementing the part he couldn't in a day.

I also got a career hit due to the positive part. "I've been hearing your name a lot lately," my boss told me after my system started getting very popular. "In a good way?" I asked? "I don't know; I only know it isn't good when a manager hears your name often." I hated this boss so much, I wanted to move to another division. But, he had a pub-meeting with the person I was going to interview with once I posted out to say they don't want me to keep me in his team because I was making him look good.

Take this an apply this general idea to every job and that has been my career. I've committed the greatest sin at every job: competence. And, because my aspie obsession with computers lead to quick turn arounds and successes, I have failed in every way but salary; at least I've managed to keep that up because there is always a mess to clean up in the mid-west. I've made a career out of cleaning up that mess and then getting cut the minute it's done. It's a living!

I definately can relate to how you feel. Through-out highschool I worked in the fast food industry, horrible job, horrible wages. But they had discipline. If you were 1 minute late, you had a formal infraction written up and put on your record. These would then be used against you on your reviews, or if you had I believe it was 3 you were suspsended, a 4th meant you were fired. I was late once in the 5 some odd years I was employed there.

Now, like yourself, I am a contract programmer. I am at a job now where there are no set break times, no set start times, no clocking in/out. Its foreign to me. I like that I can walk in 5 minutes late and not be penialized. However things like that can quickly become a habbit. I'd rather not have the option in the end.

I think most of us who have been programmers can relate to what you describe.

It's absurd to evaluate knowledge workers based on being at their desk from 8-5. We do a lot of brainstorming and creative problem-solving at home, on evenings and weekends. Also, the workload sometimes has huge peaks and valleys, and it's pretty silly to sit at your desk when there's nothing to do toward the end of the day.

However, even if your boss has an enlightened attitude, his hands may be tied by HR. In one job I carried a beeper and worked a HUGE amount of mandatory overtime, but still supposedly had to be in the office from 8 to 5. However, this rule was not applied consistently (aspie red flag) and that led to my resignation.

In another position I held (with a consulting firm), people made a big deal of showing up before 8:00 am and not leaving the office until 9:00 pm or so. You could actually drive by late at night and see the parking lot full of cars. The reality was something quite different. The employees would leave for two hour lunches and extended trips to the mall in the middle of the afternoon. Apparently the only thing that mattered was being perceived as a workaholic.

So yes, perception definitely is reality and I agree with your strategy of working a strict schedule.

Two other thoughts:
(1) The workaholic patterns you describe are not limited to the midwest. The job where I worked all the mandatory overtime (with no compensation) was on the East Coast.

(2) Consider yourself blessed to be able to work just 40 hours and get away with it. Those type of positions are rapidly disappearing as we try to compete with cheap foreign labor.

Interesting! And disheartening, I suppose, to learn. I used to work in Atlanta for a while and we'd stay later too, but that was to play video games with each other, so it really didn't count.

I do feel blessed, but I am taking a hit for it. All the rest of the team works more than that, even the other contractor who just doesn't write it down. We're not allowed to work more than forty, technically (reality), but really, people do. It is one of the main reasons I want to stay a contractor there. It is the closest thing I have to a union! They have to pay time and a half for me to work more than 40, so they won't force me, and they don't document anything and I have learned way too much.

Since I've done the 8-5, I've really been doing 43-45 hour weeks anyway, since I rarely do the whole hour for lunch. Plus, then I stay another half hour later sometimes just to get something done with one of the other team members who work at home, but that is convenient to make it so that they do not have to stop working.

It's a good life, though. I was actually thinking today about how I seem to be enjoying the job a little bit more every day. Last time that happened, they closed the office and fired all of us, so let's hope I'm a little luckier this time Luckily, my output rate is so fast, I don't run into problems of not finishing tasks in a timely manner.

Thank you guys for the advice!

I am not sure about this, but I believe it is illegal, in the eyes of the Labor Board, to make people work constantly for over 40 hours, especially without overtime pay. Now, at least that is what I have been told. I applied for a job at ACORN at one point, and refused it on the grounds that they expected me to work from 9 AM to 8 PM. Most of the people just walked out, and one girl told me that what they were doing was illegal. And this was a progressive organization, no less. I have problems with working long hours on a constant basis, and I always ask at an interview what the hours are. I expect them to at least live up to their word, having thought about taping what was said on a couple of occasions, not that I'm encouraging others to do that. I'll work overtime when asked to at times, but I refuse to do so as an order on a constant basis. But the interview is where I tend to ask more of the important questions.

- Ray M -

Aetumus,

I do not know what country you are in but that is not how it goes in the US. There are a group of workers called exempt workers. They are paid a salary regardless of the amount of hours that they work. This is legal according to US law.

I would also suggest not asking what the hours are (unless the job is a support center job, an unusual shift, or part-time) in an interview and I would definitely suggest not taping an interview. You have to understand that the employer already knows your skills set and whether you can do the job or not based on your resume. The idea of an interview is to see if you will be a good fit in the team. Employers do not want "I" people and asking about hours and stuff like that makes you look like an "I" person. Besides, the offer that is tendered to you should state the hours you are expected to work and if it does not, you can ask. An offer tendered is not an offer accepted.

Aeturnus, I too want to know what country you live in, so I can move there. Exempt employees in the USA have no limit to their hours. Many of them also carry pagers and are told (no kidding) that they are always working for the company. The USA is worse than Japan now. If my family wasn't living here, I'd move to Australia, where I hear the working environment is a lot better.