1461 Vacation or Not?

Saturday, September 1, 2007

A friend and past coworker pointer me to an article about The Company, and its relaxed attitude toward vacation and time off. The reporter makes it sound good, but the friend and I are both suspicious.

Back in the 90s and earlier, when we all worked in offices in the labs, there were always problems about vacations. Workloads, schedules, and due dates never took vacations into consideration. It was very difficult to actually take more than one or two consecutive days off. If you wanted a whole week for a trip or something, you had to work enormous amounts of overtime before and after the vacation to get everything done, and that was more stress than no vacation at all.

They allowed you to carry over vacation into subsequent years, but only up to a certain number of accrued weeks, and then you'd start losing it. So they'd pressure people to take time off, which could put you in a bad position - take vacation and miss a deadline, or don't take vacation and have HR coming down on your manager? In our last position, one of our coworkers hadn't taken any vacation in like five years. He wanted to, but with overlapping projects, there just wasn't time. Believe it or not, a management suggestion was to take every Friday off, and work two hours overtime every day he came in. Viola! Vacation taken, projects covered. Everybody happy, right?

We were all "professional", which meant we were paid a flat salary, not by the hour, and we didn't have to punch a timeclock. However, we still had to fill out a timecard every Friday. We'd just write the total number of hours across the face. It had to be a minimum of 40 hours. If less, the missing time had to be coded as vacation, illness, personal business, or comp time. Comp time needed permission, which was rarely given, since it was taken for granted that you'd work a minimum of 10% uncompensated overtime per month.

There was a state law that you couldn't work unpaid overtime for more than a certain number of weeks at a time. I think it was something like five or six weeks. I often had managers call me in and tell me that I was over the limit, and I should stop writing more than 40 hours on my time card. Most people just shrugged and wrote 40 hours no matter how much time they put in. I stood firm. I told them that the timecard was a legal document, and I would not lie on it. They could either pay me for the extra time (called "project pay"), give me comp time off (I think it was something like one hour off for every four overtime), or accept a slipped schedule.

They usually gave me the extra project pay and begged me not to tell anyone I was getting it.

It was the usual practice to assign fewer people to projects than even the best estimates required. A manager once told me that 15% overtime was planned in.

And you know what really got me? The people who took on extra projects, and who worked overtime constantly, and who made it known that they were putting in enormous amounts of overtime, thinking they were demonstrating team spirit, loyalty, and dedication, were downgraded on appraisals for "poor time management". People who lied on their timecards were seen as "efficient".

Aaaaaagggghhhh!

So, now they're not tracking vacation time? People can work from home, even from a beach, eh? Well, that takes care of that pesky state law, doesn't it. I wouldn't be surprised if 30% OT is planned in now. And with everyone working at home or otherwise "in secret", a worker who feels pressured to get up from the dinner table and go back to the PC won't even realize that it isn't just him. That The Company has found a way to get all employees to work almost constantly! All day every day. Even on vacation. Which they aren't tracking. Heh heh. Nice tradeoff.

Most people never follow the links. Hint: If you follow this one, you'll find out who "The Company" is. Not that it ever was such a huge secret....
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