Doing extra

A growing culture in modern Britain is to get in early and stay late at work. For many of those that do it, they are showing the boss how “committed” they are, always the first in and the last out. Those that simply do their standard hours are viewed as lazy and only prepared to do the bare minimum. Is staying late not simply a sign of not being able to complete your tasks in the time alloted for them? Should we not view being first in and last out as a sign of gross inefficiency?

Take sport for example. A game of football lasts 90 minutes. Each team has 90 minutes to complete the task, namely score more goals than the opposition. Now, overlay todays “unpaid overtime” culture to the game. Although kick off is as 3PM, Team A is on the pitch at 2:30 to get a couple of goals in early. Having come in early Team A leaves the pitch at 4:50, but Team B is now behind (damn those early starters!) so stay on the pitch until 6PM to finish off the job; now that’ll impress the boss. Can you see how ludicrous this is?

A recent report showed that the average Britain does £4,800 of unpaid overtime each year which is over 7 hours a week. We are effectively working from the beginning of the year until 23 February for nothing! Your boss is getting almost 2 free months work from you.

I say, “no more” to this ridculous situation. Your boss probably by now expects you to be doing this, after all you’re keeping the wage budget down. It’s time to reclaim your life. If they aren’t going to pay you then don’t do it. Would you expect to get a workman in and ask that he does a chunk of the work for free?

This entry was posted on 20/06/2007 at 08:16 am and is filed under Random stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.