Thank you everyone, it's been a long couple weeks.
Thank you everyone, it's been a long couple weeks.
Appleseed said:In the fine print, buried somewhere in the system , is the time clock policy. I was explained to me on the day I was hired, 2 years ago.
Turns out clocking in early doesn't get you any more money than clocking in exactly at 3:30. All the extra minutes that I was working before 3:30 was free labor. I might have caught this on my pay stub early on...but I've never seen one. Not one in 2 years. I cant access the paycheck information. HR knows, expresses concern every single time I mention it, and...that's it. The concern ends as soon as I leave the room.
I'm pretty pissed. One thing is for sure, I'm not doing E36 M3 until exactly 3:30. I'm not getting paid for it? Berk you.
I was a line cook at the restaurant in the middle of one of those old U-shaped motor lodge style joints. Took me a couple of months to realize that my checks were short and when I asked, owner explained that he just rounded everything to nearest hour and coincidentally, that had the effect of shorting me time, every day. When I pressed him on this being unacceptable he said he didn't have time to calculate everyone's time down to the minute and to give him a day or two to figure out a workable solution.
The solution he landed on: delegate payroll to guy running the front office of the motel. My childhood best friend. Magically, my checks were not only fixed, but somehow the rounding policy was tweaked, and my checks were actually fatter than my time cards! 
mtn said:In reply to Appleseed :
Might want to report that to the labor board, because in Illinois that is illegal.
Under the Minimum Wage Law and the Illinois Wage Payment and Collection Act, an employer is obligated to pay an employee for all time worked. For both salaried and hourly employees, if a portion of the week is not completed, the entire salary amount is not due. However, the employee may enter into an agreement with their employer to use some kind of benefit time for those days not worked (vacation, sick, PTO, etc.).
https://labor.illinois.gov/complaints.html
Came back a page to say this, "policy" or not.
I worked somewhere where "policy" was to calculate overtime on a 2 week basis. IE if you worked thirty hours one week and fifty hours the other week in a pay period, that was 80 hours and thus no overtime. People got fired over this when I pointed out how illegal that was.
Pete. (l33t FS) said:mtn said:In reply to Appleseed :
Might want to report that to the labor board, because in Illinois that is illegal.
Under the Minimum Wage Law and the Illinois Wage Payment and Collection Act, an employer is obligated to pay an employee for all time worked. For both salaried and hourly employees, if a portion of the week is not completed, the entire salary amount is not due. However, the employee may enter into an agreement with their employer to use some kind of benefit time for those days not worked (vacation, sick, PTO, etc.).
https://labor.illinois.gov/complaints.html
Came back a page to say this, "policy" or not.
I worked somewhere where "policy" was to calculate overtime on a 2 week basis. IE if you worked thirty hours one week and fifty hours the other week in a pay period, that was 80 hours and thus no overtime. People got fired over this when I pointed out how illegal that was.
Appleseed, I'd put in a call to the regional labor board as well. While their time clock policy probably isn't unlawful, the lack of pay stubs and payroll information is.
My policy is anything over 8 hours per day is overtime, even if you don't end up with 40 hours in the week.
Also, if I'm billing overtime, I'm paying overtime. To do otherwise is to screw over the employee and I'm not going to do that.
I run payroll in 15-minute increments and round up.
I don't have a time clock so the guys track their own time and fill out their own time sheets. Trying to screw them over would be kind of stupid on my part.
Toyman! said:Pete. (l33t FS) said:mtn said:In reply to Appleseed :
Might want to report that to the labor board, because in Illinois that is illegal.
Under the Minimum Wage Law and the Illinois Wage Payment and Collection Act, an employer is obligated to pay an employee for all time worked. For both salaried and hourly employees, if a portion of the week is not completed, the entire salary amount is not due. However, the employee may enter into an agreement with their employer to use some kind of benefit time for those days not worked (vacation, sick, PTO, etc.).
https://labor.illinois.gov/complaints.html
Came back a page to say this, "policy" or not.
I worked somewhere where "policy" was to calculate overtime on a 2 week basis. IE if you worked thirty hours one week and fifty hours the other week in a pay period, that was 80 hours and thus no overtime. People got fired over this when I pointed out how illegal that was.
Appleseed, I'd put in a call to the regional labor board as well. While their time clock policy probably isn't unlawful, the lack of pay stubs and payroll information is.
My policy is anything over 8 hours per day is overtime, even if you don't end up with 40 hours in the week.
Also, if I'm billing overtime, I'm paying overtime. To do otherwise is to screw over the employee and I'm not going to do that.
I run payroll in 15-minute increments and round up.
I don't have a time clock so the guys track their own time and fill out their own time sheets. Trying to screw them over would be kind of stupid on my part.
When I worked at the Ford plant, they did OT like you, anything over 8 in a day was OT. Had weekly production goals, so we'd run 10hrs most weeks on Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday varied based on how much the line stopped Monday and Tuesday, Thursday was usually 8hr and Friday they blew the whistle whenever the weekly goal truck rolled out the door.
Had a lot weeks with a 38hr check, 4 hours of which were OT. I didn't hate it.
This flu suuuuuucks.
In reply to Appleseed :
I had a summer job many years ago where the manager changed my hours as he claimed I was clocking in early. When I pointed out that the clock on the device was ahead by a lot, he dismissed me. Basically, everyone lost work time because the time clock was off from reality.
It was fun working there (it was a resort I have to live at instead of home), but the manager was a real POS.
(reminds me that his kid had the same BD as me, at the time, I was running the worker cafeteria. So they had a huge party for the brat. Made a HUGE mess that I had to clean up on my BD. Thankfully, a couple of my co-workers remembered it was my BD, too.)
The minivan had an issue with the power sliding door, which was thankfully covered under a manufacturer-extended warranty. Of course they do the multipoint inspection.
Now... I KNOW for a fact that the brake pads need to be replaced. In fact, I have them sitting on the kitchen counter, waiting for a warm day. Color me curious when the multipoint inspection doesn't come up with brake pads needing to be replaced, but the oil change and air filters are checked (both done last month, with dates written on the box, and the window sticker), and the coolant, which was done a year ago... Ya'll are really just randomly checking boxes, aren't you?
This probably belongs in the wins and the rants thread.
We did a fire door inspection a couple of years ago for a customer. 2/3s of their doors failed for various reasons. Everyone was shocked because their previous inspector had passed everything with flying colors for years.
5 months ago they had a different company do another inspection. The same doors failed for pretty much the same reasons we listed. Obviously, the original company had not been doing the inspections, just rubber stamping everything and collecting the money.
I got a call last night from the engineering director because Joint Commission is on site this week doing their annual inspection and they are concentrating on doors and fire protection this year. Once again 2/3s of their fire doors are failing inspection. Joint Commission can make or break a hospital. A fail means no more Medicare or Medicaid billing and a loss of accreditation. They have to have a plan for corrections implemented quickly to retain their passing grade.
This is 2/3s of well over 400 doors. Half of them will need to be replaced due to damage. That doesn't include the damaged frames and broken hardware that will also need to be replaced.
Here's the win. They are discussing issuing me a not-to-exceed PO for about 1/3 of my annual gross to come in and repair doors until the PO runs out. Then they will issue another PO to continue the process.
Here's the rant part. I am already chronically short on experienced employees. This will basically take two of my best people and lock them in one building for the next year or more. I'm going to have to send at least one other guy out for NFPA 80 training. Even paying above the state average doesn't attract skilled people. The old guard has retired and there isn't anyone out there to hire.
I was awake for several hours last night stressing over this. I already feel like a juggler with too many balls in the air. This is going to toss a really big ball into the mix and I have no idea how I'm going to catch it.
We have a meeting with the customer Monday morning. Somewhere between here and there, I need to figure out how to not drop all the balls. This is going to be a long week.
Pretty sure I'm going to have more gray hair before this one is over.
In reply to Toyman! :
Some form of subcontract with whatever competitor has the best reputation and relationship with you? 2 days a week? Or whatever works?
In reply to Toyman! :
We had an older salesman that would tell me to take the order and we'll figure it out later on how we're going to do it.
Then we became ISO9001 certified and had to not wing it anymore.
When I was in sales, our mantra was "Don't confuse sales with delivery"
In reply to Toyman! :
Our favorite door guy seems like he might have a similar issue (experienced labor shortage). Used to have a couple of decent pairs that could come out and knock out 90% of our openings on a job, tell us what was wrong with the other 10%, and if we couldn't sort that 10% out, he had his one guy who could basically always make chicken salad out of a chicken E36 M3 door/hardware situation on T&M.
NOW, he still has that one guy, who's still a wizard with doors and hardware, but he's nearing retirement age, had a heart attack, and can't spend long weeks in the field fixing everything. Meanwhile, the other "decent" pairs of installers are gone, replaced by younger guys who might be well-meaning, but they aren't great at door hardware. Feel bad for him, because he went from my guy I'd call to the guy I sorta dread seeing on the sub-sheet when I start a new job because I know I'll be coming behind his installers doing my own punchlist fixes.
In reply to Spearfishin :
That's the crux of my problem. I have 7 guys in the field running 4 trucks. One who is as good as I am. He's been with me for 17 years and I trained him. Two are very good and have been with me 6-7 years. One of the guys is good but has only been a door whore for 2.5 years. He will be very good as his confidence level gets better. The other two are helpers who are coming along but one has only been in the field for a little over a year and the other started a month ago. They know the quality I expect and they deliver it. But it takes 3-4 years to train a door tech. For the first year, they are almost a net loss. There is a limit to how many untrained people I can afford.
Hiring someone mediocre won't work. Substandard work would ruin the 20 years of top-quality work we have done. So, I need top-notch guys but there aren't any to hire. That lack is the reason most of my competition has pulled out of the local market or are trying to cover the area using employees who are 2-3 hours away. They can't find anyone either.
I've been raising prices trying to weed out the cheapskates but that doesn't work when there isn't anyone else in town for them to call. There is also a limit to the amount of overtime people want to work so piling on the hours doesn't work either. We are already averaging 2-5 hours per week per employee. More will make the employees I have now start looking elsewhere. Not to mention that the OT nukes my worker's comp insurance rates.
It's really a conundrum.
I'll figure it out, it's just going to take some skull sweat.
wae said:When I was in sales, our mantra was "Don't confuse sales with delivery"
When I worked in the traffic department of a telecom, that attitude made me want to kill a few salespeople.
Why do HR recruiters take so long to reply to status update requests?
Why are your sales personnel pushing items you won't have in stock until March?
I'm still dealing with hail damage claim from May 2024.
I requested a cashier's check from USAA to pay the remainder of the balance due to the body shop. The check was canceled 2 days after I gave the authorization with no explanation. Even the CSR had no idea why it was canceled. I was given no notice so I was waiting and waiting for it to show up. Three weeks had elapsed. I found on the app where I could request a check. But then it directed me to call customer service. I noticed there was record of my request with CANCELED next to it.
It would take another 7-10 business days to get mailed another check, and that's with the $20 expedited fee.
Yeah, no. Exasperated, I dug through my paperwork box and found my personal checks. I drove to the shop and wrote them a check. I don't have time to deal with this clusterberkeley anymore.
The office manager told me that when she tried to contact the claim handler listed on my claim, she was told that she no longer works there. Same for the clam adjuster. So she was forwarded to someone else who was dumbstruck as to why I received two of the payments and the shop received the other ones.
Hopefully this is all over now.
In reply to Wally (Forum Supporter) :
I'm sorry for your loss... I don't think there's ever a truly good way to have to say goodbye.
Rant 1: The repair/restomod of the DMC has been stalled, more or less, for like 5 years now. I made a lot of progress at the beginning of the Pandemic due to just having more time at home and not as much otherwise to do, and made another strong push last year and got the frame out and blasted to start repairing it but got bogged down later in the year. I'd been really hoping to push and try and get it as far along as I can this year which would involve ordering like $2k of parts (including one that is the main reason for the car being parked 8 years or so ago and is NOT something that can be reasonably fabricated from scratch AND is like 2/3 of that $2k) and likely spending a good bit more if I move forward with my plan to convert it to an EV (I'd still have to spend more if I don't, since there are things in the engine & transmission that would need to be replaced if I keep the original drive or swap in a newer engine).
But now we're taking a much harder look at our finances and spending- the events of the last few days have been a massive dose of cold water with regards to our confidence that our jobs are fairly secure (The Dancer runs a non-profit that works with children with special needs and I work for a company whose primary products are military hardware)- and I can't justify spending thousands of dollars on it right now.
Rant 2: As at least a few of you know, I grew up in a family that were members of a religion that generally eschewed modern medicine and, as such, vaccines. As they got a religious exemption from the requirements for them, I was given no childhood vaccines and as a direct result (combined with, wholly unironically, a session at a summer camp run by other members of the church) was at 15 one of the first people any of the doctors at the hospital in NorCal where we were stationed had ever seen with an active case of the Measles. Over the years I've mostly gotten caught up on them (initially out of necessity when I stepped on a rusty nail and they realized I'd never had a tetanus shot), but until recently hadn't realized that the Polio vaccine was still actively administered (I thought it, like smallpox, it was considered eradicated and thus not needed).
In this case actually ironically through current events I discovered that this was not the case and it is still considered a required vaccine. And since I know a modest amount about what Polio can do (thanks in modest part to a series of alternative history scifi books I read a ways back set in the 50's when Polio was very much still a thing) I now have an appointment to go in and get the first dose of the vaccine- and hope that I can still get the 2nd and 3rd doses down the line.
Rant 3: I desperately need it to both warm up enough (it technically is today, but...) and have the time (I don't today because there are things for The Dancer's upcoming show I need to get done) to clean up and organize our garage. Forget worrying about working on the DMC- it's literally a gymnastic event at the moment every time I try and get to something in the garage having to jump, twist, and turn through everything that's piled up and then have to rifle through things to (hopefully) find what I'm looking for. I know that it will take a solid long weekend of working most of the daylight hours to get it all done- and I have absolutely no berking idea when I'll ever have that much time to spend on it...
Message a guy 11 minutes after he posted a car for sale. He replied a minute later answering my single question. I immediately said Perfect I'll take it. Nothing. A couple minutes later I added one thing. Took him like 20 minutes to read it. No response. Arrghhh. I don't want to spam him with messages but I want the car!!!
In reply to dan0 :
In my experience, he will reply 3 days later saying that he sold the car the day before.
In reply to stanger_mussle (Supported by GRM undergarments) :
Yeah I don't understand that stuff sometimes. Like I was just looking at another vehicle. It had been listed for over a year. Finally messaged him. I said is it still around because I've seen the listing for a long time. "Yes, I still have it but someone is coming Friday or Saturday to buy it. I'll let you know if it falls through" Doesn't update the listing to sold until Monday.
Toyman! said:There is a limit to how many untrained people I can afford.
It seems like you are drowning in work and have the market cornered - raise prices, afford to train more people?
Another rant:
I've feeling like crap all weekend. I took LWOP on Monday and Tuesday since I only had 5hrs of sick time saved up which got used last Wednesday.
My coworker came into work with probably the flu last week. She was really sick and vomited 3 times at work before she thought it was a good idea to go home. I was working in close proximity to her all day the day she went home.
I only get 5hrs of sick time per pay period which I obliterated when I had pneumonia in August.
I still feel like crap but if I take anymore LWOP, I won't be able to pay my mortgage. Kidding. But not really.
My lymph nodes feel like they are the size of grapefruits. It feels like someone crushing my throat.
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