'Ok, boss': Supervisor mandates no overtime but also mandates checking emails at home, guy charges it as overtime

Brad Dickson • Managing Editor

Apr 19, 2023 11:00 PM EDT

Which is it? No overtime… or checking emails at home? You can't have both. Too many employers these days expect their employees to be always available —without receiving compensation for it.

Anyone who has worked retail, or in a waged position, has had an employer who has made it as difficult as possible to claim overtime. The store closes at 6:30 pm, and you're only contracted for those hours. So in an inexplicably non-existent amount of time, you have to manage to round up all the customers, get them out of the premises, pack everything inside, count the till, get the staff out the door, and access the safe. This frequently takes over 10-15 minutes, but you'd better not dare claim overtime for it. The repeated grief you've received for previously claiming it has made the company's position perfectly clear.

This low-grade wage theft multiplies when you consider that 15 minutes a day is over an hour of paid labor a week, and that's without considering all the missed breaks.

So, when this employee was faced with the conundrum of needing to be available to check their email after hours, they considered themselves to have been granted an exception to the previous "no overtime" ruling. This would have disastrous consequences for their supervisor.

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