'Obviously they chose most inconvenient way': Railroad employee pushes back against antiquated business practices

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    '[This] would result in wages not being paid until the following Friday'
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    Employer only paid us on- time if we FAXED our timesheets
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    This happened about 10 years ago when I was working on the railways near London.
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    I worked for an agency which supplied staff to the railways on an temporary basis. They were very old fashioned and as part of our employment contract they stated that our hand-completed time sheets had to be faxed by 7:00pm on the Thursday for us to be paid on the Friday.
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    Time sheets that were emailed even before 7:00pm would result in wages not being paid until the following Friday.
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    Obviously they chose the most inconvenient way as it was 2014 and nobody had a fax machine, so that they were able to legally retain our wages in their account for an extra week.
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    But my printer at home had a fax machine built in that I never used
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    So after my first week, I plugged in my printer to the phone line, faxed my time sheet to the agency and waited. The next day, I still hadn't been paid.
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    So I phoned them and asked why I hadn't been paid but the response was explained in a dull voice by somebody who had obviously repeated the same sentence so many times that it had lost all meaning to her.
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    "As explained in your contract, only time sheets that have been faxed to us are paid the next day. If you've emailed it, your wages will be paid the following week". "But I did fax it!"
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    She gathered her thoughts for a moment before replying "Oh... err ok? Which number did you fax it to?" So I gave her the number I faxed it to which was correct.
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    "Um... ok.. I'll just place you on hold" She came back on the phone a couple of minutes later.
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    "Ok, yes we've got it. Sorry, I can't remember the last time somebody actually faxed their timesheet to us! I'll get that paid now"
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    As you can imagine, I told my colleagues the following day and from then on, they all gave their timesheets to me to fax when I got home so they got paid on-time.
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    At the time I wondered if they'd drop the silly fax vs email rule but it continued and so every week I'd fax in half a dozen timesheets to them.
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    BmoreCreative What's funny is there are also emails you can use to fax things, and receive fax. My office got one because people INSISTED in faxing us.
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    AMonkeyAndALavaLamp. I remember about 20 years ago I had a car accident and the company refused to take the statement in any way other than fax (the accident happened during a trip to a different province where the company didn't have an office), so I typed the
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    statement, detailed the damages part by part in Word using font size 48 and used the fax/modem feature on a laptop for the last time in my life to send it over. When I came back the girl that worked at the insurance office in my town told me it took two rolls of fax paper to print the entire thing and she had to submit it to headquarters in a binder
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    because it didn't fit in the standard envelopes used to send claim statements :-)
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    co T OxfordBlue2 Reminds me of this gag 'Could you fax over a copy?' 'No, I can't fax because of where I live' 'Where do you live?' 'The 21st century'
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    Lylac_Krazy Yup, fax those 6 time sheets, then fax 20 completely black pages. Do that every week. Faxing those sheets would come to a stop quickly when they have to change print carts or rolls every time.
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    dellaevaine I once was told by a medical office that I could only fax things to this one number and someone DROVE the file from that office to their office. When we walked into the office for the appointment, they literally had 3 fax machines in the office
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    on their counter. When I pointed that out to the staff, I was told that they didn't know those machines were fax machines.

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