When I worked as a fishmonger at Whole Foods Market they wanted to promote me to associate team leader, a salaried position, but I refused. In the seven years I worked there, I got maximum raises at every evaluation but declined invitations to move up because I knew what those positions were like. The corporation basically owned you. You’re one phone call away from having to drop everything and go to work.
Read More"I do not work an extensive number of overtime hours. But I do work a few hours every week, and I do not get paid for them."
In my case, what has been done to my coworkers over the last twenty years impacts other employers, who will find me (and others like me) suspicious of their intentions when they advertise for new positions as exempt.
Read More"Being a software tester in the video game industry is its own kind of augmented reality."
Making games has been a dream of mine since I was a kid. I just never knew someone would take advantage of my passions. It’s incredibly rare to get a salaried position testing video games—something like one out of a thousand—so I felt like I had achieved a dream when I got that job. I never spoke up because I didn’t want to rock the boat. Those who did speak up were seen as venomous, and they were let go.
Read More"it wasn’t long before I was told I was being put on salary"
Then one day I realized that I was now working for less than minimum wage, in part because our salaries did not rise when minimum wages went up. There certainly was nothing prestigious about that kind of salaried work.
Read More"It was advertised as 9-6 but after starting I found out that was just the minimum hours."
I didn’t learn that my last job was classified as overtime-exempt until I had already quit my other job and was signing contracts on my first day. It was advertised as 9-6 but after starting I found out that was just the minimum hours.
Read MoreI counted the hours I put in and it’s like 15-20,000 total. That’s a lot of time to devote to a restaurant.
I work twelve to fifteen hours a day, four days a week and get paid $36,000 in salary, plus tips. The tips are probably putting me close to $40,000 a year. I’m 43, turning 44. It doesn’t sound very old, but working these kinds of hours, you can’t do it forever. I’m reaching the end of my ability to work that pace.
Read More"As a manager you just stayed to get the work done."
They wanted to save on payroll as much as possible, so if an hourly employee called out sick and you were overtime-exempt, the expectation is that you're going to stay. And you’d be doing literally the same job as the person who called out, and then also your other job. Some hourly person called out sick, and I'm a free body. It was pretty common to be there for 13 hour days.
Read More"I thought a salaried job had prestige"
I think mothers are especially limited in their job mobility because of the expectation of overtime. My ex-husband worked on salary, often putting in 50 - 60 hours a week, which limited his availability for the kids, but also my availability for work, especially after we got divorced. I always had to be careful to take jobs where there wasn't that expectation of overtime, because someone needed to be there for the kids. His career advanced, and mine stayed stagnant, and I paid the cost of his additional hours in that sense.”
Read More"time to myself has become a more precious commodity to me"
What it comes down to is that I have more days behind me than in front of me, and I want to have time to enjoy my life unburdened by work issues and problems. I'm exchanging the limited hours of my existence for the ability to afford both essentials and luxuries. That creates a fine balance between working to live and living to work. And my employer gets greater benefit from my effort than I do.
Read More"I am told that I need to stay until the job is done, even if that means sleeping at the store"
This treatment of grocery store managers is standard in the industry. It’s how everyone is treated at this store and at the last store where I worked. And the managers just expect to be treated this way.
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