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Topic: Working in a "Locked Down" Environment?
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| confuzzed | Posted – 11/8/2007 8:45:04 PM | show profile Hi again, I'm the poster below who started a new job and knew it was a bad fit from the day I started. I'm still there as I pay the bills and interview. Anyway, thanks for everyone's advice in the thread below. Now, I have a different question for all the creative media types here. Do the timekeeping / employee monitoring policies at your job affect your morale in positive or negative ways? At the job I'm trying to leave, everything is extremely monitored and regulated. Even salaried employees have to file time cards and people watch carefully to make sure you don't take too long of a lunchbreak. If you call in sick even for one day, you are supposed to go to a doctor to get a note that proves you really were ill and were not lying. There's no such thing as telecommuting or flex time and people's work is judged more by the amount of hours they are seen in the office than by the product they produce. They carefully monitor all Internet activity to make sure you're not checking your email. They even plan to install biometric handscanners at the building entrances to make sure all of our time cards are 100% accurate. And remember, we don't get paid by the hour! In all my previous "creative" jobs, things weren't handled this way. People worked extremely hard and put in long hours, but at the same time, nobody tracked their every move. There was a blurry line between "work" and "play" b/c I'd take work home with me at night and on the weekend and do it while watching TV or reading my personal email. Now that my time is watched and regulated, I'm out of there as quickly as possible, because it's very clear that every moment I give my employer is a commodity that only has a dollar value attached to it. Why take work home when there's no "credit" for it and nobody cares. Anyway, I'm curious how the rest of you feel about this. Would you feel less motivated and productive in a surveillance / time-tracking environment? |
| dribbledrive1 | Posted – 11/8/2007 9:12:31 PM | show profile The only people who would be motivated by that environment are those who would otherwise be goofing off every second they could. |
| Astera | Posted – 11/8/2007 9:42:49 PM | show profile I would feel completely unmotivated and extremely resentful, but then, I am not good at working in corporate environments. I would not be able to tolerate a workplace like yours. I don't know why your company is requiring time cards for salaried employees. If they care about your hours so much, why don't they just pay you by the hour? I am about to start working full-time at a job that had previously been part-time, and I feel like I'll be disadvantaged by becoming salaried. Other people in my office talk (brag?) about how they don't have time for lunch and how they bring work home with them and work until 8:00 at night. I am a big believer in work-life balance, and I say "no thank you" to big-brother employers and crazy hours. ------ www.adventuresofastera.blogspot.com |
| ManhattanMatt | Posted – 11/8/2007 10:32:30 PM | show profile Bank job ... Right out of college, while I was building my broadcasting career, I paid the rent by temping in a major bank cancelling checks. The way they treated us was REALLY insulting. Worse than we were treated in high school. For obvious reasons, of course, we had cameras trained on us at all times, but every SECOND had to be accounted for: we had time sheets at our desks and we had to mark down in precise military time every time we got up to leave our desks, even just to toss something in the waste basket. Bathroom breaks were limited to two minutes. It was comical, yet appalling, how people actually RAN back and forth to the bathrooms ... and rushed around inside the bathrooms ... to avoid breaking "curfew". Cancelling checks requires a flawless command of 10-key operation. I picked up the skill relatively quickly, and within a week I was processing nearly TWICE as many checks per hour (with virtually zero errors) than the "career" people who'd been there for decades. Now, I have no problem with rules that make sense. But these stupid "breaktime curfew" rules were plain stupid. One day, returning from my 30-minute lunch in the company cafeteria (10 mintutes just to get there from the 15th floor of one building to the 30th floor of another ... waiting in line for another 7 minutes ... which left me a whole THREE MINUTES to wolf down my lunch like a snake before embarking on my 10-minute return journey back to my desk) I took a quick detour to the men's room to freshen up before returning to another 4 hours of mind-numbing 10-key inputting. I ended up being a whole two minutes and 17 seconds late. My supervisor (of course it was a WOMAN supervisor ... they're big on the nit-picky stuff) was actually standing at my desk, tapping her foot, and reprimanded me in front of the whole room for "stealing" time from the company. She pointed to the other workers already sitting at their check-cancelling consoles, and demanded to know "why can't you be like the others who got back from lunch ON TIME??" Being the smartass that I am (and thanking GOD that this was just a temp job, and not my permanent fate, like the rest of these poor schmucks), I pointed right back and said "well, if you want me to be like everyone else, maybe I should start slacking off my hourly clearance rate?" Long story short, I was called into the office of the floor's General Manager. My b!tchy supervisor was sitting there, looking triumphant, expecting me to get fired on the spot. Instead, he offered me a full-time job, which I graciously declined. The look on her face was PRICELESS. Moral: don't take any sh!t like this. If you're a good performer at work, your WORK speaks for itself. If that's not good enough, they don't deserve you. |
| confuzzed | Posted – 11/8/2007 10:40:51 PM | show profile Work-Life Balance (is lockdown better)? In theory, one might argue that this kind of "locked down" environment is better for work-life balance. If you get an hour for lunch, I guess you're entitled to use it (in theory). If they watch your hours like a hawk, then in theory one could leave at 5 pm, go home to the family, and forget about work. However, that's not really the case. People are still expected to work long hours (and judged based on how late they say they stayed on the timecard). We still get blackberries so we can take emails from the boss on weekends and at night. So it's not exactly 9-5 and forget about it. But even if it were, I don't think I could take it. I understand the poster who said they value work-life balance, but somehow life seemed better to me when the line was blurrier and, if I needed to work from home one day b/c the super was repairing something, I could do it. And frankly, I find myself doing less work between 9 and 5 than I ever did at more flexible jobs, because I spend so much time thinking about the clock and getting out of there to go home. I think the biggest loser here is the employer. |
| recovering_jersey_girl | Posted – 11/8/2007 10:45:58 PM | show profile Ahhh... >>My supervisor (of course it was a WOMAN supervisor ... they're big on the nit-picky stuff) Totally uncalled for. |
| ManhattanMatt | Posted – 11/8/2007 10:48:30 PM | show profile But ... ...based on my experience of being in the workforce for 25+ years, TOTALLY ACCURATE. |
| confuzzed | Posted – 11/8/2007 10:58:29 PM | show profile Re: Bank Job Appreciate this story, but agree with the other poster that the gender of the boss isn't relevant. Sounds like your boss took great zeal in enforcing the rules, but the bottom line is that even a good manager can be powerless in a surveillance-based office culture. At the job I'm doing now, I am a supervisor of 6 people. We're working on a Web site so the location shouldn't matter. The other day, I had a programmer who told me that his son was sick and he needed to stay home, but could work from home. I told him "fine" and he stayed home that day, but worked very hard all day long (he was on the phone with another programmer continuously for like 8 hours training him and I could hear them talking). When he handed me his time sheet for the week, we put down that he had been in the office that day working. However, if my boss found out, I'd be in big trouble. If someone "turned us in" we'd all be disciplined. So I guess the "right thing" for him to do would have been to use a sick day and not work at all. Oh, but then he'd have to go to the doctor and get a note! |
| catlondon | Posted – 11/8/2007 11:33:32 PM | show profile Matt hates women and is very angry and bitter towards them. Haven't you all figured that out by now? That Matt will make a insultingly paternalistic remark based on antiquated gender stereotypes about women in every post is almost more of given than the sun rising each day. Makes one wonder what his mother did to him. |
| catlondon | Posted – 11/8/2007 11:34:30 PM | show profile Of course, when you bring his remarks to the attention of the board, he also nearly always responds that that's his experience, enough said. |
| noname1234 | Posted – 11/8/2007 11:44:29 PM | show profile Matt, I was reading along in your story, finding it interesting, until you threw in your usual bigoted comments. This may be "your experience," but MY experience in, you know, BEING a woman for 35 years is that you're simply a pathetic, bitter misgynistic liar. Back to the original question: No, of course I wouldn't find it motivational being treated like a cross between a kindergartener and a criminal at my workplace. That sounds awful! |
| ManhattanMatt | Posted – 11/9/2007 12:00:46 AM | show profile Nice, ladies! Name calling! How typical. |
| noname1234 | Posted – 11/9/2007 12:11:53 AM | show profile matt, seriously, give it up. Your shtick is completely played out. |
| catlondon | Posted – 11/9/2007 12:13:11 AM | show profile Matt, you have very thin skin. Isn't that a weak, feminine trait? |
| ConfidentDesigner | Posted – 11/9/2007 9:53:02 AM | show profile HOLD ON HERE! I've been in the biz world for 28 years. I've had women bosses. I've had men bosses. Of course it isn't a trait of all women bosses to be nit-picky. Of course it isn't a trait of men bosses to be heavy handed and bossy. All totoal, I've had about 50 bosses altogether and I think I only hold 1-2 of them in esteem. Both HAPPEN to be men but that means nothing. What sense does it make to get into gender slamming here? For God's sake, GROW UP! |
| nandy | Posted – 11/9/2007 4:33:08 PM | show profile The company sounds very draconian. The closest I've ever come to that kind of work environment was my summer job from high school through college, many, many years ago. I worked as a telephone operator and they had almost the same mentality...your 15 minute breaks and 30 minute lunch were assigned and you could not leave the board until you were relieved by another returning operator or the supervisor. And the end of your shift, you couldn't leave until you had cleared all your calls. You couldn't talk to the other operators, chew gum, or wear pants. Being a temporary employee, my only fringe benefit was use of the phones in the locker room to make free long distance calls. As a supervisor, however, I do have to put some contraints on my designers or there would be no one here on time for meetings, LOL. I only say something if there is blatant abuse of the schedules. |
| Jen480 | Posted – 11/9/2007 7:29:28 PM | show profile I get the impression Matt doesn't like women. Well I've got news for you buddy, our next president might (wait a second, WILL BE) a woman. |
| WordyBird | Posted – 11/9/2007 10:28:05 PM | show profile That kind of lockdown turns me off completely. I'm in something like that now, and frankly, I don't think I'm going to be there very long. There are no timesheets, but there is no flex-time, and frankly, getting up before God isn't doing anything for either my temperament or my writing. Oh, and Matt? Stick a sock in it. I've run into some totally anal-retentive male bosses. But if you ever work for me, I'll be sure to break yer doodads. |
| pamelabeth | Posted – 11/10/2007 6:21:26 PM | show profile confuzzed, i hope you can leave that company soon. to me it seems a can't-see-the-forest-for-the-trees approach: they might feel that this is the way to get every second of work out of every employee, but it leaves people frustrated, angry, and feeling belittled, and i think it drives away the better employees who can find better situations. regarding bosses: as a freelancer i've had so many, on many diiferent projects and in many different places over the years. i'm sitting here now thinking hard about what patterns they could be said to have followed. to echo a previous poster, there are very few that i can think back on truly positively. i think it's extremely hard to be a good manager; and that is evidenced in part by the fact that there are so few. some of the men and the women have had similar "bad boss" traits; and some have had their own particular "bad boss" traits not shared by others. i see no patterns. but maybe if you're looking for them--going in thinking "women bosses have x qualities"--then you will see them. |
| lo17 | Posted – 11/10/2007 10:41:20 PM | show profile how terrible i can't even imagine working for a company like that. you might as well be in jail. i would leave immediately and take a temp job or just live life not being treated like an animal. i also think at some point you should speak with the head of the company or human resources or someone who will listen and tell them that this environment is toxic. people need to speak up and not let this continue to happen. good luck and keep us posted. |
| confuzzed | Posted – 11/11/2007 8:09:29 PM | show profile Would it change your opinion? Would it change your opinion of the place I work if I told you it was a local government agency, not a private company? Perhaps this is just how government agencies treat people. I still don't think that makes it ok. Of course, I shouldn't take it personally. I'm one of thousands who deal with the same thing. Perhaps I should have known what I was getting into. But you know what is ironic about this is that when I accepted the job I thought "well, maybe this place will be bureaucratic (didn't know about the level of time keeping and surveillance), but maybe all the slowness and bureaucracy will allow me to have a good work/life balance." Ironically, it's not a straight 9 to 5 (I'm expected to work longer anyway and to be available 24-7 to my boss) and you know what I learned something about myself. I think I'd rather work longer hours at a more flexible, creative place. When I was working 10 hour days at an Internet startup, the days never seemed this long. |
| confuzzed | Posted – 11/11/2007 8:10:10 PM | show profile Would it change your opinion? Would it change your opinion of the place I work if I told you it was a local government agency, not a private company? Perhaps this is just how government agencies treat people. I still don't think that makes it ok. Of course, I shouldn't take it personally. I'm one of thousands who deal with the same thing. Perhaps I should have known what I was getting into. But you know what is ironic about this is that when I accepted the job I thought "well, maybe this place will be bureaucratic (didn't know about the level of time keeping and surveillance), but maybe all the slowness and bureaucracy will allow me to have a good work/life balance." Ironically, it's not a straight 9 to 5 (I'm expected to work longer anyway and to be available 24-7 to my boss) and you know what I learned something about myself. I think I'd rather work longer hours at a more flexible, creative place. When I was working 10 hour days at an Internet startup, the days never seemed this long. |
| confuzzed | Posted – 11/11/2007 10:12:18 PM | show profile Would you feel differently? Would it change your mind if you knew this was not a private company, but a local government agency I work for? Some people I've told just shrug and say "that's the government for you." But I still feel dehumanized, even if thousands of other people are treated exactly the same way. Anyhow, there's no way that, if and when I quit, my saying something to the management will change a thing. |
| WordyBird | Posted – 11/12/2007 3:09:20 PM | show profile No, it wouldn't change my opinion of the place to learn it's government. If anything, a number of government and quasi-governmental agencies are big on things like flex-time. Ever hear the phrase "Good enough for government work?" Exactly. The person who said they're missing the forest for the trees hit the nail on the head. Nothing squelches motivation and creativity like a whip-cracker carrying a stop watch. Yeah, get out of there. They're only going to burn you out. |
| WordyBird | Posted – 11/12/2007 3:17:47 PM | show profile P.S. As for this nonsense about having to be available 24-7 to your boss, my father used to have a (rather politically incorrect) response to that: "Hey, Lincoln freed the slaves." Any boss who expects that should be hung up by the toenails. Seriously. What is with employers these days that they expect access after hours? That's why I rarely give my cell number to employers, and if someone calls me after hours, I don't answer it. I'll listen to the message, and unless it's an emergency like, "The building burned down last night, so don't bother coming in," I don't bother taking action on it. You're young and fresh, so here's a little bit of cynicism to take to the bank. They will take as much as you give, and people can only take advantage of you if you let them. Learn how to leave work at work now, before you get into the habit of living to work instead of working to live. It's one thing to achieve and do well, another thing to become a workhorse for someone else's profit. There's a balance, and you'll find it in doing your best for 7 or 8 hours a day and putting it out of your mind entirely once you leave the building in the evening. |
