Job Seekers' Support Group

Question for everyone.......

We have been on mandatory 9 hour days for about a month now.  Some of the people have been workng well over 40 hours for quite a while now ( I stayed late and came in on saturdays quite a bit myself ) and even with the mandatory 9 hours now they still work more. 

The company foolishly believes that the more hours we work the more we get done.  Hello,,,  get the product out on time...stop telling the customers we can produce,  ship product in less than what we can do, stop short shipping......hire more people.  We are not management.  We are not anything.  We are cust serv reps who have been given the impossible task of fixing everything that goes wrong by everyone elses screwups and we have no authority to fix it.  over 100 e-mails a day with more than half as problems.  Each, one customer needs sometmes hours of attention.

We are on salary and as you divide the number of hours we work we are basically getting it stuck you know where. 

Well...  I refuse to work more hours other the the 9 a day.  I do not think legally they can force the issue.  I think the extra 5 is the limit or they have to pay the OT.  I just don't believe that working those extra hours is accomplishing anything other than exhausting me.  It is not right.  It is not fixing the problems. 

I have a very strong work ethic.  But I have drawn my line.  Other gals just work and work and work..... gotta get it done !!  Or else !!  I prioritze my day so what needs to get done gets done.  The "lesser" things got done when I get to them.

Nothing is said to me by management. I am sure the gals think I am not a good worker or ethical because I won't devote my life to this job.  

What do you all think ?

P.S.  Don't get me wrong, if I have to stay a little extra I do... I get to work 15-20 mins early. 

Thanks

I completely understand and agree with you!

"Work smarter, not harder."

If management knew what they were doing (hah!), your department would not be in such a mess.

The problem is bad management, not bad employees.

You could work around the clock - 24/7 - with the same results and be sick and miserable.

Or you could work regular hours with great results, a happier outlook and happy customers.

That would be sweet revenge.

That's a tough situation. it's actually been studied, making employees work longer hours for a long time and it was found in most cases, the employees weren't ANY more productive than during an 8 hour day, so companies just need to realize that telling their employees they have to work extra just means the employee will find a way to whittle away the extra time by drawing out tasks.

As for law, You should check with your state. I just looked at mine and there is NO limit to the number of hours a salaried worker who is exempt (some salaried workers are non-exempt and are entitled to overtime after 40 hours). I remember a friend from college (in IL) who got a job with a company for $40 grand a year. I thought "geez, I should have done that" but then I learned he was pretty much required to work 60 hours a week...so that $40 grand divided by 150% of what an average worker works wasn't really worth it and I was happy I wasn't doing that.

Hope you're able to find some useful information to help your case. I can only imagine there are many employers taking serious advantage of their employees during this tough economy. alienating employees by making them work long hours that are unreasonable isn't any way to keep worthwhile employees.