When Overtime is Normaltime

[dougiezerts]

Do any of you have jobs where long hours are required? If so, are you OK with it, or is it a nuisance for you?
In the early 90's, my job was struck with constant 6-day weeks. This was caused by a combination of an early buyout the company offered, and an unexpected increase in call volume. I'd often have to work 12 days straight before a day off!

[Gerrinson]

In my late teens/early 20s I worked 2 - 3 jobs at a time. And went to college full time.

One summer, I worked 15 hours a day, 6 days a week, for 3 months straight. Carpentry from dawn to dusk, then the grocery store until 10:30 PM to get back up at 5:30 AM and do it all over again.

I thought I was going to make great money. Until I came to the sad realization that I had literally eaten most of my extra income in food to keep myself up and running for so long.

Then when I went back to school, I didn't cut back on the food and I've been trying to work off the pudge ever since. Turns it comes off far harder than it goes on.

[ottid]

I've had to work extremely long rotations once or twice, that was fun By the time I got to the end of them I was making really silly mistakes. most customers understood though which was good. At HS when I first started working in the weekend I would end up only having one whole day off every fortnight. Wasn't so bad since it was HS, but when it got around to winter I lost that day off to for sports tournaments. I ended up umpiring netball the Sunday's I had off, it was fun though!

[ShadedWings]

Yeah, I had worked a job where 48 hours per week was not considered overtime, where everywhere else I had worked, anything above 40 was. It baffled me for the longest time, still does, but nothing we could do about it to change it.

[Hyndis]

I used to work in the software industry. During crunch time 100 hours a week was not uncommon.

Yes. Thats 100 hours a week. On the clock.


Luckily it was all hourly, and thus they paid us massive amounts of overtime! Average paycheck was over $2,000 during crunch time. And thats a 2 week paycheck.

Granted there wasn't much time to do, well, anything else at all. But we all knew what we were getting into.

[PepperElf]

i did. US Navy. "Overtime is authorized" was a catch phrase I hated.

While underway it was the worst, but we got use to it. Sure we had 12 hour shifts, but the "commute" to berthing was usually no longer than 5 minutes. And we had "holiday routine" on most Sundays & holidays. On my last ship we split shifts in half so that each half only had 6 hours or so, to get some extra rest. (unless the chief &/or divo was pissed about something)


The people who usually got screwed the most... cooks, food service people, and engineers.

Cooks & food service usually got very few days off. When I did my stint, I had every other Saturday & Sunday off in port; no days off underway (but we could sleep in 1 hour on Sunday).

The engineers always had hard hours & work. And if the engines were on? Every single engineer had to be on board.

[crafty]

I did 9 hour shifts, 7 days a week for 3 months straight once, with a 20 mile trip each way home.

We were closing down a store, but it was phased, so they told all the staff 3 months in advance (10 of us), and that we'd all be transferred to a store up the road (a 5 minute walk). But some staff didn't want to work there, so quit. So we ended up running the store 6am-11pm for 2 months with 6 staff. No fun. And the manager had been found another store so she had to leave too. Leaving me in charge. But one perk was that I got manager salary for the duration until we closed, and no real hard work was needed, because it didn't matter, the store was closing!

[EricKei]

Yeah, I had worked a job where 48 hours per week was not considered overtime, where everywhere else I had worked, anything above 40 was. It baffled me for the longest time, still does, but nothing we could do about it to change it.

I would check with your state's Dept of Labor on that one...with a few exceptions, anything over 40 hours/wk is considered Overtime, Period. Which job types are exempt from this varies by state, I believe.

[draftermatt]

Thankfully no.

Age 14-15 in MD you were only allowed 40 hours (summertime, if school was in 23 hours).

When I was 16 and working at the warehouse we were only allowed 44 hours a week. If we were going to go over that they would send us home. You could only get close if you had to work Saturdays.

For about a year in 2007 I was working all the time. From 7:30-4 at my day job, then 4:30-6 at the truck parts store.

Shortly after I started at the truck store I had to come in at 6 AM, so I was working 9 1/2 hours at my day job, and then another hour and a half at night, plus 4 hours on Saturday.

Day job eventually told me to stop working overtime (we hired someone so I had no reason to). But they had me coming in at 6 still so I could pick up the new guy at the train station. So I went into my evening job earlier.

The money was nice but I was tired and grumpy. Then we moved and I had to drive out of my way to go to the 2nd job instead of it being on my way so I quit.

[Sheldonrs]

1st 6-8 weeks of each semester when i worked at a univ. text book store. 15-20 hour days, 7 days per week. But we made CRAZY bonuses for the time. I would usually get $2000.00 to $3,000.00 plus my pay which was good for the time also.

[Becks]

At the former place of employment, full timers worked 8 hour days, six days a week.