You must log in or # to comment.
Yeah, no, I’ve been there.
I started a new job. It was kind of a dream job. Great for my career, 40% pay increase, opportunities to grow my skillset in ways my old job couldn’t offer.
Everything was going great until one day a coworker who was supposed to be in like a mentor position for me asked me to do something. I was on my phone at the time, texting with my wife about my three week old son who was sick with RSV. I heard her request and told her I’d get to it right away.
A few days later my boss called me into a meeting and said that he’d been hearing reports that I was on my phone all the time instead of working, and that the quality of my work was bad. I asked what he meant about my work, if he could give me specific examples, and he threatened to fire me for not taking this seriously. Because trying to understand how I can improve isn’t taking it seriously somehow?
So I buckled down. I put my phone down every second that I was at my desk. I asked everyone –everyone– I’d worked with up to that point about the quality of my work, where I could improve, if I’d done anything wrong. Just as I’d already been told, my work was great. I was learning quickly and performing well.
Then I got called into another meeting. Apparently I was still on my phone too much. I must be addicted to it. I was on it while walking down the hall, and he’d even heard that I was leaving my desk to go to my car and play on my phone. And of course I was on it in the breakroom as well. I explained that I thought checking my phone while walking down the hallway was ok because it wouldn’t interrupt my work, and I went to my car because it was a confidential telemedicine call with my doctor.
So I buckled down even more. I rarely used my phone anymore, took shorter lunch breaks, and kept doing my work. I moved to a different part of the parking lot when I had my telemedicine calls.
I had two more meetings with my boss. The first one, he told me that my work had greatly improved (it hadn’t), and now I was doing great. The next day I asked him into a meeting and told him I quit.
I took a small pay cut and got a new job working from home. It’s not as good for my career. It may screw me over in a few years. But my work/life balance is excellent. I get to see my kids and my cats, and there are no spiteful coworkers looking over my shoulder.
Fuck off brenda
What in the actual fuck did I just read?
I would publicly in office shame the shit out of this maggot and then quit right there.
“Accidentally” CC your reply to the mailing list with everybody in it.
no other offers besides scientology?
Can’t be real… this is ragebait, right?
Hi Brenda,
While you were watching me and writing me memos, you could have been making sales.
Don’t ever put pettiness over money, keep yourself focused on your work instead of your coworkers.
Warmest Regards,
Harambe
One of the best bosses I ever had was a Korean man who was very religious and yet very kind. He made a similar comment to me once. I was on my lunch break and he came to me to talk about work stuff, I was watching the clock and when my lunch break was up I went to punch in. When I sat back down he commented about how it looked like I was only there for the money.
It was a good job but I don’t feel comfortable speaking other than the truth even for niceties so I leveled with him.
“This is a good job, and I am here for the money. I do respect you and I respect your time but I have bills to pay and I have already been warned about going over 40hrs on the time clock to complete rush cases on Fridays. If we are going to be a team and we’re going to work together then you need to understand that I share a two bedroom apartment with three people and none of us can afford a car. You came to me on my lunch break to talk about CNC equipment and I was about to run out of time on my lunch break so I clocked back in. This is a work conversation so I don’t feel out of line and doing that. Is this not a work conversation?”
He was a little shocked but respected it. It opened up a line of dialogue and a relationship that I felt was quite meaningful. In the following years he and I had a lot of awesome conversations. I miss that dude. I stayed with the company until just after they fired him and then the company went to shit.
Print it and hang it in the break room. No comment necessary. See if your coworkers join you next break.
The Brenda person seems like someone that’d get featured in LinkedinLunatics.
Send this shit to an attorney.
If that had happened in Germany, Brenda would have provably committed an administrative offence and should stop unless they want to go to jail:
§ 4 Rest breaks
Work shall be interrupted by predetermined rest breaks of at least 30 minutes for working hours of more than six to nine hours and 45 minutes for working hours of more than nine hours in total. The rest breaks referred to in sentence 1 may be divided into periods of at least 15 minutes each. Employees may not be employed for more than six consecutive hours without a rest break.
§ 22 Penalty provisions
(1) An employer commits an administrative offence if they intentionally or negligently
- contrary to § 4, do not grant rest breaks, do not grant them for the prescribed minimum duration or do not grant them in a timely manner
(2) In the cases referred to in paragraph 1, nos. 1 to 7, 9 and 10, the administrative offence may be punished with a fine of up to thirty thousand euros […].
§ 23 Penal provisions
(1) Any person who commits one of the acts specified in Section 22(1) Nos. 1 to 3, 5 to 7
- intentionally and thereby endangers the health or working capacity of an employee, or
- persistently repeats, shall be punished with imprisonment for up to one year or a fine.
Can you please adopt me and my small family? We need a path out of this hell hole.
Hi Brenda,
No.
Eric
I suppose this shit is from u$ or another such savage country. In Europe the company would pay a huge penalty for putting pressure to limit the break time.
Even in Latin American countries where protections are weaker, this would be considered wildly unacceptable. Only Americans would do this
Living the American dream I guess.
Everybody want to come here! Yeah for sure /s
That’s illegal in the US too.
The OP has a pretty solid case, the manager laid it out in writing. This should immediately get forwarded to HR, upper management. Depending on their response, everything goes to the Department of Labour.
The hard part is proving retaliation, (also illegal). Calling out these types of “team player” people leads to indirect stuff like poor performance reviews, smaller raises, denied PTO, and getting passed up for promotion because you didn’t play on their team.
Labor lawyers love these cases since you have the illegal act in writing. At that point, even with the made up performance reviews it’s super easy to prove a subsequent firing was retaliatory.
If they’re smart enough to only break the law face to face, be sure to send an email summary to them and HR and bcc a copy for yourself. If that’s not possible, then keep detailed notes with timestamps.
Illegal in California
Illegal even in Florida. If you have to clock out for breaks you get 1/2 hour minimum lunch on an 8 hour shift. Plus I think 2 paid 15 minute breaks, on the clock. I can’t imagine this is real because no manager would document the illegal request in an email.
Hi Brenda,
I wanted to reach out regarding a small observation I made in your last email. In telling me how to spend 30 minute meal break and encouraging me to cut it short for the company’s benefit, you violated US labor law.
Let’s correct this behavior and try to be more mindful of that “our company is not above the law” spirit so we can keep your momentum going in the right direction. :-)
Eric
P. S. I will be retaining this communication in case this remains an issue. Thanks :-)
Lol this but CC your state labor board
Imo the move is to respond with a clarifying question about whether the hr person is asking them to cut breaks short while reiterating that asking them to do so is a violation of labor law and document the hell out of it.
If it happens again, then make a complaint with labor. This shows that you are operating in good faith and giving the company a chance to correct before going nuclear, which further strengthens your case if you do have to report.
Sometimes the hr person is just an idiot. I’ve seen suggestions like this before and it turned out the hr person literally didn’t know you can’t just arbitrarily deduct wages without explicit permission from the payee (and in some states, not even then).
Reply from state labor board: oh hey sorry yeah turns out there’s no laws requiring breaks federally or in then vast majority of states. Maybe find a new job if you don’t like it gl bro
US Labor Law
HahahahahahHahahahahahahahah*wheeze*HAHHAHAHAHA
There are no US laws requiring work breaks.
Less than 10 statesedit: around 20 have laws that require one.In the vast majority of states you could be asked to work a 16 hour shift with zero breaks entirely legally. Most employers do have break policies but it is not law.
This can’t real
It can real.
Woah.
If it is, I think it’s illegal in the US at least. By law I think employers are required to give at least one 30 minute break a day.
Employees have rights in the US?
Some of us do, and our employers hate it and try to keep us from knowing/using those rights
Only in some states. There is no federal law mandating breaks or meals.
Quite surprising that it’s based on state law, rather than something that’s mandated by the US Federal government. Employers being able to forbid their employees from having lunch unless their particular state, or medical requirements force their hand does not seem like a legal thing.
It does track, since the US was also one of the few countries that does not consider food to be a mandatory right (their official justification here), but still.
I don’t find it surprising at all.
The whole idea of breaks during the work day came from early-day capitalists (check out Factory Act and how it came to be. And for those who don’t want to/can’t - it wasn’t from the goodness of their hearts, they noticed that their workers were making too many costly mistakes, like getting themselves rolled into heavy machinery and dying, so they asked doctors to “figure this shit out”. The Factory Act is the earliest iteration of what eventually became OSHA), some of whom showed at least a semblance of honour, and following the actual tenets of capitalism (giving back to the community).
It became the “everybody knows this” kind of thing.
Then times have changed. Today’s capitalists are a bunch of babies with way too much power, who don’t know how they came to be, or why the “gentleman rules” that were in place happened. All they see is that if someone takes a 30 minute break, they’re not working for 30 minuts (making shareholders cry! :( ).
The federal government didn’t need to mandate this, because “everybody did this anyway”, and if one state was having issues, it mandated that on their own.
There isn’t a state where there is no mandatory unpaid meal break.
Yes, all states mandate meal breaks except Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming (source)
I live in Arizona, I can assure you it is mandatory.
Can you give me a link the law mandating meal breaks? The only bit of Arizona legislature I can find regarding meal breaks is HB 2797, which did not pass into actual law.
“Illegal” who enforces that lol. You complain to get fired unless you have a legal team ready to go against a corrupt corporation. I’ve watched companies break all kinds of laws my entire life and it’s about to get a whole lot worse.
There are labor lawyers that take cases like this on contingency. A case like this is a slam dunk for them. You don’t have to just sit there and take it.
Oh I see you still have hope that our system works for anyone except the corporations and oligarchs. That has not been my experience
