Money for Nothing… AITA?

[Anathema]

I work a 4-10 hour day schedule, Monday thru Thursday, 6 am to 4 pm. I’m in my office on Mondays and work from home the rest of the week. My job is maintaining and updating the mapping systems for an electric utility company.

This past Wednesday I informed both my Supervisor and the department’s Work Coordinator that there was almost nothing in my work queue and asked for additional project work because I knew they were both going to be away for a business meeting yesterday (Thursday). Nothing was added to my queue. These are the only two people in the department who can assign or move work. Certain things will auto-assign but probably 80% has to be assigned by a person.

Yesterday morning arrived and there was nothing new in my queue. I finished the two items I had to work on and realized nothing new had come in. I messaged both people about 8:30 am to inform them I had nothing to do, and I was going to spend some time cleaning up the online document management system. When I had no work at 9:15 I emailed my Union Senior Steward to ask what to do. I was told that if I had no assigned work and had completed what filler work I could dredge up, I was fine to simply sit there and do nothing until the end of my shift or until I was assigned additional work.

Bottom line, I collected seven and a half hours of pay ($45+ per hour) for literally sitting on my ass. Part of ne feels bad about this. I like to be a productive employee and get work done. That’s how I keep my work queue much smaller than most of my coworkers. Part of me says “Screw them. They knew the issue ahead of time and didn’t do anything about it”.

Thoughts?

 

[debbiedowner]

When I first started reading your op my first thought was they are telling you something and either cutting your position or firing you silently, then I saw union. So the answer is take their money and maybe next week they will pile the work on.

 

[Anathema]

When I first started reading your op my first thought was they are telling you something and either cutting your position or firing you silently, then I saw union. So the answer is take their money and maybe next week they will pile the work on

They can’t fire me. Beyond Union obligations; there are eight of us in my job classification and I do at least 25-30% of the department’s work on a monthly basis. They’re already trying to figure out what to do if/when I promote to Senior Maps & Records Tech next February and have a very different role.

I expect that there will be a good bit of work in my queue when I log in for my eight hours of overtime tomorrow morning.

 

[jbrownson0831]

I work a 4-10 hour day schedule, Monday thru Thursday, 6 am to 4 pm. I’m in my office on Mondays and work from home the rest of the week. My job is maintaining and updating the mapping systems for an electric utility company.

This past Wednesday I informed both my Supervisor and the department’s Work Coordinator that there was almost nothing in my work queue and asked for additional project work because I knew they were both going to be away for a business meeting yesterday (Thursday). Nothing was added to my queue. These are the only two people in the department who can assign or move work. Certain things will auto-assign but probably 80% has to be assigned by a person.

Yesterday morning arrived and there was nothing new in my queue. I finished the two items I had to work on and realized nothing new had come in. I messaged both people about 8:30 am to inform them I had nothing to do, and I was going to spend some time cleaning up the online document management system. When I had no work at 9:15 I emailed my Union Senior Steward to ask what to do. I was told that if I had no assigned work and had completed what filler work I could dredge up, I was fine to simply sit there and do nothing until the end of my shift or until I was assigned additional work.

Bottom line, I collected seven and a half hours of pay ($45+ per hour) for literally sitting on my ass. Part of ne feels bad about this. I like to be a productive employee and get work done. That’s how I keep my work queue much smaller than most of my coworkers. Part of me says “Screw them. They knew the issue ahead of time and didn’t do anything about it”.

Thoughts?

I think this kind of thing happens from time to time, some companies offer a VTO or Voluntary Time Off where you leave early at no pay, or a program where you take PTO but can leave that day if no work is there for you.
For me personally, even when I am caught up on my projects, an escalated issue usually comes through to handle with an irate customer or a last minute request from some poor planning exec.

 

[Cellblock2429]

I work a 4-10 hour day schedule, Monday thru Thursday, 6 am to 4 pm. I’m in my office on Mondays and work from home the rest of the week. My job is maintaining and updating the mapping systems for an electric utility company.

This past Wednesday I informed both my Supervisor and the department’s Work Coordinator that there was almost nothing in my work queue and asked for additional project work because I knew they were both going to be away for a business meeting yesterday (Thursday). Nothing was added to my queue. These are the only two people in the department who can assign or move work. Certain things will auto-assign but probably 80% has to be assigned by a person.

Yesterday morning arrived and there was nothing new in my queue. I finished the two items I had to work on and realized nothing new had come in. I messaged both people about 8:30 am to inform them I had nothing to do, and I was going to spend some time cleaning up the online document management system. When I had no work at 9:15 I emailed my Union Senior Steward to ask what to do. I was told that if I had no assigned work and had completed what filler work I could dredge up, I was fine to simply sit there and do nothing until the end of my shift or until I was assigned additional work.

Bottom line, I collected seven and a half hours of pay ($45+ per hour) for literally sitting on my ass. Part of ne feels bad about this. I like to be a productive employee and get work done. That’s how I keep my work queue much smaller than most of my coworkers. Part of me says “Screw them. They knew the issue ahead of time and didn’t do anything about it”.

Thoughts?

/-----/ Well, a firefighter is paid to sit around the firehouse for a 48 hour shift doing nothing but waxing the fire trucks, waiting for the next fire to breakout. If something does happen, you're there to fix it.

 

[odanny]

I can't comment on the whole "work from home" thing, but I was making just over $30 an hour and my entire last year in the lab, I was the only one there. There were 2 of us, down from 6 a few years ago, but since things were so slow the least senior person was sent across the aisle to work on other projects that were still plentiful. I was reliant on an outside work group to send me project work, and for reasons none of us really knew, they just stopped.

It sucked, I was bored, because I coudn't work from home, but I had my desktop and YouTube. I could only clean and improve the lab so much, machines were not getting dirty due to lack of use, so the lab was never more clean, but I waited for work to trickle in my last year. It rarely did. I put my time in scrambling for decades, so I rode it out watching videos and posting here. That's the way it goes sometimes, and I was good with it.

Your corporation makes a lot of money, paying you for doing nothing is not going to threaten bankruptcy. If you're still bothered by it, calculate how much you made doing nothing and send your employer a check for that amount.

 

[Ralph Norton]

I work a 4-10 hour day schedule, Monday thru Thursday, 6 am to 4 pm. I’m in my office on Mondays and work from home the rest of the week. My job is maintaining and updating the mapping systems for an electric utility company.

This past Wednesday I informed both my Supervisor and the department’s Work Coordinator that there was almost nothing in my work queue and asked for additional project work because I knew they were both going to be away for a business meeting yesterday (Thursday). Nothing was added to my queue. These are the only two people in the department who can assign or move work. Certain things will auto-assign but probably 80% has to be assigned by a person.

Yesterday morning arrived and there was nothing new in my queue. I finished the two items I had to work on and realized nothing new had come in. I messaged both people about 8:30 am to inform them I had nothing to do, and I was going to spend some time cleaning up the online document management system. When I had no work at 9:15 I emailed my Union Senior Steward to ask what to do. I was told that if I had no assigned work and had completed what filler work I could dredge up, I was fine to simply sit there and do nothing until the end of my shift or until I was assigned additional work.

Bottom line, I collected seven and a half hours of pay ($45+ per hour) for literally sitting on my ass. Part of ne feels bad about this. I like to be a productive employee and get work done. That’s how I keep my work queue much smaller than most of my coworkers. Part of me says “Screw them. They knew the issue ahead of time and didn’t do anything about it”.

Thoughts?

Don't see what else you could have done.

 

[Anathema]

I think this kind of thing happens from time to time, some companies offer a VTO or Voluntary Time Off where you leave early at no pay, or a program where you take PTO but can leave that day if no work is there for you

I could have taken PTO, but that’s a limited amount of time per year and I really didn’t want to waste it like that.

For me personally, even when I am caught up on my projects, an escalated issue usually comes through to handle with an irate customer or a last minute request from some poor planning exec

I had a couple of emails/IMs to deal with during the day, but nothing that took more than 5 minutes. Thankfully I don’t have to deal with customers directly. Most of our work comes from parties inside the company.

 

[Anathema]

Your corporation makes a lot of money, paying you for doing nothing is not going to threaten bankruptcy. If you're still bothered by it, calculate how much you made doing nothing and send your employer a check for that amount.

I’m not that concerned about it. It’s more of a morals question than anything else for me. But it also ticks me off thst our work management system is so screwed up thst this type of thing can happen.

 

[1srelluc]

I’m not that concerned about it. It’s more of a morals question than anything else for me. But it also ticks me off thst our work management system is so screwed up thst this type of thing can happen.

It likely would not happen is a real work environment, you know in a office. If I'm your supervisor I'll damn sure find you something to do, union or not.

 

[Anathema]

It likely would not happen is a real work environment, you know in an office. If I'm your supervisor I'll damn sure find you something to do, union or not

He wasn’t there, even if I’d been in the office. He was at a meeting in another state, with our Work Coordinator. They’re the only two people who can assign, unassigned, move or cancel department work.

 

[1srelluc]

He wasn’t there, even if I’d been in the office. He was at a meeting in another state, with our Work Coordinator. They’re the only two people who can assign, unassigned, move or cancel department work.

Union rules?

 

[Anathema]

Union rules?

Union and Management rules. Union members are not allowed to do ANY Supervisory work or to affect any form of Discipline. Both of those responsibilities are purely run by Management, though the Union is involved in the Discipline process. The most we can do as individuals is file a Grievance.

Additionally, we don’t have access to the email mailboxes that those two individuals use to collect the work they assign.

 

[1srelluc]

Union and Management rules. Union members are not allowed to do ANY Supervisory work or to affect any form of Discipline. Both of those responsibilities are purely run by Management, though the Union is involved in the Discipline process. The most we can do as individuals is file a Grievance.

Additionally, we don’t have access to the email mailboxes that those two individuals use to collect the work they assign.

That figures.....Enjoy your free time.

 

[Anathema]

That figures.....Enjoy your free time

So, what would you suggest I should have done? It turns out our Manager (next Management level) was in the same meeting out of state. Our Director (next level up) doesn’t deal with our daily work.

 

[1srelluc]

So, what would you suggest I should have done? It turns out our Manager (next Management level) was in the same meeting out of state. Our Director (next level up) doesn’t deal with our daily work.

Housekeeping?

 

[Anathema]

Housekeeping?

That’s what I have a wife, mother-in-law and sister-in-law for.

 

[Anathema]

UPDATE - 08/27/23:

I logged on yesterday morning for my overtime shift to find eight new items in my work queue. Six regular work items and two project items. I’d actually expected more. There was also an email from my Supervisor thanking me for looking at the document management system and answering questions for my coworkers on Thursday. He also apologized for not being able to get me anything to do.

Of the six regular work items, five were auto-assign work submitted on Friday, so they wouldn’t have been any help Thursday. The sixth one needed to be processed by the Work Coordinator, so that didn’t hit my queue until Friday as well. I finished all six items in the first theee hours of my day yesterday.

That left me with the two project items. These are long-term work, with each generally taking two to five days to complete. I started the first one yesterday.

Tomorrow my Supervisor and I are both in the office, and have a face to face meeting planned. That should be interesting.