Working the hours you are paid for or unpaid overtime?

I put in a lot of extra hours and effort when I was younger. I wanted to be the best and thought this was how I would achieve it. Im Retired now but if I went back to working I would simply do the work I’m paid for and no more. Quiet quitting I think it’s called. You don’t get the appreciation going above and Beto d.

When I was teaching I took a fair amount of work home with me including holiday time doing annual reports.

I was working part time for a short while, I had just arrived at the office when I was asked to help a colleague who wasn’t feeling too good.
I spent most of the morning doing his work whilst he nursed his hangover, I never did it again.

Known as Quiet Quitting.

You work the hours you are paid for, no unpaid overtime is done, no extra curricular activities ( taking work home, organising birthday cards at the office).

You do your own work, you don’t help other colleagues out.

I’d like to see that work in a private sector job.

Worked at big building society for six months (I couldn’t take it any longer) basically data input, the theory was if you finish your job allocation before your going home time you could go, however in reality you had to help other staff to finish their work before you went, making it that you did more work than colleagues for the same amount of pay, so with that and having to get your manager to log you in and out of the systems and having to ask to go to the loo, it has to be the worst job I ever had moral wise

I worked as a learning support assistant in a school for a number of years before I retired. For most of the time we had time at the end of the day when we could check our email and do any small tasks we needed to, but in the last year or so the staffing structure changed. Two members of staff had worked an extra hour each day and they carried out numerous tasks after the rest of us left. One of them left to go to another job and the other requested her hours be reduced as she didn't want to stay without her colleague. Only one member of staff was replaced but she was given different duties, so all the jobs that had previously been done were shared out between the rest of the staff. This meant that the 15 minutes at the end of the day was taken up with these tasks on a rota. Unless I had a lesson supporting in IT where I had an opportunity to check my email, I was expected to do it in my own time. As we weren't particularly highly paid I refused. I had a conversation about it with one of the supervisors when I pointed out I hadn't had chance to check my email for a few days. She said "But there may be something important." My response was that if there was something I needed to know I should be given the time to read it or it should be told to me directly. At the same time a new system of 'clocking in' was introduced and I was reprimanded for being 1 minute late 2 days running! This was on top of our contracts saying that 30 minutes a day were deducted from our overall hours for our lunch break, when the lunch break was only 25 minutes long! So at that point they lost all my good will. I was due to retire in about 8 months so I drew a chart of all my working days and coloured it in every day! In the end lockdown came and I worked from home until when I'd intended to retire. I carried on after the date in the end as I didn't want to retire from lockdown so I did an extra half term and got a proper send off! I think things have improved since I left as the school's hours have changed and they now have a longer lunch break as well as more staff. Unfortunately schools are so short of resourses they sometimes take advantage. I've always happily put in extra time when it was appreciated and my choice, but not when it was simply expected.

As a teacher, there is no such thing officially as overtime, and when it in reality became too much for me and especially because my work-load was endangering my marriage, I took early retirement.

While studying and doing temping or other office or canteen jobs, I left at the end of the working day, unless overtime at time and a half was being paid.

But then I have always belong to a union, which I gather a lot of gransnetters don't.

As a teacher, I work unpaid overtime. Even the contracted hours which cover things like staff meetings etc. don’t cover the time spent on marking, record keeping and preparation.
DH worked in the private sector and his contract had the sneaky clause and any other hours necessary to perform your duties.

When I worked in early years I spent a lot of my ‘own time’ preparing and researching. I felt that I benefitted because I enjoyed my working day more, and also from the fact that the children and families had a better experience. I wouldn’t say it was ‘expected’, it was just what everybody did.
The private sector was entirely different, in that my reward there was purely financial, and I was expected to stay/ arrive early if necessary ! Our rota system meant that there were days when there was an extra manager on duty, and our CEO was very good at saying he must owe us time, so would tell us to go home.

Most of my working life I would work late for no extra - always more to do and I did enjoy it. That included 5 years in a local authority, the rest private. The only exception was a year on a software project which had been costed to the client on a time & materials basis. The project manager used to insist we down-tools at 5ish, despite protests of 'I just need to finish this bit first'. It was a fantastic year, I have very good memories of the after-work social life!

As a teacher, all my working life involved working unpaid hours. Marking, preparation; after school events; residentials … I could go on and on. For teachers there is no ‘clocking off’ time - when the pupils go home at the end of their school day, the teacher starts another lot of work.

When I was an Office Manager I often worked late if something needed finishing. I have never been a clock watcher and I think it works both ways, sometimes I would tell my line manager that I was going to come in late the next day because I had stayed late the day before.

Casdon

I’m ex NHS too. The NHS only functions because of staff goodwill, extra hours are the unwritten contractual requirement we all signed up to. I do look back now and realise how much it sapped my energy, it took me a good year after I retired to realise how tired I had been.

I agree Casdon the NHS takes advantage of the duty of care staff feel towards their patients. My daughter regularly works more than five hours per week extra to catch up with paperwork and that's a good week.

When I first started teaching (early 70s) two of the staff and the head never arrived at school until ten minutes before the bell. The 2 staff (married with families) left at lunch time to do various household things and finished usually about 20 mins after the children left. They stayed for one staff meeting (only 1 hour) once a week and one parents meeting a year.Occasionally they took some work home with them. The children still seemed to learn.

When I finished teaching 15 years ago all the staff were in school before 8am and few left before 5pm. sometimes 6pm Lunch breaks were worked through. Staff meetings were endless and we had additional ones for various reasons. Planning and marking were done at home at weekends. Parents meetings were very long and usually took a couple of evenings We also took children on residential courses, organised concerts and plays, and visits. We attended endless meetings about special needs, SATs, curriculum innovations and other stuff. We were expected to keep up our training and attend courses. The work seemed to expand.
I never knew how many hours we were supposed to work, but it was too many and loads of good teachers simply burned out. They still do.

Never had a job where the hours worked were the hours paid. Civil service - setting up Giro Bank - Local government housing officer, - School secretary (egregious use of keeping hours low to keep us out of the pension scheme), Housing international charity (you guessed, charities assume the lowly are working for free... ) At least now women can speak up!!!

My experience was that the people who hadn't taken and/or passed exams were often 'better' than those that had.

Accountancy was one of the professions affected when the polytechnics rebranded themselves as "new" universities and began offering degrees in subjects not offered by the traditional universities. Degrees in accountancy, library and information science, education and so on. Before that people had taken the internal exams of the associations in librarianship or accountancy or they went to teacher training college. So in the late 1970s/early 1980s these experienced and qualified (but sometimes older) staff were dispreferred by short sighted employers in favour of the new graduates.

I can recall applying for a position I was well qualified for but losing out to a graduate who had a 2/2 degree in a completely different subject. A colleage told me that he had "a bit of paper that I didnt have." I told the colleague that I was thinking of going to uni to get my own bit of paper. However if I was going to make that sacrifice I wanted a 2/1. He shook his head and said "Nah, you can get a first." Back in the 1980s a first still meant something and only 10% of graduates got one.

My colleague left and rose to the very top of his profession as librarian of a very well known organization in London and was my referee for my university application.

I worked for years as a teacher and the hours were endless - evenings, weekends even supposedly holiday time either marking or preparing lessons. I finally left the profession when I realised I was earning about £4 an hour if I counted the hours worked !

I always think people who routinely arrive before time spoil it for the rest of us, who don't want to!

I also worked in local government as a qualified local authority accountant. My experience was that the people who hadn't taken and/or passed exams were often 'better' than those that had. I also found that my immediate bosses didn't realise just how much I did, until I'd moved on of course...I resigned from my permanent full-time job in 2003, and things had definitely got worse since I started in 1971 (as a graduate, the only concession I had when I embarked on the accountancy qualification was that I could take the first part after 1 year instead of the usual 2). A lot of the problems have arisen from the privatisation, imposed by central government, and the general assumption that a degree is the be all and end all. I remember telling someone that it was ageism to put that in the advert....
As an accountant, I worked in both finance and service departments and was told on more than one occasion (by people in the service department) that this was obvious from my attitude...
I won't bore you any longer with tales of local government!

I’ve worked in both private and public sector and did many many hours of “unpaid” overtime.

Yes I worked at a High St bank many moons ago and was told it was ‘expected’ of me to get in at 8.45 to set up my till but only get paid from 9am. I politely told them where to go as it worked out over a weeks extra pay over the course of the year. Sadly that’s when the bullying started and I resigned a couple of years later after being off on sick leave due to the stress caused. Now I am in a job where I do my hours and often more but if I need time off urgently or leave a little earlier no one minds. Give and take is great but also depends on the mindset of management. Luckily I have great managers now

My mum always got to her job 45 minutes before her start time, for around 16 years.

She did it so that the floors she mopped in a day centre were dry before anyone else arrived, in case they slipped.

I always used to arrive at work an hour before my start time to get the prep work done. One day I was unable to get there until fifteen minutes before my start time and found the phone ringing as I walked in. It was my boss. "You're very late!" he shouted into my ear. I pointed out that I was actually early and reminded him what time I was due to start. I felt taken for granted.

Just thinking about my time as activity coordinator.

My paid hours were 30 a week, but I honestly put in at the very least, double that amount, if not more.
I paid for a lot of the supplies too.

I have always worked the hours I was paid for and was never asked to work beyond them unless it was paid overtime.