Working the hours you are paid for or unpaid overtime?

Worked till the job was done nhs

That's a great achievement!

Think of the difference you made to a lot of families in that time.

I read for a minute "apart from a couple of hairy teens"

Misadventure - we were lucky in that the club was very popular and we managed to run the kids club financially separate to the school. Apart from a couple of hairy terms we always had the funds to cover resources. The club is still running 25+ years later. I retired as treasurer about 5 years ago.

Worked in FE and had a bully of a boss. She was very small and everyone was afraid of her. She only liked small people. Horrid woman. You were expected to come in very early and stay late even when students were on holiday. Will never forget that nasty bully. No thank you ever, just a look that would turn milk. She was always looking for a rich husband, and managed to get her children jobs. No one else could get their children work. She would summons me to a meeting, I’d knock the door and she’d not answer. (Power game play) I’d return to my lecture room. She wasn’t happy but it kept happening. I saw in the press that she had an award. Wish I’d spoken about the bullying. No one else reported either - we were afraid of loosing our jobs. This was 30years ago but still when I hear someone with her same Christian name, I shudder.

A lot of teachers actually end up buying supplies for these clubs, too, from what I know.

I remember being quite appalled at how many extra hours teachers were expected to work without receiving any extra pay. It was the late 80’s and I became heavily involved in the forming of an after school club at our local primary school. A few of us were volunteers but many involved were teachers who received nothing extra for the hours and hours they worked getting the club off the ground. I became the treasurer and always insisted that the kids club staff received overtime for any extra hours they worked. It won’t surprise a lot of you to know I was a civil servant and our terms and conditions were far more generous than teachers at the time.

MissAdventure 😁.

I'm NHS non-clinical. In one post I worked a lot of unpaid overtime as I loved the job & the commute was easy & I didn't have any caring responsibilities at that time. At other times I'e either been caring for elderly relative or 2 school-age children so in order to be fair to them I usually just worked my paid hours.A point I'd like to raise is, in one of the latter jobs I had a 2 hour round trip & caring responsibilities at home & full time so I worked my hours only. I had a colleague who always got in early & stayed late, unpaid, & made sure everyone knew. However they seemed to think that that entitled them to snoop around, gossip, disturb other people, send umpteen emails & notes about the state of the kitchen , the state of the loo, someone having a window open too much, is someone using so & so's coffee, what time did X get in this am etc etc which not only meant they didn't get much work done, it also affected everyone else's ability to get through their work. I know I did more in my standard hours than they did in their voluntarily extended ones.

Missed a bit once my youngest started school I became a class room assistant. Got paid very little but really enjoyed it and I got school holidays.

For those who worry about these things DH has a degree. I don't!

nadateturbe

^It does sound ridiculous, though, doesn't it^

It does MissA. Definitely doesn't apply to any office I worked in.

Someone inboxed me to ask if it was a particular place I'd worked, and they were right!

I worked for a High Street bank and always knew that my hours started at 9am but was expected to be at work for 8.45 at the latest. At the other end of the day no one left until everything balanced.

Once I had children I did various short term jobs. Part time piecework mainly. That meant you got paid for what you produced. The old fashioned way of getting paid which worked. I pulled in a bit of office cleaning too when DH was around in the evenings. Once DH started working away (sometimes overseas) all that stopped. It didn't bother me because when he was away he got a better rate of pay and overtime pay.

When he wasn't working away DH was on the staff so he worked all the hours necessary with no extra for overtime. When the firms were busy his hourly rate dipped. When they weren't busy we worried about him being made redundant. In the end he took redundancy and set up his own business. So back to if you don't work you get nothing.

Seems we have a very different working life experience to the majority of posters.

I worked in the Health Service and my job was to go out and meet up with people who were on long term sick. I worked hard to find the right help they needed and made sure they knew the job was there for them when they were ready to come back. My immediate superior who never left the office was, I think, jealous of my success. She undermined me in front of two much younger colleagues and that was the moment I decided to leave. Never regretted it.

After many years in NHS I dread to think how many hrs of unpaid work & like many others in past & now . Despite good time management , as it is a public service patients are the priority. Would anyone want a nurse to walk away from a family member that either had an emergency or needed the toilet . The answer would be of course not . There is NO overtime & time back is non existent as unable to take back due to low staffing numbers. NHS staff SAVE the government money at a cost to the staff no wonder morale is near or at burnout !!!

It does sound ridiculous, though, doesn't it

It does MissA. Definitely doesn't apply to any office I worked in.

Teaching !

Ilovecheese

Management jobs in the private sector involve unpaid extra hours, but the salary will reflect this.
Factory floor jobs are not expected to work for no extra pay.

One of my sons works in the private sector, not in a management roll nor on the shop floor. He regularly works 10+ hours a week of unpaid overtime in order to meet deadlines.

I worked in local government. Regularly wirked until 8 pm when the computer system was shut down for backup. Again, two or three ights a week I had to transfer wirk to my home computer and often worked to 1 am finishing work off and then sending to work system for the next day. No overtime paid.

A lot of professionals here!

I think with teachers and nurses they obviously work more than their contracted hours, but you sort of know it comes with the job and their salaries and holidays used (I know not anymore) to reflect this- including good pensions.

What I think is happening now is that people in poorly paid and often considered 'unskilled' jobs are also expected to work more for no benefit except for the profits for the company they work (slave) for.

So many people working two or even three jobs now just to make ends meet- and have never heard of unions.

People's ignorance of their bargaining power in the workplace astonishes me, but when you are easily replaced by some other desperate sucker it is either work here or go.

As a nurse for 49 years I ve often worked longer than I should have, a scrub nurse won ‘t just leave the operating table at a crucial moment and say I m off home, a midwife won’t leave the patient they ve been looking after all day just at the moment they re about to deliver, these are just a couple of instances I can give as examples. I certainly never got paid for taking my baby/toddler back into the hospital to finish off paperwork I hadn’t had time to do whilst on shift 🤷‍♀️

I'm NHS...in chilrens community services....I try to never work over
My hours ...if I ready have to ( eg safeguarding) then I always take the hours back as toil....I'm happy to swap my day off for service need ...but only if it suits me....I'm 59 and retired and returned so at the end of my working life...not sure if that makes a difference....I did my MSc in works time and funded by work .....any research I need to do ( to ensure up to date evidenced practice) I do in works time ....if you start doing stuff in your own time then you aren't doing yourself or your colleagues any favours

My DD is a freelance proof editor. The rate for each job is offered/agreed at the outset. Unfortunately, it’s hard to know in advance the scale of the work required. As a result, being conscientious, she often works far more hours than she’s paid for. Occasionally, the publisher recognises the amount of effort that has been put in, and pay more, but generally not.

When in the Civil Service I routinely worked many hours over the contracted amount and this was necessary to write annual reports, read new instructions and more importantly to check the work of others which otherwise would leave people without the correct amount of money or no money at all. I later got a job in a private industry and it was the easiest job ever! Could not believe it, set hours, hardly any 'difficult' customers, no hassle or changing rules, uniform to wear and OK pay. Very difficult to understand why staff still complained about the problems of the job, thought I should have made the change years ago.

Mollygo

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.^

And don’t forget the other sneaky clause regarding your duties ‘ And any other duties deemed necessary by management’!

36 years of teaching , no bonuses or paid overtime it time off in lieu plus after schoolmatches, practices, marking, preparation etc etc ! Not moaning, loved it all but don’t miss it now aged 73 !!

Yes, private sector, PA to director working from his home.
Not only to job done, but also being available on the phone 24/7. Every time my phone rang you could scrape me off the ceiling incase he was calling with a problem. In the end, my mental health was so shot I had to take early retirement.