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Trenches comic: Thursday, September 1, 2011
Robert Khoo
Registered User, ClubPA staff
Registered User, ClubPA staff
Posts
To be fair, it could easily be both...
for ease of access
STEAM
To see your boss put up a "reward" system for unpaid overtime? Unless you have wife and kids and seriously would be in danger of losing your house, I'd walk out. And/or report them to some sort of labor board for unfair labor practices. Because it's just plain ridiculous.
Maybe it's just because I'm not American, but I'm not sure I get why anyone would work even an hour unpaid. Fear of getting fired? And if you get fired for not doing more than you're contractually obligated to, then... I don't know... Sue 'em, I guess?
Some people find satisfaction in a job well done, and sometimes the cost of that is hard work and long hours.
Others may find that work is the only thing that gives them purpose, and would rather spend their nights feeling useful than alone with their misery.
To be fair though, anyone with the last name Cox is going to have a rough time in school.
twitch.tv/Taramoor
@TaramoorPlays
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PSN: SoulCrusherJared
All depends on the contract they signed, and the labor laws in the state in which the company is employing them. Unfortunately, most of these places know how to legally ensure they can't be sued over it. I'm no union guy, in fact, I hate my union and that I'm forced to be in one, but this is one case where I could see that unions would actually be helpful in forcing companies to pay properly.
I can see that getting very old very fast, but you do have to realise that for some of us it is pretty jarring to read about stuff like this.
It is so far removed from our frame of reference when it comes to worker's rights that it's sometimes hard not to look for faults at the employee side.
Re: trenches comic of today. Am i the only that's scratching his head at this joke? We have three accomplished web cartoonist bundeling their forces and this is the best they could come up with?
I am in no way complaining about a story driven comic. Hell i don't even need or expect a punchline, especially with the disclaimers being given. I understand that. We're doing something different. That's cool.
But, when you do decide a punchline is in order, one would think they'd be a bit more critical about the jokes that do make it into the strip.
I mean, you have the luxury of not needing a punchline, no one is expecting a joke-a-day kind of strip, so there's a level of freedom you might not have in another comic. Given all that, Why does this joke feel so forced?
Because I enjoy this comic and the story so much that it puts me in a ridiculously good mood! Love it. Love it so much.
hee hee
isaac cox
also I love the sign on his wall
That said though, it's pitiful that we have yet another story of unpaid hours. Not in that I'm sick of hearing about it, I just hate that it's a thing that happened. And may still be happening.
Also today's comic is the best so far. :^:
what am i missing besides a phonetic joke about sucking dick?
Also, I am about ready to call bullshit on most of these stories. Who the hell puts up with 100+ hours unpaid overtime? Either its crazy people working for crazy assholes or just lies.
Look at Team Bondi, and that's not in the US. Unfortunately this sort of thing appears to be endemic in the games industry. You've got a lot of idealistic kids who always wanted to work on video games and now have their chance, so that's a group that will be very easy to take advantage of. And if they stand up for themselves? Just shitcan 'em, there's always another waiting in the wings.
As for the comic, I'm just waiting for something to happen. We're almost a month into things and the main character doesn't even have a job yet. I know these things take time, but at some point I'm ready to get into the actual meat of where this is going.
We at least got TOIL (Time Off In Lieu, which is possibly one of the most hilariously inappropriate acronyms) when our company went on a fairly extreme cost cutting drive during the worst of the financial crisis. Got all of December off, and still carried a week into the next year. This wasn't with saving it up either, we had the brilliant idea to spend the odd hours of TOIL we generated to get the afternoons off on paydays - so we could just go to the pub and not come back. Turned what I thought til now could have been one of the most depressing work environments into a really good Summer.
Unpaid overtime doesn't have to be terrible, as long as you've got good bosses.
Just look at how much more beautiful your bookmarks could be:
As far as I know Chrome unfortunately doesn't have the ability to manually change a page's favicon (yet), but some of the other browsers do (or have extensions for it). We can also just hope that the lovely Penny Arcade employees who do this sort of thing will indeed do this sort of thing, and give us some official favicon love.
time for time is not anywhere close to unpaid overtime.
Two strips a week doesn't lend itself to a lot of forward momentum. Particularly when the people working on it (Mike, Jerry, Scott) have a shitload of other irons in the fire. Though the 2010 trademark still makes me think they have a hundred or so strips already in the can and they're just doling them out to us like some cruel experiment.
twitch.tv/Taramoor
@TaramoorPlays
Taramoor on Youtube
Yeah, unpaid overtime is working for free. As in, you're at work, and they're not paying you in time, money, or kittens.
Now, I've only ever had two jobs in my life, but still.
I didn't even get it at first.
I have 2 friends named Mike Cox and we don't make fun of them. Much.
bring back the robot!!
I didn't either, since I read that as 'Eye-Say-Ick'.
Sometimes the best thing you can do is just play Russian roulette with jobs unless you hear about a company that actually treats their employees right. For me, I was generally lucky in that most of the companies didn't require anything more than one or two hours here and there. Then again, if you clocked in between 8 and 5 and left at exactly 5pm, good luck getting anywhere with your career when the guy next to you is staying a little later and looking better than you just because he's more "dedicated".
The sad part is how easy it is to classify a job as exempt. It's supposed to be for professionals (think engineers, scientists) and executives. For certain categories, there's a minimum salary test required to ensure you don't take someone making $20k a year and classifying them as exempt.
http://www.management-advantage.com/products/overtime-exempt.html
For instance, you could consider QA personnel as "Administrative Exemptions" as long as they're paid the equivalent of 2X minimum wage (so, more than $33k). I've heard of people getting paid even less but my guess is they either didn't know the laws (you learn to when you first get categorized as exempt...just like you learn to understand non-compete laws; for instance, non-competes are largely toilet paper in California though the threat of a lawsuit, however frivolous, is enough to keep people from testing that theory) or they were in states that didn't have the same laws in place.
Oh, and if you're in California, if you have a written employment contract, you are entitled to your unpaid salary within 72 hours of you giving notice or getting fired.
http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq_paydays.htm
It helps to read up on this stuff. A lot of smaller companies without a lot of HR personnel are often unaware of the requirements. I learned most of this stuff because I had to for one reason or another.
You work overtime because you are a professional. You don't get paid at that time but when it comes round to Christmas bonus time or review you tend to get a shitload more money than everyone else.
Satans..... hints.....
Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
flexi time is great
and ahahaha Isaac Cox. I giggled, but then I'm a sucker for childish jokes.
They'd have a lot more time on their hands if they didn't do it since they'd be out of a job.
There's no fuss except where employees intentionally understaff, forcing unpaid overtime.
So exactly like the military. Except, intentionally is replaced with unintentionally, but still the same concept.
On the side, I work for DoD, and I work with a person from the UK's Ministry of Defense. We're always working an hour past the end of our shift, yet he's always gone an hour before. Gets pretty angry if you say the word "schedule" around him, too. Europeans are silly people.