So your employers shortcomings are covered up by you pulling in extra hours for free? Thats no way to teach anyone anything...
You know that saying give them an inch and they'll take a mile?
Our boss tried that...he kept giving us tighter and tighter deadlines on workorders knowing that we would try our damnest to finish them on time...so where he expected a job to be done in 4 days beginning of year he now wanted 3 days cuz of a rush job....well that 3 days became the norm and a 2 day job became the "rush"...ya screw that noise.
you know what hes thinking in his head? "this shmuck will work extra hours and i dont have to pay him? Swweeeeeet!!"
another example: My girlfriend works for corporate office of a large but will remain unnamed food store chain.
She started working there over 3 years ago and has always put in 45 to 50 hours a week...Being salary her pay always stayed the same and she "assumed" it was a 40 hour work week. So after me asking her for years to confirm what shes actually making and her hours she inquired and was astonished to find out that she technically only had a 35 hr work week. You think her manager said a word to her? You think her manager came up to her and said "Hey, u know u dont have to leave at 5, u can leave at 4?" Nope! and now that she stood up for herself and shes doing 40 hours (Not even 35, still putting in extra) her boss is being a total **** saying my g/f is and i quote "not a team player", "giving me attitude". The cherry on the cake? G/f wants to keep taking half hour lunches and leave at 3:30. Response: "NO! you spend a lot of time on the phone which all adds up to you having an hour lunch"
If that was me id have snapped and said something along the lines of "Well, i think i time banked enought THOUSANDS of hours that i can open my own damn telemarketing business and not come close to spending that much time on the phone!"
I think i proved my point.
I dont work for free....My time is valuable and due to someone elses shortfalls, mismanagement or too short of time tables i dont get to bend over backwards.
sure if the boss appreciated it and showed it in different ways, absolutely....but for middle management who only wanna see results so they can turn around and get patted on the back for your hard work, u gonna pay!
"oh you told the client this machine will be ready by end of the day? Even though we told you we have serious issues that will take 2 days to sort? Oh u really need the machine today? Okay we'll stay but u're paying!!"
So next time he'll listen, and he wont try to BS the client and try to make himself look better
Well you didnt have to stay... but put it this way... if your job went out ****ed up because you didnt stick around to let the next shift know the issues with it, you can guess who that falls on. So it was more a CYA kinda thing. I rarely stayed because i was good about getting people from the next shift ready to work as soon as they got in. But other people werent great at that, and ended up having to stick around a lot.
I can understand as a sub contractor not caring about the company youre working for, because theres always more places to hire you. But as an employee of a company i kind of feel like its my responsibility to ensure that the company is successful and profitable, as it being so directly affects their ability to employ me. Im not talking about giving up an entire shifts worth of pay, because thats unreasonable and no hourly company should ask you to do that, but an extra 15 or 30 minutes here and there is not unheard of, especially if it means getting a project out on time and having a happy client, versus having a really ****** off client with a late, trash product.