I've had to work this weekend and I'm out of practice, I can tell you. I've been spoiled, for at least the last ten years, being in a position where I was able to restrict my overtime to weekdays and call the weekends my own. But right now I'm working on a big government bid (I could tell you what it's about, but then I'd have to shoot you) and for the second time in as many months, I've been working on it all weekend. And it sucks.
It might have been at least ten years since I did weekend overtime, but what sucks even more is that it's almost twenty years since I was paid to work overtime. Yes, I've reached the dizzy heights of the slippery pole where working additional hours (or even, "as many hours as it takes") to get the job done is not only expected, but if you don't do it your performance assessment suffers. This is an insidious, dehumanising side of business in the UK. Forget "a fair day's work for a fair day's pay." This is more like a long day's work for the privilege of having a job. Some years ago, I worked out how much the company owed me in unpaid overtime, based on my salary since 1988, and standard overtime premiums of 1.5x hours worked on weekdays and 2x weekend hours. The figure came to almost £100,000 then, and it's been at least five years since I did the calculation.
There's a silver lining to every cloud though, innit? And this weekend my silver lining has been the wonderful dinner Nikki cooked for me tonight - a smashing stick-to-your-ribs beef stew served up with a glass of chilled wine, a candlelit table, lashings of hot horseradish and an apricot crumble to follow (which we've yet to enjoy). That, and the snow that started up about half an hour ago, the first of the year. Nikki has a photo on her blog.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment