Why E* Employee's don't CARE!
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I got a buddy who just retired from AT&T and he kind of had the same issue. Many times he would work through lunch and take his lunch break at the end of the day before he went to punch out at the shop. Reason why he would never take lunch during lunch is because he didn't want to be in a time crunch at the end of the day.
If you had an office position where you punched in and punched out everytime you left the office to get lunch, I think you would have a case.
The issue here is that as an installer you are not supervised all day long. You could take an hour lunch, and they would not know any better unless they had GPS tracking on each and every one of their Vans.
As far as sitting in the office at the end of the day, if you want to sit around for 30 minutes, I would suggest finding a mc donalds down the street from the office and sit in the parking lot for 30 minutes and read a good book or finish your paperwork. By sitting in the office, its just pissing off your boss because it looks like your using company time sitting doing nouthing.
It might be pushing it, but you could sit in the office at the end of the day and actually eat your lunch and If I was your manager that would be perfectly accecptable.
If you had an office position where you punched in and punched out everytime you left the office to get lunch, I think you would have a case.
The issue here is that as an installer you are not supervised all day long. You could take an hour lunch, and they would not know any better unless they had GPS tracking on each and every one of their Vans.
As far as sitting in the office at the end of the day, if you want to sit around for 30 minutes, I would suggest finding a mc donalds down the street from the office and sit in the parking lot for 30 minutes and read a good book or finish your paperwork. By sitting in the office, its just pissing off your boss because it looks like your using company time sitting doing nouthing.
It might be pushing it, but you could sit in the office at the end of the day and actually eat your lunch and If I was your manager that would be perfectly accecptable.
Well, I put in my two weeks a week ago because I am being transfered to Japan with the military. When they found out they fired me a week early. So I don't have the issue of taking lunch anymore just all the missing money. And they know if I take a lunch and how long. We have to check in and out of jobs with dispatch and report mileage at every stop. They do two gps checks via our phones everyday and daily mileage reports against our planned routes.
Dish stopped using GPS several years ago, if they're telling you that they are using it then they are lying unless the shop your at set it up on their own. Generaly if a company fires you after you give your two weeks notice its because you have been a problematic employee or an ineffective one or both.
When I worked for dish it was an easy enough work around, I would clean my van up when I stopped to top off the gas tank at the end of the night, this included getting all gear ready to simply take out of the van, I would write down all the receiver info on a sheet of paper and the equipment count so when I got back to the shop it was time for me to be relaxed and I could take a half hour to carry a few things in and then write down the numbers for my inventory wich all of this would normaly take 5 mins to do.
You shot yourself in the foot though by saying that you have to call in your mileage and time in, a lunch is your responsibility to take and if you didnt then that was your decision and one that your gonna have to prove in court wasnt yours and that you were forced to work wich you wont be able to prove easily. Your best bet is to see if you have a copy of a job sheet that lists the points and the hours for a specific job type and then show the work that you were given in a day plus map out the drive time on a map.
Let me give you this, it may help if you decide to go to court.
I worked for DNS Wixom / Ann Arbor, in Feb 06 the management there implimented the new performance based plan that corporate sent down but they screwed it up by adding additional work on thinking that the techs would cancell one or two jobs, this didnt happen much at all. The results were that every tech working out of the DNS Ann Arbor depot was working an average of 18 - 21 hours a day from the start of Feb 06 up until when I left in May 06. The average work load techs were sent out with was equal to 90 - 130 points, hours would be for these jobs 20 hours and up and drive time would be 2 - 5 hours ontop of this. I know that due to the broken management of the Wixom office and the lack of communication from the office manager to the installation manager to the general manager this resulted in the problem. During that time I never took a lunch and I am sure that most of the other techs didnt take them either, we had to eat on the road while driving from job to job. If it helps I will include a map showing the area that the depot I was helping open up covered, at the time we were doing superdish installs in most of the coverage area shown and most of these were 2 - 4 room installs. Something to note is that alot of the time it would be common for myself to have jobs spread from one side of the blue circled zone to the other as did other techs, not sure if this will help you if you do take it to court but I know that dish keeps records and so did I, I saved all of my work stubs for 2 years, you can also get all of yours for the last near 2 years that you worked from the online website that they use for payroll.
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I dont blame him really, 2 years of no lunch break and having that time docked from a time card does come out to a hefty chunk of change lost, but it would be a really really hard fight considering Charlies legal team.
E* will be responsible for showing time cards. If they show the 1/2 hour being subtracted they won't have much to stand on. My wife has been through this. Someone other than her complained to wages and whatever it is about something similar. Wages dept checked records for all the empoyees not just the complaining employee.
Happened at my office, too. Someone must have griped to the labor board abotu something, becaus eI had to go through a couple of moths of timecard punches and show where people were taking their lunches.
My problem was that the dirty little criminals that worked for me would take their lunch, "forgetting" to punch out and then back in...hence looking for some OT by the end of the week.
Labor board = a giant waste of my time and money.
My problem was that the dirty little criminals that worked for me would take their lunch, "forgetting" to punch out and then back in...hence looking for some OT by the end of the week.
Labor board = a giant waste of my time and money.
Up to the time I left last year it was still sent in on paper handwritten by the managers by way of fax machine even though they were using a fingerprint scan system at my office.
Lots of self-proclaimed JD's around here...
Long story short, there isn't a universal time tracking system in use for said company. For techs there generally doesn't have to be due to point tracking and the fact that your job more or less depends on you showing up to each customer. There's much more to this than you're being told, and so far Van has the clearest insight.
As of the time when I left most of the offices were supposed to be using a card swipe system for tracking an employee's time in and time out but not his/her lunch, this would automaticly be deducted wether or not said person actually took a lunch break. The office I left employment with used at the time a finger print reader made by microsoft that was linked to a program that recorded punch times for in and out. At the end of the pay period the manager for that shift would write down each employee's time and then send it to the install manager who would go over the times with the general manager and sign off on each hand written time card and then they would be faxed into the corporate payroll office.
Thinking back on this further I can say that not one manager wether an field service manager, installation manager, or a general manager ever showed any concern about wether or not any employee was taking a lunch break and as a matter of fact I can name two ( one past and one present ) that has said that we could take our lunches while driving from one job site to another wich really isnt taking a break as your operating a company vehicle.
For the O.P. yes it does suck but Ive got six years of crap that I could unload into my own thread including a now fired general manager that got his rocks off on belittling me infront of the other employee's that I worked with. I do know of time card related issues aswell as some heavy abuses of company policy by upper management and a few other things that if I could get a few others to come forward on would probably get the whole office shut down and the regional manager out of a job as well.
Thinking back on this further I can say that not one manager wether an field service manager, installation manager, or a general manager ever showed any concern about wether or not any employee was taking a lunch break and as a matter of fact I can name two ( one past and one present ) that has said that we could take our lunches while driving from one job site to another wich really isnt taking a break as your operating a company vehicle.
For the O.P. yes it does suck but Ive got six years of crap that I could unload into my own thread including a now fired general manager that got his rocks off on belittling me infront of the other employee's that I worked with. I do know of time card related issues aswell as some heavy abuses of company policy by upper management and a few other things that if I could get a few others to come forward on would probably get the whole office shut down and the regional manager out of a job as well.
JD's??
I'll I was saying is that wages will look into it and if they find holes they will start looking into all employee records. The situation where my wife worked resulted in the entire office geting some pretty decent back pay.
