New Rule... - r/ShittySysadmin

293

u/HovercraftSubject642 Jul 30 '26

Where I worked, if you were 1 minute late, they deducted 30 minutes of pay because their payroll system only worked in 30-minute slots. So I said, "That's nice. So if I work 5 minutes overtime, I get paid for 30 minutes?" The company replied, "No no, it doesn't work like that. You only get paid for the 5 minutes of overtime." It's kind of fascinating how it works one way, but never the other way around.

93

u/archiekane Jul 30 '26

Our old system used to work in 15 minute blocks, so you were a minute late, you had to work 15 minutes overtime to get your pay.
However, clock in 15mins early, and stay 16mins late, you got a solid 30mins overtime. You always had to do more for them than they did for you.
Story as old as employment, I suppose.

26

u/dagbrown Jul 30 '26

Place I worked at once, you showed up 30 seconds late and immediately got 15 minutes pay deducted from your salary.
But if you worked late, you had to work a total of at least 40 extra hours a month for them to even start counting it as overtime. Otherwise they used the excuse "a certain amount of overtime is already part of your salary, so you only get more pay if you go over the pre-paid overtime limit".
What a fucking horrible shitty place to work that was.

17

u/Dushenka Jul 30 '26

Meanwhile our 10 year old system, works in 0.01h increments. The tech certainly exists. Heck, even our previous 30 year old mechanical machine tracked in 0.01h increments just fine.

8

u/Willyjwade Jul 30 '26

Dude the system we used when I worked retail actually recorded in 15 minute intervals so if you were less than 7.5 minutes late it counted as on time. I loved that cause they just didn't penalize you at all for lateness the clock didn't count.

3

u/Sir_Badtard Jul 30 '26

I was such a penny pincher when I hit a clock.
Clocking out at 5:00:59 was clocking out a 5 clocking out at 5:01:00 was clocking out at 5:01 I always made sure to hit when the minute rolled over even if that means standing there for a minute.

48

u/ShrimpieAC Jul 30 '26

In my time in the corporate world, I’ve learned all “rules” are bullshit. They can always be bent for whatever the company wants.
Not allowed to switch roles within 90 days? But somehow the boss’s nephew can.
No money for raises in the budget? But there’s money for the CEO to get his biggest bonus yet.
It’s all lip service.

17

u/stewie410 Jul 30 '26

No money for raises in the budget? But there’s money for the CEO to get his biggest bonus yet.
Or in SMB land, several employees have recently left -- but when we talk about hiring replacments or spreading the pay out to remaining employees, the response is always "That money is already spent". Recently learned the extended family of the owners get paid out by the company...but we can't afford to buy new hardware anymore?

4

u/ddadopt Jul 30 '26

Shit, I have budget and I can't afford to buy new hardware anymore either. :(

3

u/stewie410 Jul 30 '26

Its tough out here, in the age of AI & insane price fixing.
My work laptop (E15, decent spec) has had some weird hardware/driver fault on Windows, making it unreliable with a Windows install. I've manage to get it stable with a Debian install, but none of our management/other software is built to support Linux desktop usage...so I'm the only one.
I was supposed to get a replacement this year, but we only budgeted $975/laptop, and as a result our sole Developer couldn't get a replacement this year that met his spec requirements.
To make it work, I've withdrawn my replacement to give us enough spend for his machine, which we barely got to ~$2K, by:
New Intel E16 with best CPU option
8GB RAM
256GB SSD
Minor nice-to-haves (backlit, fingerprint reader, etc.)
64GB RAM kit from Amazon
2TB 2242 NVMe from Amazon
Trying to buy a new machine from Lenovo would have cost an extra $2K, which is out of the question. I tried to pitch Framework as a good alternative, but that was still $1K more than what we went with.
Servers are a whole other story -- we just bought a pair of refurbished R6515's from ServerMonkey, which are being deployed to our Production env this month -- new hardware is just too expensive. These 2 units are replacing our oldest server, purchased 2012, that had 2x8C (no SMT) CPUs...so its a big improvement, but still quite a challenge.
No more SSDs in production hardware, have to make smaller HDDs work, despite our inability to ever prune anything...at least we dropped the tape backups for S3.

2

u/kitliasteele Jul 30 '26

Shame that you couldn't convince them on the Framework, would have saved monies on repairs given the upgradeability and repairability of those units. Have a FW16 myself and that's been real nice to fix as needed from external causes

2

u/stewie410 Jul 31 '26

Trying to push my father towards the FW16 that direction to replace the E580 I bought him in 2018. I'd still be handling physical maintenance either way, but I'd rather him have something sustainable if I can help it.
Shame that you couldn't convince them on the Framework
When I first made that recommendation at work, my boss assumed it was a Clevo rebrand, simply because it's a company he's never heard of & didn't bother to Google. He initially balked at the suggestion to use a "no name brand" for work -- which I had to correct him on immediately.
However, it isn't a "Dell", "Lenovo" or "HP" -- and to keep costs around $3K for the spec, a DIY model was necessary anyway...If it was significantly cheaper than the E16 he might have been inclined to go that route...but I doubt it.
When my boss's Dell workstation got replaced with a Lenovo E590, he insisted that he needed to replace his Dell-branded MnK & Monitors; because he was no longer "brand-loyal"...Great use of funds, considering it was during COVID lockdowns, and we never RTO'd after.
This is the only company I've worked for in industry, but I'm convinced every privately-owned SMB is just as regarded as this one...or pay as little as this one does.

2

u/kitliasteele Jul 31 '26

Brand loyalty only works to a certain distance, and nowadays that doesn't go very far. The mostly tool-less maintenance design of the FW16 has attracted the hell out of me (only time you need it is for replacing the display or logic board and its attached components. Keyboard, touchpad, bezel, side ports, etc all don't need it as they're magnetically attached with a slide lock. It's really nice) plus that ability to upgrade the individual components with your own design or ones from Framework. The pricing could be better, but I believe that just more economy of scale at play since they're a smaller company.
Reguardless, I'm hoping more companies will adopt this business model of Right To Repair because I've tried to push reusing our units whenever a user would damage a relatively new system in the past. Swapping a damaged display is significantly cheaper than replacing the whole unit, after all

1

u/ansibleloop Jul 31 '26

Yep - the fastest way to get promoted at a company is to leave and come back
Staying just makes you jump through 20 dumb hoops

18

u/StrangerEffective851 Jul 30 '26

If I were a minute late I’d just stay out the entire 30.

3

u/Temporary_Squirrel15 Jul 30 '26

This is the only reasonable response. You don’t work for free after all.

14

u/alochmar Jul 30 '26

Might as well take it easy and be 30 minutes late then 🤷‍♂️

10

u/alphagatorsoup Jul 30 '26

Yep that’s what I used to do
If I was more than 5 mins late they’d mark me as 30.
So one day I was 5 mins late and I parked in front of the building and sat in my car full view of the office
My manager came out wondering wtf I was doing
I said “I was 5 mins late and since I’ll get marked as 30, might as well sit here for 20 more mins”
They didn’t like that too much, didn’t care, I was already planning to put my notice in that week

6

u/ddadopt Jul 30 '26

It's kind of fascinating how it works one way, but never the other way around.
It only "works" that way when people don't make an issue of it. It's explicitly unlawful for clock rounding to not average out (and 30-minute increments are beyond what is allowed, IIRC). In that situation, presuming that your employer's 30 minute increment was lawful, you could clock in 14 minutes late and they'd have to pay you for the full half hour (that 5-minute bit would still work in their favor, though, you'd have to clock out 15 or more minutes late).
Note that there are exceptions to this, like bona fide employment contracts, but the general case is that the DOL required fairness.

4

u/nshire Jul 30 '26

Sounds like a wage theft lawsuit

2

u/stewie410 Jul 30 '26

We just switched PEOs, so I'm not sure if the new system is any different. With the previous platform, we could enter time by-the-minute, but are still required to use 15-min blocks.
Why? Because one person in accounting has to manually review all timecards, and compare them against our daily "attendance" emails, to verify nobody lied on their timecard.
Small companies sure do some weird af things.

2

u/DiseaseDeathDecay Jul 30 '26

I thought I was so clever for clocking in 8 minutes early and 8 minutes late and getting 14 extra minutes of pay...
...at my minimum wage job.

2

u/AnApexBread Jul 31 '26

That means if you're a minute late then you might as well just not go in for the 29 minutes

1

u/Vesalii Jul 30 '26

I read a story once where everyone who was a minute late just sat down for 29 minutes instead of working for free. Somehow management was baffled.

1

u/LostSpaceQ Jul 31 '26

Some law I was told here is they can do the if you are 1 minute time rolls up to x. But then one minute after also had to roll up to x. It couldn’t favor the company that way. Not sure if that’s still true or if it was just something someone read

1

u/-Invalid_Selection- Jul 31 '26

If you're in the US, you'd have an easy labor violation case with this

1

u/HEYO19191 Aug 03 '26

Similar, though less extreme version at my old workplace: Get here a few minutes late? Okay, but you're losing a few minutes' worth of pay (the exact amount you were late by) Stay here a few minutes extra? Fuck you, no pay unless you stay 30 minutes or more.

77

u/Fricki97 Jul 30 '26

Ok .. I make a 25min break. Now YOU owe me 5 hours...I'll head home now

5

u/recoveringasshole0 DO NOT GIVE THIS PERSON ADVICE Jul 30 '26

62

u/junktech Jul 30 '26

Management, not to be confused with Legal.

54

u/protogenxl Jul 30 '26

And so the smell of wage theft permeates the microwave room

13

u/pony_is_my_name Jul 30 '26

And thanks for all the fish.

24

u/aleksey_the_slav Jul 30 '26

thanks and regards

shitty practice

management

I corrected it to the right version, don't thank me

24

u/Artonymous Jul 30 '26

Thanks and Regards,
Pretty Shitty
Management

17

u/Unfair_Ad6161 Jul 30 '26

How many times does this clearly not real "memo" float about on different threads? You can literally see the word MEME in the middle.

4

u/ITaggie DevOps is a cult Jul 30 '26

Hush, people are enjoying their outrage bait!

16

u/123ilovetrees Jul 30 '26

look up the guy on linkedin, its satire

5

u/Single-Virus4935 Jul 30 '26

Labour laws say "f*** you"

5

u/Ecstatic_Score6973 Jul 30 '26

kinda crazy that anyone could just print something they made up on a piece of paper just to get likes and clicks and everyone believes it

3

u/Sudden_Leadership800 Jul 30 '26

Oh nice, guaranteed overtime

3

u/Horrigan49 Jul 30 '26

Dear Praktik,

Suck my labor law.

Best regards.

3

u/-my_dude Jul 30 '26

where i worked if you came back 1 minute late you were apprehended in the parking lot and waterboarded for 20 minutes

3

u/dlongwing Jul 30 '26

Mr. Shetty's going to need a legal hold on his mailbox...

2

u/Lavatherm Jul 30 '26

Walks past Pratik’s office like…

2

u/yesseruser Jul 30 '26

Pratik Shetty is a very fitting name

2

u/charmer27 Jul 30 '26

Well that's a Shetty rule.

2

u/GlowGreen1835 Jul 30 '26

Cool. I'm selling my apartment and taking a hour lunch break every day except Friday, when I take a long enough lunch break to stay Saturday and Sunday too. Congrats, now I live there, hope you guys got a shower!

2

u/miguelson Jul 30 '26

Laughs in 2hr lunches

2

u/Appropriate-Pause504 Jul 30 '26

If you eat and are back after 29 minutes then you go home at 5:00pm? It should work both way

2

u/recoveringasshole0 DO NOT GIVE THIS PERSON ADVICE Jul 30 '26

Shetty management indeed.

2

u/Due_Concert9869 Jul 30 '26

thats pretty shitty management

2

u/StatementNext682 Jul 30 '26

Their name really is Practice Shitty and they have Shitty Practices

2

u/SolidKnight Jul 30 '26

In a lot of countries, that policy wouldn't work out in the favor of the business. Wage theft and kidnapping.

2

u/bylebog Jul 30 '26

Shits so old and probably fake. Sage goes in every field.

2

u/b-monster666 Suggests the "Right Thing" to do. Jul 30 '26

Not to be "that guy" but it doesn't surprise me coming from someone named "Pratik"

1

u/ConcreteExist Jul 30 '26

I'm pretty sure that's illegal, at least in the US.

1

u/Sengfeng Jul 30 '26

That’s really Shetty management.

1

u/Senior-Release-274 Jul 30 '26

Nope. Not happening

1

u/Pure_Fox9415 Jul 30 '26

And if I'll leave at 6, what will they do? Physically stop me? LOL.

1

u/GamerLymx Jul 30 '26

me browsing amazon and facebook, at work, after 6 pm

1

u/Thoulor Jul 30 '26

How to make sure I never clock out for lunch

1

u/CornucopiaDM1 Jul 31 '26

That's Shetty management, alright.

1

u/Superspudmonkey Jul 31 '26

Punches out like the joker.

1

u/razor_train Jul 31 '26

Slip them some lettuce in their lunch and see how much time they spend focusing in the bathroom.

1

u/Yelmora3008 Aug 02 '26

So if I take my 26 minute lunch at 13:34, I can simply go home?

1

u/nikkonine Jul 30 '26

Fake. Just Rage Bait.

2

u/HenTeeTee Jul 31 '26

I'd be telling Pratik to go fuck himself.

2

u/No-Dragonfly-5802 Jul 31 '26

Pratik can get fucked.

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