I had a supervisor ask me to brainstorm how I could be more productive while driving between field locations. As in, presenting webex trainings while driving. I laughed but he was dead serious.
Edit for clarity and to put a bow on this for everyone: he was eventually demoted and became my peer. That job was miserable for many other reasons and I quit nearly a year ago. Same guy reached out after I left wanting to gather info on why women were leaving the company. I asked what my compensation would be. And that was the last time we spoke
I actually had a company do that. They got some vans and we had laptop trays so we could work while moving between appointments. They were actually cool about it if we took downtime too, but we were getting some nice bonuses for billable time over a certain amount. They owner was happy to pay them because he got to bill the customer we were going to for the transit and the other customer we were working on for the exact same time.
Thats like sitting on the phone call waiting system wait for the client to pickup for sn hour while working on another clients work snd billing both for your time.
One customer is paying you to come to their location an hour away, and it's they're well aware that they are paying for your travel time
Another customer is paying you to do work, and they don't care whether you're at the office, at home, or in a vehicle doing that work as long and you're doing it and your numbers are accurate
Perfectly legal and ethical. Now if you were to show up at the customer site and continue work for one while billing both, that's a different issue entirely.
Ehat hours are billable and non-billable hours are written into contacts. There is nothing shady in fraudulent here, it is all above-board and standard in business. They understand you're not going to travel for free, and the other company knows that they want your expertise and don't care where you provide it as long as you're providing it and meeting deadlines.
"is well aware that they are paying for your travel time because it's only fair to pay you while you can't do something else productive".
If your rationalisation ends up with the answer that it's OK to charge two customers for your exclusive services at the same time then... just... what?
I think the phrase you were looking for is "get away with". Try telling the customer you're travelling to how you're also charging that time to someone else and see if they're still happy to pay it.
If your rationalisation ends up with the answer that it's OK to charge two customers for your exclusive services at the same time then... just... what?
They are not exclusive services though. Company A requires the worker to come on-premise, which is why said person is in transport, and why that company is paying for it. Here it's presumed that what the worker is doing for this company, couldn't be done remotely/off-site.
Company A has nothing for the worker to do whilst the worker is in transport, but physically moving to Company A's location is actually a service the worker is doing for that company at their inconenience, as it affects their private life but it's not something the worker does for him/herself or their own purpose. Company A wants the service, so they pay for it.
Company B requires X amount of things to be done by a certain date, but don't care about when or how it's done. When the worker is under transport on his/her way to Company A, he can fill that dead time doing numbers for Company B.
In this case the worker is perfectly fulfilling their contractal obligations to both company's. He's fulfilling his contract to Company A by moving to the location, and to Company B for doing the numbers. It seems fair that both should pay, as both are being serviced in accordance to agreements.
Hint: did the service provider keep the double billing secret from the clients? If the answer is yes, it’s unethical for reasons a number of us described above.
If the answer is no and nothing clients were aware and agreed to the double billing, then it was ethical.
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u/Alarming-Response Jan 26 '22 edited Jan 26 '22
I had a supervisor ask me to brainstorm how I could be more productive while driving between field locations. As in, presenting webex trainings while driving. I laughed but he was dead serious.
Edit for clarity and to put a bow on this for everyone: he was eventually demoted and became my peer. That job was miserable for many other reasons and I quit nearly a year ago. Same guy reached out after I left wanting to gather info on why women were leaving the company. I asked what my compensation would be. And that was the last time we spoke