Punch Debt In The Face: Walk in to your bosses office right now (I’m assuming you are reading this while on the clock, am I right?) and demand a raise. See what happens. You’ll either get fired, or at the very least laughed at. Unless you work on a commissioned base pay system, truth is you probably don’t have much influence over how much you get paid at your 9 to 5. But what if you want, or need, to make some extra money? You really only have one option, work more. For some this might mean a second job; delivering pizzas, monetizing your blog, or selling things on Craigslist. For non-salary employees, this might mean putting in longer hours and getting paid overtime. For the first time in my four-year career, I’ve been given the opportunity to work optional overtime. I’ve been authorized up to 15 hours a week for at least the next few weeks.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Work longer, make more.
Punch Debt In The Face: Walk in to your bosses office right now (I’m assuming you are reading this while on the clock, am I right?) and demand a raise. See what happens. You’ll either get fired, or at the very least laughed at. Unless you work on a commissioned base pay system, truth is you probably don’t have much influence over how much you get paid at your 9 to 5. But what if you want, or need, to make some extra money? You really only have one option, work more. For some this might mean a second job; delivering pizzas, monetizing your blog, or selling things on Craigslist. For non-salary employees, this might mean putting in longer hours and getting paid overtime. For the first time in my four-year career, I’ve been given the opportunity to work optional overtime. I’ve been authorized up to 15 hours a week for at least the next few weeks.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
There has to be an end to the increase in work hours. If we can no longer make a decent living off of a 40 hour a week job then either we need to cut back on our lifestyle or we need to get out of our buisness. The idea of working 80 hour weeks for the rest of my career is not something that I am prepared to accept and there must be a balance between life and work. Work should not define your life or you will miss out on life itself.
Amen! That is a very valid, point, sometimes work is not as important as actually living, and not a good enough reason to stop enjoying living. That being said, there is an unavoidable truth that in order to live within our means, we have to work that certain amount. As much as we want to have our cake and eat it too, sometimes its just impossible to have both. I like the idea of scaling back one's lifestyle in order to make sure you can support the life you want with the right amount of fair, do-able work. That way we wont have to choose between sacrificing one aspect or another.
Yeah, but a lot of designer-y jobs in this industry don't work that way. They are paid with fees or salaries, often by the week, and are task-based rather than time-based. Unions, where you can make a huge amount of money when working for 12 hours after sundown on a Holiday, excepted, the reality of this industry for most is that 40 hours a week is short. That certainly holds true at CMU.
Regarding raises, didn't we have an article on the green page a few weeks ago with the 'couldn't hurt to ask' mentality? I think that a being laughed at as this article suggests is the worst that can happen.
I agree with a lot of what's already being said here. It's really unfortunate that the standard 40-hour work week isn't providing enough for people to live on. That being said, is the problem that the hourly wage isn't enough or that we as a whole should be putting in more than 40 hours? As daniel said, 40 hours is a pretty light work week for our industry, at least in those sectors of it where pay is done in hourly wages. One of the dangers of our work, as Daniel points out, is that the pay is by the show, or by the week, so one could get paid the same amount for sacrificing 40 hours a week of one's time as 60 or 70, because how is the payroll office to know? As the article states, this person isn't letting his work rule his life, but I understand how torn he feels in that the extra money is something he probably deserves, but would require sacrifice of hours on his part in order to get it.
This is an interesting question. What's more important free time or more money? I generally side with the writer about working over time. But if faced with a big bill or something that I am saving up for I find that I will take over time if it is payed really well, but other then that I tend to really enjoy my free time. I think that time off is important to enjoying your job and in the long run your life. While your job can be a majority of your life and while it is nice to have money, at what point is it still worth it?
This decision becomes a battle between what you value more: time or money? I'm sure everyone would love a little more of both, but unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. It also depends on whether or not you like what you're doing in order to get paid overtime, or whether you think it's worth your time, whether or not the amount of money will help you in the future. It's a difficult decision to make, and it's also difficult to turn down when you're presented with the opportunity to work an optional overtime. In the end, it's up to you.
This is perfect. Work more... then you can make more. There is nothing else to it. The only way people gain credibility is working. No one just randomly becomes successful. If you want to have wealth - work a lot, budget effectively, and then reap the benefits of your labor in the long run. The entire world runs on a 40 hour work week - so its not going to change. Billions of people have made it work- so if you can budget correctly, you will find success.
I mean, I know, at 19 years old, I haven't experienced "the real world," and all that jazz, but the past couple summers have worked pretty similarly to this. From mid-June to Labor Day, I'd average about a 60-80 hour work week between a summer camp, my job at a children's clothing store, and a couple different babysitting gigs. So, I'd probably take this guy's side in the argument. He said that this is it's a temporary situation, and I tend to fall on the "work as much as you're physically able to" side of the spectrum. But, I've yet to have to really support myself with my salary. I think I may sing a different tune once that happens...
Well, after reading this article I laughed a little to myself. If i were getting paid for the hours I have to put onto school, I would be getting a lot of overtime! I guess I will be use to working so many hours that it won't seem like a big deal to me to work a forty hour week. Although, I don't see my job as ever having normal hours or working an average forty hours. All that said, I would definitely work for time and a half. Maybe not every week but sometimes. I would like to have the option to make more money if I need to.
Post a Comment