Stealing…

At work, when holidays fall later in the week when our timecards are due, we have to guesstimate our hours. On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I had to guess whether or not I would be at work on Wednesday and Friday. I marked myself to be at work on Wednesday and out on Friday.

Tuesday night was not good to me and I was horribly sick on Wednesday morning. I stayed home and spent most of the day on the couch sniffling and sneezing in misery.

When I reported to work the following Tuesday, I remembered I had to tell payroll about my absence.

Or did I?

If I just let things go, no one would notice my extra day. In fact, they had let everyone go home early that day and I wasn’t really robbing work of 8 hours – only 4. And, every other holiday they let people go home early, I always put in an extra 2 hours so technically they OWED me. Plus, I am underpaid! What’s a couple extra hours?

So, I didn’t tell payroll…

and I lasted a whole hour before I made myself sick and went running to payroll to correct the mistake.

Not only am I bad at fighting for raises, I’m really, REALLY bad at being a thief.

Posted by Beks on December 8, 2011 at 5:00 AM in Life Experiences | 11 Comments »
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is not allowed.



  1. mikey responded:
    Posted: December 8th, 2011 at 11:31 am

    So glad you don’t have the constitution for thievery.

  2. Money Beagle responded:
    Posted: December 8th, 2011 at 2:09 pm

    That’s awesome, and really, even though the couple of hours may not matter, what really does matter is that this shows your integrity all around, and it means that you won’t be tempted next time to do something bigger. It’s kind of like the ‘first one is free’ philosophy. You don’t take that first step and you won’t have to worry about taking even worse steps later.

  3. Quitschibo responded:
    Posted: December 8th, 2011 at 2:38 pm

    I have a question, do you ever find yourself working longer than you reported? Are you salaried or an hourly employee? It sounds like you may be hourly since you have to report your time, but I know there is some salaried jobs that require time reporting also. I myself am salaried and find myself often working 50-60 hours per week, yet I “only get paid for 40″. That being said, I don’t mind working the extra hours and not getting extra pay for it, but by the same token, I don’t feel bad if I go home 2 hours early on a Friday or run errands during the day that would otherwise be very inconvenient to schedule.
    I also find myself traveling a lot for work, I often leave on Sunday nights to catch a flight and don’t get back until Saturday sometimes. I don’t get comp time or pay for this, but I also don’t feel bad by finishing a day off early if things are slow.

    It’s all a matter of being reasonable, you know how hard you work, it’s a judgement call to make.

  4. Newlyweds on a Budget responded:
    Posted: December 8th, 2011 at 3:19 pm

    There are some things more important than money…integrity is one of them.

  5. Nicole responded:
    Posted: December 8th, 2011 at 4:44 pm

    ….and that’s a good thing : )

    Nicole

  6. Beks responded:
    Posted: December 8th, 2011 at 9:51 pm

    Quitschibo – I am a salaried employee and I often put in more than 40 hours but couldn’t get over the thought I’d be stealing.

  7. Beks responded:
    Posted: December 8th, 2011 at 9:52 pm

    Oh, and I travel as well. Its a tough call.

  8. Jen responded:
    Posted: December 12th, 2011 at 10:09 am

    It’s a federal law that if salaried employees work at all, even 1 minute, your employer is required to pay you for the full 8 hours. This is supposed to help balance the many hours worked over the 40 hour work week. Obviously, if an employee were to do this all the time…it’s the employers prerogative to fire the employee. But if there are any days where you don’t work a full day, legally you aren’t required to report this to your employer for them to dock your pay.

  9. Quitschibo responded:
    Posted: December 13th, 2011 at 10:44 am

    Beks,

    thanks for getting back to me. I think Jen makes an excellent point, there needs to be balance and I don’t think you would have been stealing by over-reporting a few hours. It’s interesting, my company used to require salaried employees to report their hours in a timetracker, but about 2 years ago, that requirement quietly went away because everyone was always reporting 40 hours per week anyway, since it became an annoyance to those having to report it. The only exception to that was vacation time, but otherwise, everyone that was salaried always reported 40 hours.

  10. Mar responded:
    Posted: December 14th, 2011 at 4:49 pm

    You can get fired for falsifying your timesheet; one of my co-workers was some years ago, although he was consistently putting down an extra 2 hours a day. He had other traits that didn’t endear him to any of us and we went and got ice cream when they told us to make ourselves scarce so he could clean out his desk in private. It was the closest we could come to a real party.

    I have no idea what law Jen thinks requires you to be paid for 8 hours if your timesheet has 1 minute on it. Jen, what is the number or name of that piece of legislation? I know I could not do that at my employer since we are contractors and our hours are reported to our customer.

  11. Bill Swan responded:
    Posted: December 27th, 2011 at 4:44 pm

    While Jen is right about employers required to pay for a full day, some manage to determine what constitutes a “full working day”.

    On the honesty part – you’d make a lousy politician

Leave a Reply

About This Site

My Debt

  • Original Debt: $38,495.86
  • Added Debt: $1,781.50
  • Total Debt: $40,277.36
  • Paid: $36,084.36
  • Remaining: $4,193.00
  •  
  • Broken Down
  • Auto Loan 1: $0.00
  • Credit Card: $0.00
  • Student Loan: $4,193.00
  • Auto Loan 2: $0.00
  • Vet Loan: $0.00

Categories

  • Supporting Sites

    Note: This is the end of the usable page. The image(s) below are preloaded for performance only.

    Offset header image Offset header image