The discussion surrounding the ethicality of workplaces contacting their employees after hours has ramped up in the past few years, especially with some areas introducing laws preventing companies from doing so.
This is the story of someone who encountered many an after-work call that they used as leverage when their employer tried to saddle them with asinine charges.
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Our tale begins with the author providing some much-needed context.
“So I need to preface this by saying this happened a long time ago. Like back when cell phone plans had minutes.” They then explain that this phone had unlimited minutes, meaning that wasn’t a factor in the later concern their employer brought up.
They were working an hourly supervising contractor job.
“Part of my job description was to carry around a departmental cell phone at all times, […]. Kind of a bogus deal, but whatever. Employees would call me whenever, 24/7 for troubleshooting or if they were calling in sick. I never got paid for these phone calls, but to me at the time it wasn’t a big deal.”
They also worked in the mountains.
“[…] I didn’t always get the greatest reception with my Tmobile phone. I got great reception with my work phone, so every once in awhile [sic] I’d use it for personal use.”
This seemed fine as they didn’t hear anything about it, so they continued on.
Then, a whole year later, they got an email from their “boss’s boss’s secretary”.
The company was suddenly asking them to pay for each of the calls they made. The author initially agreed and asked for the phone records.
“After that, I went through the phone records over the past year and saw I’d used it maybe 10% of the time for personal calls.”
So they emailed the secretary back.
“I added everything up, and turns out I owe you guys x amount of dollars for my personal calls. Technically, I’m an hourly employee, so I should be getting overtime each time I pick up the phone for work purposes. Will we just subtract the difference for all those hours owed?”
Lo and behold, they never got a response.
They didn’t push for one either, not really wanting to make this into a huge ordeal if it could be easily ignored.
A swift and simple lesson learned on the company’s end and a pretty satisfying victory on the part of the employee. If you’re not going to pay overtime, definitely don’t expect your employee to pay any extra fees.
h/t: Bored Panda
