i know, im annoying and never serious. but something at work has come up and i need real advice (so that rules out most everyone i know. i feel i have a better shot at asking people i dont even know)

today we were presented with a new task at work. time sheets. time sheets that document everything we do down to the 15 minute mark. we do repair work, so the boss expects us to multi-task and work on multiple jobs at once, depending what can be done at any one point. to add to this, we must deal with walk-in customers and any odd job the boss wants done too. we are constantly pulled in 10 different directions at the same time, and the boss already admits that we have too many responsibilities and he likes that we are able to get through it. but then he comes up with this time sheet stuff and blames it on the insurance company.

he claims it is solely for insurance purposes, and it is also to track how much we get done everyday (im not kidding, in a long way that is exactly what he said. i was so confused). he claims there is great money to be saved through insurance discounts for workmans comp if we track our time to the 15 minute mark. on monday i plan on asking him privately how much were saving, because if he cant come up with at least a ballpark figure i will know hes bullshitting us.

i am used to time sheets that write hours at whatever jobsite im at. and even then i rarely didnt because i was usually just working on the site not running the job. but now i sit in the same spot with multiple jobs on my table, managing everything from incoming and outgoing calls, shipping and receiving, walk-in customers, and the actual repair work- and now trying to differentiate what is getting done when every 15 minutes of the day. ludicrous doesnt even begin to explain it. this isnt going to go well for my boss, its going to fuck everything up and i have to go through the motions on it. fuck

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

Ask what types of categories would help with the cost reduction and then you'll know how to write the timesheet the way he wants it without much effort on your part.

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"All crowds boycotting football games shouldn't care who sings or takes a knee because they aren't watching." - Nas

Write it up like a lawyer does. Every task you do even for 5 minutes becomes a 15 minute write up.All tasks round to the next 15 minute mark for the total. Doing three tasks in 15 minutes thats 45 billable minutes. He will get the idea when you ask him to pay you for your 13 hours in 8 hours one day.

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Elections have consequences.

i get what youre saying. he showed me the time sheets, they are laid out with the time already on them on 15 min increments, but he wants us to add in the notes section if something took less then 15 minutes. so basically, what he really wants is written binary code of what the 8 cameras we have on us at all times record in video anyway. and this somehow helps workmans comp insurance by a huge margin...

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

Sounds like he is a bad manager and either doesn't have control over his department or is under extreme pressure from his management. Not much you can do but comply with his request. A good manager has already estimated out most of your day and only needs your report in hourly to half-day increments.

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oh i guess i forgot the best part- the guy owns the company. small local shop. we are a 3 tech, 1 part time accountant/manager team. the manager comes in only 3 days a week but handles as much as she can with all the paperwork for 5 day periods and also the walkin customers. me and the other tech are highly skilled, but the owner does pull in the most money because of the type of equipment he works on has the largest profit margins. what really bites is especially between me and my boss(owner), where he has been training me to do his work and its felt like a great partnership.. but this time sheet thing kills any trust i could give him, as everything must be documented now. i showed up and started working 15-30 min early almost every day. i rarely took longer then 15 min lunches. i almost always stayed 20-40 min late too, just to either get something done or learn from the boss.

but now i will be forced to walk in the door on the minute, eat lunch the same time every day, a full 30 min, and when its 5 oclock im walking out the door or its being written down that im talking to boss about home stuff on paper.

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

That one is throwing me for a loop. I've never heard of that as a reason for time sheets. Most of the time, its used for "cya"-type stuff. Secondarily for project billing.

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Middle Aged Crazy, like Uncle Terry

I suppose the insurance company wants it on the record so if you claim an injury they can point to the timesheet and say it wasn't work-related. Like this doozy:

http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/07/31/aus ... ness-trip/

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When I managed a team for a few years, I required timesheets because it was the best I could do to protect my employees. The company was trying to complete too many projects at one time and when the shit hit the fan, I needed something to show why productivity was so low. Never thought of insurance related impacts.

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You don't have something that you can punch in and out when you work on something? Reason I ask is at my company they have a card per each piece that they are repairing or rebuilding . The clock tracks it by tenth's making it easier to do the math. They punch in and out when they are not actually working on said piece then I have to do the math and figure out how much their time cost and then I get to see what each guy made the company at the end of the day.

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its a 3 man shop, we all have benches within 15 ft of eachother. we work mainly on our own projects, but of course we help eachother when needed. i work right by the owners side all day long.

i did immediately bring up the fact that we are recorded 8 ways every second, and why that wouldnt work well enough for workmans comp insurance. boss said it was because it would be too hard to go back and see what happened. i didnt understand this response.

you guys confirmed my suspicions though- my boss doesnt trust us. this goes against everything i am about with a job. all he stresses is he wants someone who he can trust, and someone who works to their ability not to their paycheck. me and him even talked about these time sheets two months ago, and we agreed they would be ridiculous in our situation. now, suddenly, theyre here. its a pretty low blow, because i have done nothing but give this guy 150% and he knows it. i think he is actually trying to show the other tech that the new guy is doing so much better, but making us both slower is bullshit.

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

we are required to deal with random public that walks in, and building maintenance as the boss sees fit. also asked to do odd internet searches all the time too. none of this will show up as profit for the boss, and he is the sort of person that will literally tell us "we need to shave off a minute on our average customer talk time." anal isnt even the way to start explaining it....

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

I can see tracking to see where the profitability is for repairing or working on a piece of equipment is or if it is taking someone "too long" to work on something. But if you aren't working on that piece of equipment and have to deal with public why not clock out so it isn't added to the time and he isn't being anal and nit picky and worry about shaving off a minute or two.

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Ike, you work for a moron.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

starting to think that way. hes book smart, has a lot of experience doing what he does, but as the other tech has told me, apparently has never been able to work with anyone throughout his life and spent most his career in a separate room from everyone else. that is where he got the timesheet idea, because his old company used to make him do it because he was never being watched at any given point. and he already admitted to me he hated those timesheets, but today in the meeting hes telling us how its easy once you get the hang of it and it doesnt take time from your day. i knew right there he was completely full of shit, but i want to ask him more about the insurance savings because that is a lot more comical to me...

its game time again. every fuckin job i get... i wont make him decide between me and timesheets, but he is going to have to understand i need to focus on my work not on making my paper work look right.

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

ike, I've got absolutely nothing intelligent to offer you in regards to your situation. I can only say that I'm awful sorry you find yourself in a situation like that, and that I hope your rather cogent posts in this thread are only a reflection of your excellent coping skills rather than, as would be my case, virtual head-in-hands anxiety. I'll pat my cat - also named Ike - on the head in proxy for a pat on your back.

Let us never speak this civilly to each other again; the lack of ire and vulgarity makes it rather ghey.

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

lol

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

I went off and did a google search. All I can see are coding of time for three-day waiting period, dr's appointments, light duty, etc. So, jab a soldering iron up your eye socket, and we'll see how this nonsense applies to workman's comp insurance. More to the point: do you regularly get injured at this shop? Or, others there?

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Middle Aged Crazy, like Uncle Terry

Ike ask him if you can help him in any way to draw up the value stream map of your operation over there. I suppose your guy is trying to calculate the process cycle efficiency which to be meaningful in manufacturing/repair environment has to be down to a minute.

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"It's not exactly a rocket surgery." D.J.

It's not a big deal. You'll get used to it. I've had to keep track of my hours down to 15 minutes since I started in Civil Engineering 22 years ago.

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@audioidkid

This board needs some civility engineering.

that's what they do at the shop I am with. They manage the time so that way if someone who normally takes say a hour to repair something takes 2.5 hrs is there a problem with the worker or the piece of equipment and if it is the equipment they are repairing they can bill the customer accordingly

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As a former business owner who never could hire anyone to do things enough "my way", I can relate to your boss' attitude. I even proposed using separate stop watches to track individual project times, talk about anal! Eventually, even my mentor/partner and I realized our differences were too much to overcome.

Having left and gone to work for a fairly large organization, I struggle mightily with being a supervisor of a dozen guys with vastly different work ethics. Yet, at times I get a little pressure from my manager when I spend too much time getting something "my right" and not just getting it done.

Sounds like your relationship with the owner is strong enough to talk privately and ask those questions. Come at it from "How can I help improve our output/margin?" Not just how it negatively affects you, but how it can benefit him or if something else you suggest would be even more productive. Definitely not for bitching about with the others, but just you and him.

thanks k fective. i think the reason hes doing this is because the other tech has been bitching about wage, and i have been getting more done so the boss wants to show the other guy that he sucks. ugh, just stupid if you ask me because hes slowing everything down and adding confusion just to prove a point that he doesnt have to.

another late idea of his is to put a microphone in the shop so "we can be protected" in case a customer lies to us or something... i think the point i really need to get across to my boss is that this is not the career i would stay at long term, as i need to have an employer that i trust and they trust me.

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

What type of shop is it?

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But that's project billing. That's a correct use of timesheets.

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Middle Aged Crazy, like Uncle Terry

ike - you'd have to ask the bored lawyers, but isn't it illegal to have the microphone you're talking about? That is to say, Illinois has a laundry list of laws against recording conversations that extend well beyond phone calls .... they were using it via mission creep, so to speak, to disallow citizens recording cops, etc. Illinois is, I think, the most dickish state about these types of things.

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

Ike - This exact issue came up at my work place about 3 years ago. Out of the blue, we were told to start filling out sheets you described. In the end, it eventually boiled down to who did what and who didn't. The ones who "didn't" were layed off and/or eventually terminated. Granted, your shop is way smaller than we were but my guess is he is looking to let somebody go and wants to keep the guys that can pick up the extra work that will result in the termination.

Basically what happened to us was that management cut every department's manning in half and the "surviving" employees were expected to continue the same work output with half the manpower - the management's attitude was "don't complain about it - your lucky to have a job."

My guess is that somebody in your shop is going - the boss just wants to make certain he makes the choice that won't bite him in the ass later. At the very least, somebody's hours will be cut or they will go down to part time employment. I hope this isn't the case for you but that was my experience with newly created "time sheets". Good luck, bro. Let us know what happens.

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"This is Chicago, my friend. Anything can happen."

i agree with this. thing is- its a 3 man shop! the boss (owner), me, and another tech on the other side of the room. we all work together sometimes to get things done. the one tech only works on certain things, so its easy to see what he did and didnt do- and as for me i work hand in hand with the boss all day long! so i just dont know what the fuck he is thinking, other then he is a lunatic.

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

1st day of the new bullshit. i made it plenty obvious that i was not happy about something, but the boss didnt ask whats up so i guess he figured i just had an off day. one of these days he will understand.

today i just did a few long jobs, but there were plenty of interruptions. everything was documented, but its not totaled so someone has to go back over it now and add up whats there. some jobs start and pause throughout the day so there are multiple entries for each period i worked on it. it isnt confusing but it tells you basically nothing about how the job actually went. funny too, when the secretary asked me to help her with something, it really did take 15 minutes; so after we were done i asked her what the job number was for that. the look on her face was priceless. she couldnt believe i was logging that time down against her job LOL

so here it goes. passive aggressive wars just to get frivolous information in a 4 employee independent shop. my fuckin life man, i swear. i might say i put on an act in these forums but some days it really isnt.

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.