ZOMG You Gaiz, This Was Only A Six-Day Work Week

[xifeng]

+ I'm going to try to start posting my food & exercise logs in here, because I took a flying leap off the wagon yesterday (poor food choices) and today (which I will not go into details about other than to say that it could be aptly named the Donut Ballocaust of 2011).

+ I have worked 120 hours in the last pay period. Actually, I think it was slightly over that.

+ Then most of it got sucked away because savings and I had a car payment I wanted to take care of sooner rather than later, and, oh, I went to the car dealership this morning to get the oil changed and have the power steering flushed and somehow I let myself be talked into getting all the filters replaced. (They told me I needed my windshield wipers replaced, too, and while I've never found the service to be anything but good there, I'm not giving them $26 for something that costs me $19 for parts and 15 minutes for labor and that I can do myself at home). I also finally got an estimate on the busted taillight casing (we don't know how that happened; I came out to the car one morning and found bits of red plastic in the bushes).

+ My day basically looked like this: Get up. Get in the shower, get dressed, go to dealership. Go to work for 4 hours. Get pedicure. Come back to work for 3 hours. BUT! I made my quota for the whole weekend today, so I can be off tomorrow :D

+ I think I'd like a hot bath, assuming the drain in the tub is working properly.

+ ♥

Comments

[hatefulsandwich.livejournal.com]

Egad, if you find an interesting regime that works for you, do share. I discovered that an old lecturer of mine (long story) has been doing that Zumba program and lost 26kgs. I'm seriously considering whatever the hell Zumba actually is. I think having to sit behind a desk all day is a serious constraint when it comes to weight loss, of course.

How long would a normal amount of work be in a pay period? How long is your average work day, or how much do you do in a week?

[shake-the-stars.livejournal.com]

Zumba is something like a dance/aerobic combination, I think; some of my co-workers go in for it. I sit on my ass all day in front of a computer at work, which takes its toll; I have done it mainly through diet (limiting carbs and sugar), but need to exercise too. Given that I can walk to the high school track, you'd think I wouldn't be so lazy...

The average American works 40 hours a week and is paid every other week (this is called a "biweekly" pay, which drives me nuts because we DON'T get paid twice a week), so the average pay period is 80 hours. Normally, this is me. Right now, with mandatory overtime, I work about 9-10 hours a day plus at least 4 more on the weekends (and lately, it's been closer to 6 or 8). So I basically just worked 3 weeks instead of 2.

[hatefulsandwich.livejournal.com]

Ah, okay. We only get paid once a month. Being paid every fortnight (nice word, :P) would be very useful.

Wow, don't you have laws governing your overtime? I mean, granted, we have laws that a lot of people don't stick to *cough*animation industry*cough*, but we're not supposed to be allowed to do more than 10 hours of overtime a week. Why so much mandatory overtime?

[shake-the-stars.livejournal.com]

It really is, in terms of calculating how long I can wait this bill and so on. (Not that I have to do that a whole lot these days, but it was a survival skill at one time...)

Eh, kind of? Federal law (state law may vary) doesn't limit how many hours you can work, but it does stipulate that you have to be paid and you have to get time-and-a-half for it (your regular hourly rate, if you're paid by the hour as I am, plus half of that again), for most employees (certain professions are exempt). Most employers have their own regulations regarding overtime in place because it doesn't make good business sense not to do so--everybody burns out at their own rate, but there comes a point when you're just not good for anything because you really need to sleep. My workplace doesn't allow workdays longer than 10 hours without approval, and I'd really have to work hard to prove that I NEEDED to work a 12-hour day (they did allow 12-hour days over the Labor Day weekend because we had such high quotas, but nobody HAD to work a 12-hour day; we were just given that option and allowed to make our own decisions about whether we wanted to exercise it. I didn't).

Basically, the reason for the mandatory overtime goes like this:
+ Mortgage rates have dropped dramatically.
+ A lot of people are refinancing to take advantage of the lower rates.
+ A lot of the bank's refinance business comes through us; it's a large bank with affiliates in 12 or 13 states, and we provide the title insurance for ALL those affiliates. (The bank does have mortgages in some states where we aren't licensed, but obviously we don't deal with those.)
+ Volume goes up and we get swamped.
+ Mandatory overtime~!

It'll probably drop as the winter approaches--title is a feast-or-famine business--but for now, I kind of enjoy being filthy rich XD

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