In the kitchen at work somebody's just put up a flyer for “Work Your Proper Hours Day” – the philosophy behind it is that they're encouraging everyone on February 24th to actually work their proper hours, rather than cutting their lunchbreak and/or working late.

The basis for this is that in England there's apparently 5 million people who do a combined total of about 25 million pounds worth of unpaid overtime every year. They've therefore calculated that on that basis, Feb 24th is the date when your work actually starts to count towards your paycheck rather than towards providing your employer with free labour. It's analagous to working out how much of your salary goes in tax, and then figuring how many hours a day you actually work for the tax department.

2 points leapt to mind upon reading about this great initiative – firstly, I'm an hourly paid contractor and as such don't do any unpaid overtime (well, any more, that is…).

But more importantly, on Feb 24th I'm going to be on a snowboarding holiday in Austria.

Oh wait a minute, no I'm not. That's next week. Bollocks. Oh well, can't carry on so smugly about that then, can I !! Guess I'll have to just take a 1 hour lunchbreak on the 24th, leave at 5pm, and then come back in and slave over a hot keyboard all weekend.

I wonder if overtime was unpaid whether that'd stop me doing it…?

2006-02-08 : Serendipitous planning there…
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