Donning Asbestos Suit:
When I was young I spent some time in management in the retail industry. They would routinely work you 60 hours/week on salary, often running around doing mundane jobs that had nothing to do with managing anybody. The weeks got a lot longer at Christmastime. Break it down per hour and you were making less than the minimum wage.
I got smart and left that business when I realized that the impending birth of a child would qualify me for food stamps. But my former employers played WAY too fast and loose with the rules. As one of my former colleagues in that business was fond of saying “you gotta draw the line SOMEWHERE.”
“When I was young I spent some time in management in the retail industry. They would routinely work you 60 hours/week on salary”
The same thing happened to me when I worked in Hotels as a Front Desk manager. Not only would the manager give me piles of work beyond my job description but I was at the mercy of the regular desk clerks. If Belinda the single mothers 4th baby was sick guess who got to work her shift? When John the doper was arrested for DUI who had to work the shift? The minimum wage clerks had more freedom than I did
Was in the same situation. Worked in retail management on the logistics side. They would save on payroll by sending hourly home and making all the managers throw freight. You stayed until you were finished. Sometimes this took 18 hours.
During holiday season it was not uncommon to work 70-80 hours in 4 days, then you had mandatory volunteer time.
When you added up the hours, you actually made less per hour than the hourlys. I got sick and they fired me. Best thing that ever happened.
That problem was solved by certain tests required to determine whether a person was really management, such as the percentage of their time spent performing actual management tasks. I know it was still abused, but I did HR and payroll for decades, and I made sure my employer followed the rules to avoid lawsuits.
Most of the people that had a choice of comp or overtime took the comp time. I never had the choice as a manager making way beyond the threshold, nevertheless I wouldn’t work excessive hours unless special circumstances required it.
I totally support your point of view.
I sometimes work as a pastry chef at a couple of resorts around here and the managers are there for six ten hour days per week and then they come in on the seventh day for manager’s stand-up meetings.
And they end up making less than minimum wage when you figure their hours worked against their pay.
Sucks to be a manager.