There has been much discussion lately about Eric Cantor’s attempt to pass the Working Families Flexibility Act, which would allow employers to offer comp time instead of paying time-and-a-half for overtime. Although I have been retired for six years now, and although it was 38 years ago that I worked my last hour of overtime, the very word fills me with dread, and I can still feel all the agony of working more than 40 hours a week as if it happened just yesterday.
In the three years that I worked that first job in the early 1970s, I only worked overtime a total of eight weeks, scattered here and there, but it was enough to make me suicidal. That is no hyperbole. I was so miserable one night, having worked overtime for three weeks straight, that I decided life was not worth living under such circumstances, and that I might just as well end it all. I reached this conclusion about 4:15 AM, for the stress of working long hours had given me insomnia. But having reached this point of desperation, I then found I had the courage to just quit my job outright, even though there was a recession on, and I had no idea whether I could even find another job.
Actually, I did not exactly quit my job. Having reached that decision, my insomnia was cured. I went right to sleep, and, as I had unset my alarm, in accordance with my newfound courage, I slept late and got to work just before lunch. I told my boss I would be willing to keep working for him, but only for 40 hours a week, because I was through working overtime. He fired me.
Maybe I was just lucky, but within one week, I found a job where there was no overtime, and life seemed worth living again. For the next thirty years, whenever I applied for a job, I always made it clear during the interview that I did not work overtime. Sometimes I got the job and sometimes I didn’t. But the point is this: it is a big world out there, and there are easy jobs to be found with no overtime, if you are willing to look for them.
And that brings me to the point of this essay. I learned a lot about avoiding overtime along the way, and having a natural sympathy for like-minded fellows, I decided I would pass along my bits of wisdom, in the hope that others might benefit from them. Of course, not everyone wants to avoid overtime, which brings me to a fundamental distinction. There are two kinds of people: those who hope their boss will give them the Friday off after Thanksgiving, even though they will lose a day’s pay; and those who hope their boss will ask them to work Thanksgiving, in order to get the double-time-and-a-half for working on a holiday. I am addressing my advice solely to the former.
It is to be noted that the title of Eric Cantor’s bill has the word “families” in it. As always, there is a prejudice in favor of families and against those who are single. It used to be even worse. In the early 1970s, it was not uncommon to read in the want-ads an advertisement such as the following: “Wanted: Married man to manage furniture department [or restaurant, or convenience store, etc.].” The reason was obvious. A married man had the responsibility of supporting a family, and could be counted on to show up for work, putting in long hours without complaint. A bachelor, on the other hand, had no responsibilities, save the few expenses associated with the single life. He was likely to place too high a preference for leisure over income, with no desire to hit it too hard. Nor is it merely a matter of the married man needing more money than the bachelor. When a friend of mine happened to mention the overtime he was putting in at his new job, I expressed sympathy for his situation, thinking that it was something that he wished to avoid as much as I did. “Well,” he said, “I can either stay late at the office, where there is peace and quiet, or I can come home to the nagging wife and the squalling baby.” By way of contrast, the bachelor not only needs less money than the married man, he also has more temptations to lure him away from the workplace, for his leisure time will often be occupied with the pleasures of carousal, or just the milder amusements of vegging out on the couch and watching a little mindless television. In other words, this discrimination against bachelors openly acknowledged in the early 1970s was based on reality, which all who would avoid overtime should take to heart. If you wish to have an easy job working no more than the traditional 40 hours, you must forgo the pleasures of hearth and home. A domestic life is not for the lazy.
In the above paragraph, I addressed myself primarily to men, and will continue to do so for the remainder of this essay. This is done for ease of expression, and not intended in any way to slight the fair sex. I am sure that there are just as many lazy women out there as there are men, and such women can benefit from my advice just as surely as their male counterparts.
To return to the issue of familial discrimination, I once tried to finesse this situation, in hopes of getting all the advantages of being regarded as a married man by a prospective boss, while at the same time keeping my freedom. I worked it into the interview that I had a fiancée, even though no such woman existed. The way I figured it, this would not only make me look mature and responsible, but it would possibly get me better wages as well, on account of the greater financial needs of a married man. But that was before I realized that it was actually better to work for less. If the going-wage is $20 an hour, then it is better to work for $19, and $18 would be better still. This is the opposite of golden handcuffs, in which an employee is highly compensated in order to deter him from looking for another job. In this case, by working for less, by being cheap, Grade-A labor, it is your boss who will become enslaved. When he wants you to put in a little overtime, and you say, in the spirit of Bartleby, the Scrivener, “I would prefer not to,” he will be hard put to do anything about it. On the one hand, he would love to fire you, as my boss did in my first such refusal related above, as a way of putting down the insurrection; on the other hand, he knows that he cannot replace you except by paying someone else higher wages, and that he will be loath to do.
Let us say, however, that you have to work overtime, and you are fearful of being thrown into the ranks of the unemployed. Assuming that you are paid time-and-a-half (I’ll get to comp time in a minute), you will, of course, start taking home more money. When I worked overtime, lo these many years ago, I fell into the trap of thinking, “I deserve.” In other words, I started thinking that I deserved to have a steak dinner for lunch instead of a hamburger, because I was working so hard. Or I deserved to buy some expensive toy, which I could then afford, as a way of compensating myself for the extra work I was doing. In a word, I spent it all. It was as if I tried to make up for the loss of leisure in the quantitative sense, by enhancing what little remained in the qualitative sense. That was a big mistake. If you are forced to work overtime, you should use the money to build up your Fuck You Fund. I regret having to use this vulgar expression, but it appears to be the one that has become standard for setting aside enough money to be able to quit your job without worrying about how you are going to pay the rent until you find a new one. Also, I would never say that to my boss, for it never pays to make enemies. Besides, once you have saved up so much money that you can quit your job whenever it pleases you to do so, you can afford to be magnanimous, and hand in your resignation while politely expressing your regrets.
We come now to the Working Families Flexibility Act, which precipitated this essay. If the comp time is real, then the lazy man will prefer that to the traditional time-and-a-half, although no overtime at all is still the ideal. Unfortunately, I have never known anyone who ever managed to take all the comp time he was due, or even most of it. After all, if you are having to work overtime this week, how likely is it that there will be so little work next week, or even next month, that your boss will let you take the comp time? In a blog from Working America, the following example is given:
Say you want to take your comp days off. You go to your boss and request an afternoon off to take care of a sick child, for instance. Under “comp time,” the boss can deny your request outright. Why? Because they can claim that your request “unduly disrupts the operations of the employer” or that the request was not made “within a reasonable period.”
I cited this example not only as an illustration of the problematic nature of actually taking the comp time accrued, but also as another instance of the discrimination against people who are single. If that poor guy, in the above example, could not even get the day off for a sick child, what chance do you, as an irresponsible bachelor, have of doing better? I mentioned my feeble effort early on in trying to feign my familial status by alluding to a nonexistent fiancée, but I do not recommend such. A bachelor simply cannot hope to come up with the kind of excuses for not working available to the married man. Instead of showing weakness with a lame excuse, I recommend being brutally honest. Although I never had comp time, I did work for a place that allowed us to take our vacation days one at a time, should we so desire. So, from time to time I would go to my boss and say, “If it’s all right with you, I’d like to take one of my vacation days this Thursday.” Invariably, my boss’s eyebrows would come together, and his lips would tighten up.
“Why do you want to be off this Thursday?” he would ask, with just a touch of irritation in his voice.
“Well,” I would answer, “the way I figure it, if I take the day off, it will make me feel good.” My boss never found my reply as amusing as I obviously did, but since I had already implemented the strategy described above, of working for less than the going wage, he had little choice but to grant my request.
In the end, however, whether Cantor’s bill passes or not, whether you have a boss who will let you take your comp time or not, my advice here is that same as that for overtime generally. The key to securing an easy job is to follow the principles described above: remain single, work for less, save your money, and do not despair, for there is always an easy job out there somewhere, just waiting for you to walk in and take it.