On 13 Dec 2004 23:10:20 GMT, Michel Boucher >
wrote:

>Nancy Young > wrote in
:
>
>> Crap, I worked many a holiday for FREE. Welcome to corporate
>> america.
>
>You should never work for free. If you do, your employer will fail to
>assess the value of your labour at its just rate and you will
>persistently be underremunerated. Of course, if you WANT to be
>underremunerated, then you're doing the right thing (I am of course
>being facetious here).

You've never had to work in a USA state that separated hourly and
salaried. I'm a paralegal who bills hours and am considered a salaried
employee (even though my billable hours nearly always exceed my
paycheck). Overtime does not apply to salaried employees, only hourly
employees (secretaries and other support staff - the *only* support
staff considered salaried are paralegals). Thus, I frequently work 60
hours a week without overtime. And my bonus is far larger than hourly,
but would never make up for the hours.

Case in point: we start a jury trial on Jan. 10 and I can plan on
putting in at least 2 - 4 hours after court recesses in the afternoon
(4:00 p.m., travel time 1 1/2 hours to get back to the office) to deal
with the ordinary, day-to-day stuff on *top* of trial-related issues,
putting me back home at about 10:00 p.m., give or take, then up to
rush to L.A. Superior at 8:00 a.m. And this is "best case scenario."
Worst case, I get a hotel room near my office (done before many
times), which is 40 mins. closer to L.A. Superior and see my husband
on weekends <steam!>

Why do I do it? I am damned good at what I do and helping the Bad Guys
go down in flames is a kick.

Terry "Squeaks" Pulliam Burd
AAC(F)BV66.0748.CA


"If the soup had been as hot as the claret, if the claret had been as
old as the bird, and if the bird's breasts had been as full as the
waitress's, it would have been a very good dinner."

-- Duncan Hines

To reply, replace "spaminator" with "cox"