Do you finish work 'on the dot'?

[BananasAreForever]

Most people I know (including me) are regularly working outside of their working hours (weekends and evenings), even without being in particularly high paid roles or being paid overtime. This seems to be a more accepted part of the world of work now but I don't feel this was the case 20 years ago when I started my career.

The expectations put on employees all feels a bit grim, especially as we don't have a huge amount of free time anyway.

Are you lucky enough to have a job where you are able to leave at the exact time your hours finish without the expectation you will be putting in extra hours? If yes, what do you do?

I'm genuinely shocked at how many people are prepared to work for free!

I understand that in some highly paid roles that is the expectation and that's why they are highly paid, but otherwise? I think you're all mugs, sorry!

Completely agree and do the same!

I understand that. In one of my roles our core hours were 10 am- 4 pm. I arrived at 7 30 because that is what worked best with combining it with DH's commute. I'd leave at 4.45. My manager came in just before 10 am and i have no idea when she left,. But one day she drew me aside and told me that i was setting a bad example to everyone else by leaving 15 minutes before 5 pm. I told her 'you know I arrive at 7.30 am, and so does everyone else'. She told me off anyway. Things is, if I left at 5 pm it meant I would miss a train that would get ne hone around 6.30 pm and would instead be home around an hour later. Which she was well aware of.

From that day forth I did not a second extra. Instead of sitting in the office at 7.30 I would have a leisurely walk around the park and a casual breakfast over cups of coffee.

Over a 40 year career I have never routinely worked extra hours. I have also never refused to work over if there was a deadline to meet.

Too many people (imo) worked extra, just out of habit, or even because they had nothing to go home for. I'd stay if there was a one off thing I needed or wanted to finish, but I didn't do it just because there was always too much to do.

I once worked in a place that mangers got the hump if you left on the dot and didn’t first ask every other team member if there was anything we could help with before we left!

I usually start 20 mins early once I've had coffee and clock off a few minutes after finishing time if ive got things to finish but i also work as and when asked in the evening and over the weekend - I also do "necessary" bits when i'm on holiday because nobody else can.
I do it because I work for a small company and the owner is my direct boss and is great - if i need to take a day to do something outside of annual leave or if i need to go get physio/optician/vet or anything else his response is "just go do your thing"
Hes flexible with me, i'm flexible with him.

I was brought up to believe that you had to consistently prove yourself worthy of the job. So extra hours and extra responsibilities were the norm, and expected and in my family you were considered 'lazy' if you didn't do it.

Took me until I was 50 to realise that none of my workplaces have ever given a shiny shit about me or my wellbeing. In my last workplace I was massively overstretched when people were made redundant and management only saw the chance to make savings by not recruiting new people, and by loading tthe people remaining with extra work. I recall being actively suicidal due to the workload and driving to work one day thinking 'I could just go off the side of the road... I'd get a rest'. That day i went to my line manager and told him how I was feeling. His response was; 'Just go on anti depressants. That;s what we all do'.

Fuckers.

I used to be terrible at logging in early and working late but a close colleague died suddenly last year and it really highlighted how we are all just very small parts of the puzzle. Everyone one is replaceable in the workplace so why would I give any more of my precious personal time to that.

I'm on flexi, and I'm scrupulous about it (well, within 5 minutes).

We also have a statistical target so my manager gets on my case if it's not met.

I have worked in a local authority for 15 years. Always worked way over my hours. I decided in January to not go over bar 20 mins or so. I am very behind!

When I was a teacher I worked at a school that specified working hours. 8:30-4 for example with a 5pm one night for staff meetings.

Usually teachers don’t have specific clocking on and off times so this was new to me. In a previous teaching job I’d arrive at 7:30am to beat the traffic and eat breakfast and start setting up my classroom. At the end of the day the care taker would be dangling his keys loudly to get me to leave at 5pm as I was still marking and didn’t want to take work home. But I did and often did an hour or so on an evening. However if I ever needed to leave after dismissing the children it was need an issue and some staff did to collect their own kids and would take work home.

Back to original school mentioned in this story with fixed hours. I would still be on by 8:30/8 to miss traffic and still sometimes left at 4:30 so later than specified, as I had kids in wrap around to collect. One Tom I needed to ask to leave about half an hour before specified time to take my child to an appointment and was told to log it on the HR system. Next payday the had taken half an hour of my wages away. Apparently computer systems like this aren’t made for being flexible. No extra money for all the hours I work but deductions for leaving early.

Left teaching quite recently and work in a different job for the LA. I do literally clock off at 4:30 which is my finishing time and I am not checking emails and working again until 8:30am the next day. But this job allows me to get things done in my working hours. We manage our own diaries and arrange our own meetings and can work either at home or the office when not doing visits. I love days when I’m working at home and can shut the laptop at 4:20. There have been other days when I’m leaving the office or a visit place at 4:30 and am home a bit later but I don’t mind as I’m not putting in extra hours working.

I used to also work a job where any hours above regulation was closed as time of in lieu. I often travelled around the country and clocked up loads of TOIL. I’m not allowed to do that on current role but I like being able to have a finish time.

Retired 16 years ago. Neither of us ever finished work ‘ on the dot’. Nor did colleagues. We also worked evenings and at least one day of the weekend.
The grass was not greener in the past.

Nope!

And l’m sometimes up in the night for video meetings with Asia.

But work probably looks after me better than a lot of employers would.

I work for a newspaper. My official hours are 9 to 5pm but I always aim to be in by 8:30 cos I like to have a cuppa before work & time to set myself up before I start. I have an hour lunch but can work through it if I need an hour off for an app or whatever so I still leave at 5pm. My manager is amazingly relaxed & as long as no one takes the piss, we can do what we want. Because of this I don’t mind staying a bit later which can sometimes happen if we need to get the paper done but it’s very rare. Since I started there last May, I’ve had to stay past 5pm twice & that was only a few mins.
id occasionally get a call at the weekend if an ad in the paper has problems (I’m in sales) but again, thats happened maybe twice.