To finish work on time

[tellow]

I'm a lunchtime supervisor. I'm contracted to work 11.30-1.30. I always blow the whistle to signal that it's time to come in at 1.25 its often 5-10min after that that I actually leave the building. Everyone does the same and never complains. Last week I blew the whistle at 1.20 to allow extra time that was needed to round up the reception class, obviously they aren't used to the routine or us and they keep running off etc. I get an email today complaining that the whistle is being blown to early. Obviously by blowing early the rest of the school re-enters school 5 min earlier than normal. I will mention it tomorrow but I feel this should of been obvious. Am I expected to stay even longer after my time has finished which we already do? How are we expected to blow the whistle at 1.30, line the children up and walk them in and finish at 1.30? AIBU?

dolcezza99 Had tellow had been asking for advice about grammar it may have been helpful .
tellow was asking for advice about his/her hours of work

You were rude

That's OK then; she can carry on making a fool of herself at work. No skin off my nose at all.

Also, I think she's being rather silly. It's five minutes.

When you work 2 hours a day 25 extra minutes per week is a huge chunk of extra work to get from an employee.

Also I'm sure the ht would rather hear about this and deal with it than lose a member of staff that will take time and effort to replace!

More concerning than a LS making a small grammatical error, is the fact that we have a HT who can't do Maths or basic accounting - unable to work out properly how many hours the LS has to work! Either that or deliberately and illegally being exploitative.

Hope your workplace are still complying with minimum wage legislation then raizel! If they are, that's more than OPs are doing.

I don't know anyone who gets to leave bang on their finish time. Most people have 5/10 mins clearing up/handing over/closing stuff down

Red for faith. If yoy are paid minimum wage then dont beg. Report them for breaking the law.

BananaShit

I don't know if I articulated my point correctly the reason I mentioned about the 15 mins early expected in my previous post which is then pointed out again in interview and contract because then the colleague I'm hiring knows when they are taking the job exactly what is expected of them and is then not only unreasonable but breaking their contract if they complain or refuse and it is done so we do not get situations like this and I was just wondering if this was pointed out to the Op when they accepted the position if it wasn't then they are quite entitled to go home when their shift ends and a solution needs to be found as it is unfair and if they approached the head then this is something they could point out in their defence.

Yes we certainly do follow minimum wage legislation and our colleagues are very well looked after.

Also I would like to say having not worked in a school I don't know what the consequences of taking the decidion to blow the whistle early so she could go on time would be but if I shut the shop early because I wanted to go home exactly on time because my working hours where done I would imagine I would get into serious trouble.

You're not supposed to be walking off the premises at 1.30pm (unless you have all your belongings on you), you're supposed to finish work then. After 1.30pm you get to pick up your stuff and then go. So if you're blowing the whistle at 1.25pm and leaving the building 5-10 mins after that (as per your OP) then you're not being short-changed. If anything, if you're exiting the building 5 mins after blowing the whistle, then you're short-changing them by not working up to 1.30pm.
But if you begrudge them the odd minute here and there maybe it's not the right job for you

The thing is raizel, regardless of whether this was explained to OP when she took the job or not, it's still breaking NMW legislation. The law overrides anything in interviews, contracts or implied terms and conditions. Whereas it's perfectly legal for your employer to do what you describe, so that's fine.

I'm a lunchtime supervisor too and our bell goes at 1pm, we then speak to teachers about any problems that occurred over lunch etc so sometimes we can be 15 minutes over our 'finish' time. I can't get worked up about it really, some days we leave 5 mins after some is 15, depends on how the day has gone.

Either way, as I said above, she absolutely cannot, as an MSA (or any other member of staff other than the Head or SMT), take the unilateral decision to end lunchtime for the entire school 5 or 10 minutes early. That is an outrageous over-stepping of a line.
Deal with it through the proper channels.

Mind you, there are some jobs where working to rule just doesn't work - anything to do with schools and children, for a start. That may not tick all the correct official working directive boxes, but t'was ever thus. Schools (and other caring professions) only function because everyone works above and beyond what's officially expected. If you can't do that, then you maybe need to re-think your job and choose something, maybe in a factory, where you can clock in and out bang on time.

I can see your point BananaShit and I'm not intending to criticise and maybe I'm wrong but in my head if I went for a job interview and the interviewer pointed out to me for example I would be working 1 hour a day but I may have to stay an extra 5-10 minutes to help finish things off but unfortunately they wouldnt be paying me for that time I would then decide whether I wanted to do that. If I didn't want to do that I would not take the job but if I did I wouldn't take the job and then complain it was unfair and tell them they where breaking the law.

Where as if it wasn't pointed out to me that I would be expected to do the extra then I would be pretty annoyed by it.

Maybe that is unreasonable and I'm not saying I'm right that's just my point of view.

I didn't expect a grammar lesson but thanks for pointing my mistake out. I'm not trained to teach grammar and wouldn't be expected to do so in school during my volunteer role or lunchtime role so relax nobody will be harmed by my grammatical errors!

I like the idea of the teacher coming out to collect the children. For some reason our school doesn't have a bell. I think this would help everyone stick to time. We are expected to report back to teachers anything that might of caused concern during break, if I need to go to several teachers this then starts eating into my time and I think this puts some staff off reporting things. I sometimes volunteer at an old people's home before and after my lunchtime job so I am eager to leave on time on those days.

We also have a system whereby the bell goes at 1.15 and the teaching staff go straight out to the playground to collect their classes, at which point the MSAs are no longer on duty. They might have a quick word in passing about any punch-up or so on, but they're then free to go.

It's obviously up to you what you'd do in that scenario raizel and there's no right or wrong when it comes to whether you personally would mind. It's just that, if the employer expecting you to do those hours for that rate of pay would be paying you less than NMW, they're BU because they're breaking the law and because they think they get to agree with employees to contract out of workplace protections that don't suit them.

That obviously doesn't preclude you from being happy to volunteer unpaid in a workplace, or to do unpaid overtime where you're still on NMW or more.

You blew the whistle early? I'm not surprised the headteacher is unhappy.

I worked as an MSA and we, as a team, were offered either a meal at the end of our shift or 15 mins extra pay per day. We took the extra pay and didn't bump our gums about staying late, though we did get immensely annoyed with one person who waltzed in ten minutes late every day and somehow always left bang on the end of the shift. I would check that you aren't getting pay in lieu of a meal before you get too annoyed.

OP YANBU at all. (NC'd for this)

I work in the same environment, but with severely AS kids. I originally did lunch times as well as many hours of support work. The extra hours made up for the fact I rarely left before 2, despite only being paid until 1.40.

We've had a restructure. My support work has been pulled for budget reasons and my weekly hours are now 5 hours 50. When you do that many hours you're damn right every minute counts for you.
I am now supposed to leave at 1.30. Fortunately for me the kids eat after play so I do get up and leave, with the complete support of the teaching staff who can clearly see that this new approach just will not work.

I sat down last week and calculated that on my new hours it will actually cost me about 2/3 months pay extra to book a holiday out of term time. I, and several others have decided this is no longer viable and have handed in notice. Unsurprisingly they are now desperate to replace us and nobody wants to work that little hours a week at a site they will have to drive to get to.

I don't have an answer for you OP, I wish I did.

This sounds like a temporary problem, just until the reception children have got used to lining up? Hopefully you'll be leaving on time in a week or two? Keep an accurate record of your leaving time each day, add up the total and ask if you can have time off in lieu when things aren't busy.
As other posters have said, it's only 5 minutes a day but it does add up.

I've never worked anywhere that finishing time was "leaving the building" to go home time. You finish working at your finish time, then put your coat on, get your bag and leave. So if the children have been effectively handed back to the teachers at 1:30 and your work is finished at that time, I don't think it's reasonable to be paid for anything after 1:30. If they aren't handed back to teachers by 1:30 and are still under your care then it would be reasonable to speak to your line manager about it.

YABU

I don't any person that works who leaves precisely at the time their working hours end.

I finish at 5. But after turning off my computer, getting my paperwork organised etc I usually leave at 10 past. I wouldn't add all those 10 minutes up and ask for overtime, that's so petty.

So bang on 1.30 you expected to be able to just get your handbag and leave?

Last week I blew the whistle at 1.20 to allow extra time that was needed to round up the reception class, obviously they aren't used to the routine or us and they keep running off etc. I get an email today complaining that the whistle is being blown to early

I completely missed this part.

I'm not surprised the head teacher was annoyed!

You were effectively trying to cut their break short so you could leave bang on 1.30?

ask if you can have time off in lieu when things aren't busy.

WTF? This is SCHOOL! Hundreds of kids to supervise every lunchtime. When do you suppose it is ever "not busy?"

So bang on 1.30 you expected to be able to just get your handbag and leave?

It would appear that way. Seems that the OP doesn't understand the working world very well.

dolcezza99 can you possibly communicate your points without being snarky with the OP?