to take my 'downtime' during work hours?

[wishfortime]

By 'downtime' I mean nice easy things, like online shopping, coffee breaks, and a bit of random internet surfing.

I work full time and have a 90 minute standing/rushed commute.

Mornings are a rush with early start and nursery drop off etc, My DH picks up DC from nursery between 6 and 6.30 pm, and i reach home about 7pm, spend an hour doing bath, bedtime routine with DC while my husband cooks, we eat at 8.30 then its cleaning kitchen, laundry and general housework, and getting sorted for next day while my DH catches up on work emails. Weekends are also quite jam packed as both our families live far away, so more often than not we either are travelling 300 miles (at least once/twice a month), or family/friends are staying with us.

So I don't get any 'free time' at home, hence i feel i need to take some 'down time' at work. My workload isn't always 100% capacity, but its the type of job where i need to be there and available or it impacts the team. Its paid well and often things kick off i do need to work late into the evening, and sometimes at weekends from home. (I don't get paid for this 'overtime', which is how i justify to myself that the downtime at quieter times during the day is ok).

I can only ask again: why wouldn't she tell her manager this was what she was doing?

Probably because he hasn’t asked. And the reason he hasn’t asked is because he’s satisfied with her performance and she is performing her role to a high standard.

Why would you? You’re doing what you need to do. You’re having regular performance reviews and your manager is happy with your performance. You’re meeting goals. In my case, I was performing to a very high level and getting bonuses for my performance. Why then would I say ‘by the way, sometimes when I’ve not got much on in the daytime I do my Christmas shopping online, before spending 2 hours of my evening, at home, on an international conference call’?

I had a job like that once.

Paid to work for 5 hours a day but there was just no work really. I don't know what they thought I did, but I'd spend a good 2-3 hours a day online/doing my tesco shop/mumsnetting

As a PP pointed out, some people are more efficient than others. They think quicker than others/work quicker than others. Why should they be punished for that efficiency by being given more work than a less efficient colleague?

I actually don't envy the Op. It would be one thing if you could head off at 3.30 because all your work is done or because you'll be "on" again working from home at 7pm. Quite different to be required to stay in the office until 5.30 or whatever just filling in time, waiting until you can leave. I'd find that bloody soul destroying.

I think it's fairly common though and unfortunately lots of companies are still uber conservative, placing value on presenteeism rather than performance. It's a pity because with a bit of planning (and the will to do it) many employers could offer their staff much more flexibility and really improve work life balance without reducing productivity. In fact it would probably improve!

I don’t know why the OP hasn’t told her manager. I wouldn’t have explicitly told mine because it was a standard way to work in my industry. My boss did it, her boss did it, my direct reports did it. No need to tell anyone, because we knew that was the way it worked. My manager said to me ‘I don’t care how you organise your time as long as you meet your goals’.

" wouldn’t have explicitly told mine because it was a standard way to work in my industry. My boss did it, her boss did it, my direct reports did it. No need to tell anyone, because we knew that was the way it worked. My manager said to me ‘I don’t care how you organise your time as long as you meet your goals’."

This has the been the case in most of the places I've worked.

"Speaking as a manager, that isn't what you'd do. You would realise that an employee (or more than one) had capacity, then you would allocate work accordingly, either to that employee or to other employees, and you would consider whether you needed to employ as many people as you were employing."

Penggwn - speaking as an employee whose had many managers. That isn't what they've done. They've known very well that work can be quiet sometimes and are happy as long as the work is done.

I don’t know why the OP hasn’t told her manager. I wouldn’t have explicitly told mine because it was a standard way to work in my industry. My boss did it, her boss did it, my direct reports did it. No need to tell anyone, because we knew that was the way it worked. My manager said to me ‘I don’t care how you organise your time as long as you meet your goals’.

Same here.

If you were unemployed would your adviser be happy with you taking extra time off faffing around that you should be spending looking for a job?
I doubt it. You are effectively stealing from your employer. You are being paid during that time to work and you are not working.

YANBU to surf a bit at work - nobody can be productive 100% of the time at work for the simple reason - we're humans. We need to take breaks. We aren't robots.

However, your problem isn't work. Your problem is your ridiculous weekend schedule of visiting parents and in-laws. A 600 mile round trip every 6-8 weeks to see your parents and then a 500 mile round trip to see your in-laws AND they also visit you in between? Bloody hell. I'm exhausted reading that. Cut those trips out. Cut them right back. For example ... Use the first weekend of January to see your parents (you visit them). Then the first weekend of Feb to see your in-laws (they visit you). Then the first weekend of March to see your parents (they visit you) and then the first weekend of April to see your in-laws (you visit them). Therefore, you're only travelling in total once every 2 months so you have lots of time freed up then. You have DC, you don't have time to be doing these ridiculous journeys all the time.

"Then they are poor managers."

I don't think so. They're part of the same system.

As a PP pointed out, some people are more efficient than others. They think quicker than others/work quicker than others. Why should they be punished for that efficiency by being given more work than a less efficient colleague?

There is something in this. I’ve been a civil servant for years, and for a while had several colleagues on the same grade doing overlapping work. It became apparent that while I was trying to do more advanced stuff than my strict job objectives, my ‘superiors ‘ weren’t interested. It also became apparent that my colleagues weren’t much interested in stretching their roles either. For example, one of our common tasks was answering queries from the public. I did this by providing a helpful response. My colleagues did it by just sending a link to the same legislation - every time. My manager refused to countenance that I should be given a better performance mark for this. Oh, and I was the fastest worker - of course, again not recognised.

Bollox was I going to volunteer to take on yet more of other people’s drudge work on this basis.

"If you were unemployed would your adviser be happy with you taking extra time off faffing around that you should be spending looking for a job?"

For universal credit, there are set times, but for old-style JSA you have to look for jobs, you don't have to work to any kind of schedule.

"You are effectively stealing from your employer."

Then the employer is stealing from her when asking her to work out of hours.

She is not stealing from her employer - how ridiculous. Are employers stealing from employees when they do extra to their contracted hours? Lots of jobs have peaks and troughs. I’ve had jobs in the past where I was doing 14-16 hour days during busy periods. It’s then been an unspoken rule that you faff about a bit once that project is over to have a mental and physical break. I’ve given my junior staff unofficial toil or let them work from home when I know they aren’t doing much after really busy periods. This works and my team appreciate and work harder for the flexibility and still do me favours once they have left the organisation. Treating people like adults builds trust. Obviously some people might take the piss but that is something that can be managed.
I basically set my own deadlines for my day to day work so if I am a bit slow one day, I know I’ll make it up over an evening or weekend because I am self motivated enough to do so.

Then the employer is stealing from her when asking her to work out of hours

That’s exactly what I was going to write, but decided to give up engaging as some people can’t understand that not all jobs and not all industries are the same.

I’ve given my junior staff unofficial toil or let them work from home when I know they aren’t doing much after really busy periods

Yes, if we’d just come out of a particularly crazy period I’d often ‘suggest’ to my team that they could work from home on a Friday, which meant I just expected them to be on hand if anything urgent up but didn’t expect anything else to be done.

It shows a difference in employer and manager styles is all. Some people won't get it.

I'm Mumsnetting right now. I'm also responding to a few emails and waiting for my US Manager to be available for a chat to clear something up.

Of couse I won't take all this time back. But I'm still around, and engaged. This is most days. So if I want to do an online shop in a free hour once in a while (not that I have a lunch hour ever really) then I will do.

Coconut - I agree. Unless there’s something the OP has missed out about the DPs/iLs being terminally ill/ about to emigrate, that’s a helluva lot of visiting. Heck, my parents are only 40 miles away and I didn’t even see them that much pre-DC (admittedly, we’ not hugely close emotionally).

People I know use Facetime so that their young daughter can get to know/ keep in touch with relatives in the Middle East. Would that be a possibility for OP?