Aibu to thinking working on train shouldn’t count towards your contracted hours

[Daffodildainty]

I’ve noticed a couple of management colleagues recently working consistently short days then crediting 2-3 hours a day as working on train. Aibu to think this is bolocks, that you can’t concentrate properly or review papers during your commute and shouldn’t be working on highly confidential material in a public environment anyway?

I wondered what the dripfed justification would be!

does grate when one of my management colleague consistently fails to meet ANY deadline

Where someone works is irrelevant. The fact that they are not meeting deadlines and thus are working below an acceptable standard is the issue. (Assuming deadlines are reasonable)

I've never worked anywhere where travel between locations isn't counted as work hours. Usually driving.

@BlueberryPud

You'd hate my DH Daffodildainty. His typical commute involves getting on a plate at 5.40am, having a 30 minute nap, then doing about an hour to 1.5 hours of work, then taking a cab into the city while making work calls, then finally starting what you'd probably class as 'proper work' around 11am.

What a fecking shirker, eh?

I travel extensively for work and often my work is town on planes and trains. As long as the work gets done that’s all that matters.

getting on a plate at 5.40am

Actually he gets on a plane

LOL...

slightly confused here - clearly people are different, jobs are different and travelling habits are different.
That's it really - I often struggle to get work done in the office when I am endlessly interrupted .So if you can work on a train - good for you .

"shouldn’t be working on highly confidential material in a public environment anyway?"

Depends on the type of material, confidential in a legal sense or dealing with medical files aren't things that should be done in public places where anyone could look over their shoulder or even just steal the laptop.

DH sometimes gets the train to Edinburgh for meetings... 5 hours. Damn right he counts them as working hours, he’s not going to give up 5 hours of his unpaid, spare time is he? He works for some but not all of those hours.

YABU. If they are doing the work that is what counts. It's better that they do it on the train to maximise their productivity imo.

@Daffodildainty then you're entitled to feel aggravated by it,especially since it influences your own workload.
It doesn't mean however the practice isn't suitable just that it isn't suitable to that particular person or they're taking the piss.

Were they more productive and meeting all deadlines when working in the office only?

Drip drip drip...if you have a problem with one of your colleagues not meeting deadlines then take it up with your line manager. Don’t tar everyone who WORKS on a train with the same brush, else you could just as easily say the same about people who work at their desk but don’t meet deadlines, plenty of those around!

It’s this kind of thinking, and busybodying that makes me SO glad I jumped ship and no longer have to deal with petty office politics. It’s time wasting & energy draining...wild horses couldn’t drag me back into that shit.

Dh has been down to London by train today...left at 5.15am and will be back by 8.45pm
He's seen his client and also done a full days work on the 7 hr train journey, which means he'll have this weekend free instead of having to work and we'll have takeaway curry for tea, everyone's a winner

Working on trains is necessary sometimes while travelling between meetings and might involve other colleagues who are travelling too, while responding to emails in the morning and catching up on document reviews in the evening can be far more effective than trying to do that in an office where everyone is vying for attention. It's just being efficient. Any confidential information or company logos need to be shielded from view, obviously.

Yes car picks my husband up around 7.00 to get to airport or to station. He works from around 7am until he returns home about 8pm or he stays overnight. He is on call 24/7. He works almost continuously but is only in the offices for limited time due to distance between offices. He works wherever he can - sometimes that means the beach or garden!
I am paid to work as soon as I leave home so my train or other travel is work time. I work on the train and make calls (hands free) when driving.
We both deliver to time.

I wrote half my PhD thesis on trains wonderfully productive time...

Aibu to think this is bolocks, that you can’t concentrate properly or review papers during your commute and shouldn’t be working on highly confidential material in a public environment anyway?

^YABU and your talking bollocks

If I travel for work I am supposed to work whilst travelling if I want to have it as work time. As we work through a Remote Desktop, realistically it means you don’t have reliable signal a lot of the time so can’t connect.....but if I’m trying, it counts. I also can’t use public WiFi networks for security reasons.

A lot of my work is confidential aswell, so practically speaking I can’t always work whilst travelling as it requires me to have a certain train seat to ensure privacy. I can’t take phone calls about my cases in public either.

I also work at home a lot - get the most work done there actually.

YADBU. I'm super productive on trains.

The better half does many hours a week of work on planes, trains, airport lounges, all of which is billed per hour by her employer to their client. If it is being charged out why should it not count as hours worked?

YANBU to worry about lack of confidentiality but there’s no reason why a person can’t get a solid couple of hours of work done on a train.

This is why we have iPhones (and blackberries before them). With my workload I’d basically have to sleep in the office otherwise. Work actually get more hours out of me because I am free to be where I want. We are all adults and I trust my direct reports to do the same.

I’m waiting for the day when the need to sit in an office to do your work is done away with, sitting at a different desk everyday, paying extortionate commuting costs wasting time waiting for cancelled trains killing the environment to spend half your day playing politics is a thing of the past

If the confidential information includes any personal data, then they probably can't do it on the train. That's under the new GDPR rules.

Someone needed to explain this to the drug counsellor (I assume) who was bellowing into her phone about a client on my train last week! I knew more about this poor man, his previous drug use and current methadone prescribing regime than his own family probably do after 20 minutes of this. Had it not been jam packed I'd have had a quiet word but I couldn't even move my arms let alone go over to her at the time.