Work expectations

[wotindnameofdlordisthis]

I’d really appreciate some outside perspectives on this work situation.

At my job, we have a shared inbox and 2 persons is “on duty” each day to clear emails by 5pm. Yesterday I was on duty. Around 4.45pm I opened an email that had 12 attachments, including 6 bank statements that were out of sequence. This wasn’t a quick admin task. It required checking dates, sequencing documents, and deciding whether further financial information needed to be requested.

By the time I’d saved and attached the final document, it was 5.29pm. At that point, after a full day, I was mentally drained and didn’t feel able to properly analyse the bank statements without risking mistakes. Because accuracy matters, I left the assessment until the next morning when I could do it properly.

My manager has now said I shouldn’t have done that and that I should have been able to complete it because I took my breaks during the day. I’ve explained that taking breaks earlier doesn’t necessarily mean you still have the mental capacity late in the day to do complex financial processing safely.

Am I being unreasonable here, or is it fair to leave detailed analytical work that comes in late in the day until the next morning?

manager said to ask for help if struggling at 5:30 every had finished and logged of and it was not a mater of struggling 🤷🏾‍♀️🙄

What time does your workday finish?

If the email didn't arrive until 4.45pm then I don't understand why taking breaks earlier in the day makes a difference? As above, what time do you finish work? - is this a case of having too many documents to assess in too little time?

But your working day finishes at 5pm. So if you open a task that is >15 minutes at 4.45pm it was never going to be finished on the same day. Is there an expectation of unpaid overtime in your company? How well paid are you - if higher rate tax payer then I would expect to do some additional time occasionally but if not then no.

Your manager sounds like a bully. How on earth were you supposed to know this massive task would emerge at 4.45?
Also, your breaks are not " treats" that allow you to go home on time.
The only thing you could have done differently was to flag up this massive task and allow the manager the decision to either split the task, roll it over to the next day or pay out overtime.
I can't see here the comment of breaks earlier in the day comes from. That comment is the bullying part. Presumably the breaks are part of your contract and nothing to do with how long you stay to complete work ? ( Unless you are on some sort of flexitime)

Did this email arrive in your inbox at 4.45pm or earlier on and that is the time you opened it?

You’ve posted about your work before haven’t you but last time it was an issue of taking a lunch break in the middle of a task? I think I’d be looking for another role, their expectations are unreasonable, there seems no good reason not to split lengthy tasks if that is how they fall in your working day.

at work we’re excited to be as sharp at the end of the day as we are at the beginning

did you run out of time or were you tried at the end of the day

@Statsquestion1To be honest, 🤔it isn’t clearly defined. It may simply be an expectation rather than a formal rule. In practice, we tend to work roughly between 8am and 5pm, which is likely why there’s an expectation that emails are dealt with up to 5pm. That said, most of the team usually starts between 8:30 and 9am.

@Ilikewinter. Exactly as I mentioned to the manager, having a break earlier or later in the day has no bearing whatsoever on whether one is mentally energetic or drained when processing documents at 5:30 pm.

You made a sensible decision to avoid making a mistake.

Your manager should be thanking you for staying half an hour late to make it a quicker task for tomorrow. Especially as everyone else had logged off.

@rookiemere. Thank you for your question. To clarify, this is a relatively low-grade role at the council, processing applications and handling correspondence. Etc. There are often times when staff are working hard up until 5:30, 5:45, or even 6 pm to clear emails and complete tasks clearing emails received up till 5pm- there times I have found myself alone in the whole office because whoever was working with me got lucky picked a relatively easy email and I picked one with a thousand and 1 doc to attach and process or the other way round.

While I don’t think there is a legal requirement to clear emails up to 5 pm, it seems to be expected by the manager in order to keep things under control. However, this should not come at the expense of employees who are not highly paid—though slightly above minimum wage, it is still low pay. Overtime is logged but not paid, and there is also pressure to reduce logged overtime hours, meaning staff are pushed to finish allocated tasks on time.

Because of the workload, overtime hours tend to accumulate rather than decrease, and while there may occasionally be opportunities to leave early if tasks are completed, these are rare. The system places a lot of pressure on staff to balance workloads with time constraints.

I would not be staying later than 5 or 10 minutes. By doing all of the unpaid work, it masks the workload issues and creates a culture of expectatiom around unpaid labour.
Are you in a union at all?

@CurlyKoalie To clarify, the emails in question were processed this morning, as no concerns were raised when we all 1st logged in to start work this morning. My understanding is that the new manager (who use to be my colleague before she took the role of our old manger ) only raised the issue after being contacted by her manager (our former manager) on his day off regarding unrelated matters, which also involved me. That unrelated matter has since been clarified with my manger , and it was determined that the situation was not my fault. But then she needs to go back to her manager to say so and I am not optimistic at all because he is bully & controlling my manager to the extent that my manager can’t make any decision old manager controls everything
Flagging the email and having the manager make decision is a good ideas and she would have agreed but perhaps not because she would know that her manager would not like it hence she would have reluctantly said no process it because she wouldn’t want him to complain that emails her left unprocessed.

@RescueMeFromThisSilliness 🤔 I can’t recall exactlly ii will check and let you know, I would like to check now but I have been warned not to log in after working hours even if I want to check my payslips etc but bottom line is all emails received up till 5pm must be processed even if we are processing an email received at 3pm at 5pm with 5 or even 10 more emails received before 5pm.🤷🏾‍♀️

for now, all I can recall is that at 5:29 I attached the last doc and could not mentally processed to look into it - my brain had had enough hence I left for the morning.

i would not want to deal with an email that arrived with so many attachments at 4.45
i think personally you would have been in your rights to leave the whole lot until the morning.

@Moonstone20how did you work that out? Yes I did post something about work break. The place is toxic and no one seems to be saying anything only accepting the discomfort. I reported the issue to HR but I guess HR is not there to protect employees but the organisation- I am going to email HR to ask for update re my decisions with them. I have since found out that my manager’s manger is well known to all but nothing is done perhaps because the organisation sees it as good 🤷🏾‍♀️ keeping work under control even at the expense of employee’s I am relatively new there so only just finding out/hearing things. Someone started me was pushed to crying all night recently 🤦🏾‍♀️.

@ScupperedbytheSea thanking me or my colleagues who finished 5:30 or 5:45 or 5:55pm?? That’s NEVER HAPPENED instead you might get told off for working too slow or making a mistake or having too much hours logged for overtime and pressured to reduce it which is almost impossible when there usually case like what happened yesterday

You’re being totally reasonable. It’s sensible to finish a task like that off in the morning when you’re well rested and feeling sharper. Your manager is unreasonable to expect you to stay after half 5. You need union representation.

The bit you potentially missed is telling someone that was your plan.

And flagging at 4.45pm that this was a chunky activity.

As a follow up, it may be helpful to have a conversation with your manager around expectations. What’s the cut off for dealing with same day vs leaving for tomorrow. Whats the expected action for things that will run past a certain time.

You’re completely reasonable. I check my emails and estimate how long it will take me to deal with. If I look at something estimate it to be a very long job I leave it to next day. If it is something complex and it is the end of the day I would leave it for next day when my brain is freshest. The only time I would do it the same day is if it was time critical and had to be done immediately.

You’re not unreasonable at all - but your supervisor is a micromanaging arse.

@ScaryM0nsteri did follow the procedure I have seen done when this happens and like I said my manager didn’t have a problem this morning until her manager called net to complain probably telling her the break I had earlier in the day is enough to process the application that would have probably taken me up to 5:45 o later .

Hang on a minute. You are in a low-grade position on not much more than NMW and they don't pay overtime. They expect you to work overtime, won't pay you for it, and there is pressure from above to minimise that logged unpaid overtime?
(I bet there is - they have probably cottoned on to the fact that all the unpaid overtime means they are breaking the law on NMW per hour).
And that is their way of forcing you to work as hard as possible and take on more and more of the workload. Then they moan at you for not having finished a task in time, even though you stayed and worked unpaid overtime to do so?

They are squeezing you every which way aren't they? I don't like the sound of this employer at all. Take it from me, they will not appreciate you if you continue to work more hours than you are paid for. If you let them treat you like a doormat, they will carry on doing it.

Now is the time to tell yourself that enough is enough. You need to start getting there bang on start time and down tools to leave at 5 on the dot. Anything that isn't finished, forward a copy to your manager at 2 minutes to 5 and tell them you are part-way through but have to leave at 5.

I think being tired is a bit of a red herring but it's odd you don't have contractual hours. Are you allowed to leave earlier than 5? If so I can kind of understand why she'd want you to deal with the task unless you had to leave. Would h
you have been able to take the time back?

I don't think you were unreasonable.

Apologies if I've missed it, but I don't think you've said what time the email arrived.

If it arrived at 4:45, then you are not unreasonable.
However if it arrived at 4pm, then it's reasonable to flag up to you that you need to check before 4.45 to clear the emails.

I've worked with someone who was always "oh I didn't have time to answer that email/finish that task", and frequently these were things they could have started a couple of hours earlier - and no they weren't particularly busy so couldn't have started earlier.

How many hours are you paid for each day ? I can see the managers point if you are taking a number of breaks over and above your contracted unpaid lunch break.