The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Ssh, be quiet. Everyone's sleeping.

[confidentially: I'm upset at some things about my job and I still don't like San Francisco. I'm wishing I had never left Seattle. I should have tried harder to find a better job which didn't require moving.]

qotd: How many hours a week do you work? I supposedly work 40 but lately I've been working, like, 60-70. Supposedly this is a fluke and a temporary crisis but I'm still not terribly happy about this.

Finished off another Purple Reign song this morning. I am quite enjoying this project, though I am allowing it to eat into time I am supposed to be spending on other stuff (but fuck it, I say!).

QOTD: Well, technically I am working 26.55 hours a week, since I was put onto part time. But I'll spend anywhere between 0 hours to 20 hours doing freelance at home.

Do you get paid for the 60-70 hours you work?

I work none right now - summer jobs are enough to keep me in college, and my parents are pretty nice when it comes to helping me out at this point (though they won't put up with me for many more years)

sausage boy wrote:I am quite enjoying this project, though I am allowing it to eat into time I am supposed to be spending on other stuff (but fuck it, I say!).

Hear Hear!

I'm under worked and over paid...yeah
I'm always on call in case one of my guys mess up or doesn't show up, etc.
Paper work never ends.
Always having to juggle funds to keep things running smooth
Sales appointments are when most people are home from work, so after 5:00pm generally. But I always push for earlier and tell them to take off work early. I tell them that they deserve it. They agree and then like me.
I hired another sales person, so things have lightened up some
I really have no idea how many hours a week I work. I just do what needs to be done, pull a pay check, and bonus myself generously.

Reïst wrote:Do you get paid for the 60-70 hours you work?

I'm salaried, like most full-time software engineers. (So, no.)

40 hours and I'm very particular about them. If I'm doing more, I better be getting paid for it or at least getting comp time.

I like Thursdays because I don't have class or work.

Lately, I've been watching Discovery Channel's Planet Earth series on DVD. Amazing.

qotd: I work 20 hours a week and take 15 credit hours. It keeps me pretty busy.

60 - 70 isn't unusual, as a rule.

Forty more or less on the nose these days. I used to work many more hours back when I was freelancing.

I'm taking a home-buying class on Saturday though... so more hours of freelancing may be in my future.

röymond wrote:60 - 70 isn't unusual, as a rule.

It isn't unusual - but it is completely unacceptable. I will never do it again.

One thing you will never hear someone say on their deathbed is:
"I wish I'd spent more hours at the office...."

80 in two weeks; we have flexible time which allows me to make up time for the other week. That's cool. We also have this thing called SAA (Supervisor Approved Absence) which will give you time off in the next pay period if you have to work extra. Yeah!
-bill

I'm a teacher. On the clock I do 35 hours. That does not include the large amounts of lesson planning, grading, and staying later than the minimum time required by contract. I probably work more like 50 - 65 a week on average.

I hate when you end up at a bar when it's just a bunch of asshole people trying to pick each other up. It's the saddest thing ever. I would rather be at a bar where it's just a bunch of sadass dudes with no hope who actually acknowledge their own depression and drink it to the floor.

College sucks sometimes. I hate those people.

That said, I feel good about life right now.

Röss wrote:I'm a teacher. On the clock I do 35 hours. That does not include the large amounts of lesson planning, grading, and staying later than the minimum time required by contract. I probably work more like 50 - 65 a week on average.

Do you include your 12 weeks of holidays each year in that average?

One has to consider whether you love what you do, or if what you do challenges you or changes/develops in interesting ways on a regular basis. Do people prefer to work 40 hours a week to support things they like to do, or is the job something they love, so working more isn't a sucker situation?

I used to pay a lot of money to go to college to learn about stuff I really dig. Now I get paid to do that. It sucks now and then, but over all I love it.

Yesterday I was at a conference where Larry Aidem (President and CEO of Sundance Channel) talked about how to be successful. "1. don't work for dicks. 2. do what you're good at but let people who you trust tell you what you suck at now and then. 3. don't create shit. 4. when you know what you want to do, don't let anyone tell you you can't." Lastly: "if your going to fail, fail on your own terms"

Just thought that was inspiring in some way.

©aravan®ay wrote:

Röss wrote:I'm a teacher. On the clock I do 35 hours. That does not include the large amounts of lesson planning, grading, and staying later than the minimum time required by contract. I probably work more like 50 - 65 a week on average.

Do you include your 12 weeks of holidays each year in that average?

I think he's talking about the weeks he actually works. It's not like he gets paid during the holiday (unless he has them set it up where he gets paid over the break in exchange for each paycheck being for less). That said, the annual salary of a typical teacher is quite nice for someone who gets an entire season off. That said, it may be a dismal salary for someone who takes so much work home and who has to be so emotionally invested in his work. But the hourly rate for teaching is still, on average, better than that for a scientist, or maybe...a philosopher?

Lord of Oats wrote:

©aravan®ay wrote:

Röss wrote:I'm a teacher. On the clock I do 35 hours. That does not include the large amounts of lesson planning, grading, and staying later than the minimum time required by contract. I probably work more like 50 - 65 a week on average.

Do you include your 12 weeks of holidays each year in that average?

I think he's talking about the weeks he actually works. It's not like he gets paid during the holiday (unless he has them set it up where he gets paid over the break in exchange for each paycheck being for less). That said, the annual salary of a typical teacher is quite nice for someone who gets an entire season off. That said, it may be a dismal salary for someone who takes so much work home and who has to be so emotionally invested in his work. But the hourly rate for teaching is still, on average, better than that for a scientist, or maybe...a philosopher?

Wow, answer a simple question. I was certainly not trying to start a teacher debate.

No I was not counting my vacation weeks in that average. Summer vacation is pretty good, but the Christmas and Easter-time breaks I usually have a fair amount of work brought home. Honestly I was just answering the question, which because of my profession has two answers - formal hours and actual hours.

I have no complaints about being underpaid or overworked. I love my job.

Teachers earn their money, yo.

Strange that of all the hotbuttons in the world, teacher pay is always one of them. I mean, there's abortions and gay rights, immigration and all sorts of bigotry and... teacher salaries.

I guess I can understand it, since teachers are so important. Maybe since they ARE so very important, and often the impression the media leaves us with is that schools are failing, whether teachers should get raises becomes more contentious. But for me, teachers can't get paid enough.

The responsibility of their position should engender a six-figure salary potential for high performance. I've got a bachelor's degree that isn't anywhere close to the field I work in (full disclosure-- it's a BS in music education). My teacher friends who have 20-years in and a Master's-plus-30 grad credits (and counting) will NEVER make as much money as I do in the corporate sector no matter how long they work, no matter how much education they get (teacher pay is linked to seniority and ongoing education very specifically).

Teachers are the Alaskan Crab Fisherman of professional workers. Their earning period is compressed into 9 months, but during those 9 months they usually work very very hard, and many of them commit to extracurricular responsibilities that are even more work. During their vaunted summer-vacation, they often have to begin preparing for the next school year a month in advance, for no perceived pay.

Teaching is a performance activity, and all performance activities require extensive preparation to do well. The consumer pays for the resulting product, but the performer's expenses include all that preparation time.

I used to play a lot of weddings in a string quartet. We'd show up, play for an hour, and I'd get $100. Is that $100/hour? No, that money has to make up for the time I spent organizing music, practicing on my own, rehearsing with the string quartet, getting my suit drycleaned, buying the occasional new string for my instrument, getting my bow rehaired, etc. etc. etc. How much does that work out to? I think one time I figured it out to less than $10/hour, for a trained professional doing an unfulfilling job. (Playing the 8-note cello part of Pachelbel's Canon in D for the 150th time is not fulfilling, in case you've wondered.)

There's a lot more to anything in this world than appears at first glance. And teacher pay is a lot more than "9 months then 3 months off, NO FAIR I WORK ALL YEAR". It's a knee-jerk response that immediately gets under my skin <i>even if the person speaking didn't really mean it as superficially as I took it</i>. Which is probably the case here, and I've just gone off on a silly rant.

qotd: I am scheduled 40 hours a week with an hour lunch (that I don't ever get in one solid chunk) They also give me the company cell phone every Thursday night for on-call duty. I get a flat fee of $25 plus overtime for logged calls. I get every 5th weekend (on a rotation) on-call for a flat fee of $50 plus overtime for logged calls.

(AND SOMETIMES I work on Sunday for Navteq / Traffic Pulse (traffic.com) for a full 8 hour shift)

I still find myself broke as all H. E. double hockey sticks. I need a wife/girlfriend if not just for help with the money handling and/or rent.

anyone who's achieved any moderate degree of success in life can probably thank a few teachers for helping them get there. yeah, under paid. under appreciated.

moms are like that too.

jb wrote:Teachers earn their money, yo.
There's a lot more to anything in this world than appears at first glance. And teacher pay is a lot more than "9 months then 3 months off, NO FAIR I WORK ALL YEAR". It's a knee-jerk response that immediately gets under my skin <i>even if the person speaking didn't really mean it as superficially as I took it</i>. Which is probably the case here, and I've just gone off on a silly rant.

No, I'm glad that *YOU* did. I fought off the urge. I figured I'd end up typing about 4 long paragraphs about how I think that it so unfair that there seem to be less deserving jobs with better pay. Even I at one point was making more than my Aunt who was a teacher (until she retired early) editing and managing online porn content. Does that seem fair to anyone?

It's weird to consider that anyone would average their vacation time into their answer to the question "How much do you work a week?"

Bob: "So, how many hours a week do you work?"
Bill: "I work 55 hours a week."
Bob: "Excuse me? I think you mean 52.88 hours a week, aren't you forgetting your TWO WEEK VACATION?!?!?!?!?"