Do I have a beef?

[Michael Hancock]

[Ron Lindeboom] “(I am NOT the warmest and fuzziest human being you will ever meet. But I am very fair and try to treat our people with respect.)”

Ron, I think you bring up a really great point here. Your boss doesn’t have to be your friend, but they should respect you and treat you fairly. If they do, and you still hate doing personal projects on the clock, definitely start looking around because the respect obviously isn’t flowing both ways.

I’ve worked for people I would never hang out with or even want to have a beer with after work, but they were fair and respectful to their employees so I did the best damn job I could every time. As their employee I owed them my best. I respected them. I get the feeling you don’t respect your boss, and that’s poison to an employer/employee relationship.

An honest conversation between you and your employers could go a long way to clearing the air and addressing your grievances. But if just don’t respect your boss, start looking for employment elsewhere, because it won’t get any better.

Michael.

[Mark Suszko]

Randy makes a vital point. It is always ironic when we as communications professionals have a breakdown in communication. That’s what I see here as well: a small shop where three people gave each made certain assumptions and not bothered to compare them to see if they are congruent. If stuff was first talked out, written down, and signed off, this thread would not exist, since Aaron would know the score and so would his “owners” regarding what was covered under salary and what was “off the books”. Aaron could then have a clear choice as to what was expected of him and what he was comfortable doing for the couple. The absolute worst thing though is letting this situation fester. You have to do something here. Have a heart to heart about what the policy is and get it written down. See where things go from there.

This may or may not heal the working relationship there, my guess is it is too badly bruised to fix, but you can never tell with human beings, they can surprise you.

My take as a non-manager mid-level grunt is that the work situation has deteriorated gradually into something that borders on abusive from the aspect of how much overtime or uncompensated time is being asked of him. I agree with most of you that when they have him on the clock, whatever they ask him to do is pretty much fair game. However, there are naturally some boundaries to a blanket assertion like that. Some of you have probably been asked to do spots for tobacco companies, or political campaigns you oppose, or something you may find morally distasteful, like porn. Your choice to play along is yours, and one consequence of the choice may be you lose the job. However, most good employers I think (hope?) would give you an option regarding some of these tough calls.

I remember working as a teen, raising college money in a summer job in the packing and shipping department at VCA Teletronics in DesPlaines, back in the 80’s, labeling and shrink-wrapping VHS and betamax cassettes on a line with other students and housewives.

One day the line got a work order to process a large shipment of porn tapes. We didn’t have to watch them like the dubbing crews, (who only did that work at night) just label, box, and shrink-wrap them and put them in crates for shipping. The line manager told us we had the option to go home without pay, stay and sweep up or stack shelves or something if any of us didn’t want to handle the illustrated boxes all day. Those that packed would get a small bonus for working short-staffed. I’m sure they could have just insisted on work or quit, but they didn’t. So there *is* a line to be drawn somewhere, is all I’m saying. Where we’re having the argument is more about the exact placement of that line, IMO.

If they are strong-arming Aaron to do stuff outside of what would be considered the normal work, AND they are not paying him for it, seems like he’s working under duress in fear of losing his job. How is that good management in 2008? Why should Aaron be the bad guy, if that is really what’s going on? This is the feeling I get from Aaron’s writing, I’m sure the couple sees things very differently. We all react to the facts of a case study based on our own triggers and tropes. I don’t think we know enough about what the real situation is here. In the interest of full disclosure, my interpretation comes from the POV of someone who has experienced very good as well as very BAD managers over a career.

I do think you learn more, or at least more quickly, from failures and bad examples than you do from a perfectly fortunate life. No believer is more devout than the converted, they say. Should I be in a real boss position someday, I aim to remain flexible and have options, but also to not let a situation get this far out of control in the first place. All it would have taken was a simple document to spell out the boundaries. Simple communication.

[Shawn Miller]

This is a very interesting thread with a good spread of opinions.

Truthfully, it sounds like the biggest issue here is communication.

It isn’t true that an employer completely owns you when you’re working for them, clearly there are limts to what you can be asked to do when in someone else’s employ. What those limits are however, are defined A. by the civil and criminal code of your city, county, state, etc. and B. any formal agreements you have in place as a condition of your employment. I used to work for a state institution in which the “boss” expected everyone to be at work 10 minute before their paid shift started and ten minutes after their paid shift ended… he was of the opinion that he had the full right to do that because we was “the boss”. I pointed out that he couldn’t compel us to work without pay, so he fired me that day. I went to the finance dept and asked if they knew that my (now) former manager was trying to get twenty minutes of free labor per employee, per shift… to make a long story short, finance didn’t know he was doing that, he got demoted (no more employees) and I was offered my job back (I didn’t go back).

I guess the point I’m trying to make is that you can’t be asked to work “off the clock” if you’re an hourly employee… if you’re a salaried employee, then the conditions of your employment have to be clearly spelled out. I know it’s not fun, but if you don’t have some sort of agreement in place (or even a job description), then the scope of your responsibilities can become flexible enough to encompass such duties as shooting events, editing video/audio, pet care, light house work and “all tasks assigned”. 🙂

The bottom line is that you need to talk to your employers, come to an agreement and get it in writing.
Thanks,

Shawn

[Randy Wheeler]

I still think Aaron has a conflict of interest because he charges much more money with his side-business production company doing the same work he is sometimes asked to do at his full-time salary job. For example, he’s might be making $20/hour based on salary and he makes $100/hour when freelancing with his side business.

This is a quote from his first post:

“If they were to hire a freelancer to shoot the meeting, they would have had to pay him more than I make in a week with my salary.”

Aaron resents that he can’t charge them a “freelancer” rate for this “personal” work that he does and feels is not part of his job duties for this employer. He wants his employer to hire him as a freelancer for these jobs and rake in the money at a freelancer rate.

Problem I see is that you can’t have it both ways, either you want the security of a salary job and do the work they put in front of you or take on the risk but higher hourly pay of freelancing.

Aaron has already stated that he is doing DVD’s for his employer using his side business so I assume he is making money doing that at a freelancer rate. Looks like he wants this to happen with the “personal” jobs also. Good luck on that.

I’m still looking for opinions by anyone that has experience juggling a salary job and freelancing on the side in the same field.

Randy

[Mike Cohen]

Great thread, even if the original post suggested a less-than-great situation.

Here are some thoughts based upon my experience:

1. I have cut local political ads on company time, which my boss did as a favor to the local politicians. It makes no difference whether the company is being paid or not, as long as the employee doing the work is getting paid. When someone is a salaried employee, the project being worked on at a given time is not directly funding the employee’s pay for the same time period. In fact, the employee should not care whose money is going into his pocket.

2. Any company of any size should have a handbook or employee manual, listing the rules and regulations regarding pay, overtime, comp time, benefits, grievances etc. If there is no policy to handle a situation, a friendly meeting needs to be held to discuss the matter in a non-threatening way.

3. We periodically use freelance shooters and pay their rates. For example, we may pay $1500 for a full day two-man crew. Of course this is more than two full time salaried employees make in one day, but this is not apples to apples. Freelancers on this board can tell you that the $1600 a day is not profit, given the overhead of being an independent operator.

Mike Cohen

[Mark Suszko]

Randy, The freelance vs. salary comparison is IMO apples and oranges, and doesn’t really apply here.

Salary is always lower on a full-time salaried job than comparable freelance pay because of who is picking up the tab for FICA, health care plan, insurance, taxes, etc etc etc. A self-employed freelancer has to charge for all of those things. Well, he does if he’s smart.

Salaried people tend to have no idea except in a general sense how much of their pay goes off into that HR netherworld of “benefits”, they usually are most interested in the take-home amount. If you like to inflate your salary description, replace the net take-home with the gross before deductions and benefits. But the worker is getting those benefits either way, the difference is just who’s keeping track of it all.

Salary is also not the only way to pay someone. In Aarons’ case, if the bosses can’t spring for the raise, (assuming he’s good and has earned it) there can be other ways to reimburse, like paying for some training courses, DVD tutorials, books, etc. or buying him hardware or software but depreciating it off the company’s books. Or paying his travel to a trade show or user group meeting, maybe paying his dues to some professional association… Added dental or other health care, spousal inclusion, a gym membership. Company car or travel reimbursement? Who knows what kinds of trade-outs can be arranged? There are more ways to pay someone than just in cash, is what I’m getting at.

One place I know of had a deal with the editors that they could bring in their own freelance jobs after-hours, as long as it was cleared in advance and didn’t create any obvious conflicts of interest or bad publicity for the company. The owners felt that the more time their editors spent on *anything* in the suites, the more skilled they would become and that things they came up with in private projects, for fun or money, could eventually transfer and be usefully applied to company jobs. They even considered freelance clients on weekends good marketing; a lot of those one-time weekend clients were so happy with the editor they wanetd them all the time and the jobs got converted to monday thru friday bookings with the same guy on the official books, after that “get-acquainted session” on a weekend freelance gig.

Some shops sponsor all their editor’s efforts to enter awards contests by paying the entry fees for them. That’s good PR for the editor and the company when they win something.

There are many creative accomodations a boss and valued worker can come up with, if they happy with each other but are up against a problem with a cash limit on salary. Some things can be worth more than cash but cost the company less to make happen.

When I got my current job, the salary was abotu 25% lower than private sector rates, but the benefits (at the time) were incredible, as well as the pension plan and investments. To sweeten the deal, and make up for the low initial pay, I got brought in 2 levels higher in the command chain, which didn’t make any difference in salary or day to day operations ever, but jumped my bennies significantly on the back end, essentially leapfrogging my pension and promotion schedules by several years’ head start, right from the get-go. That little give-away in the 80’s will let me retire with higher pay a few years sooner in this century.

[Zane Barker]

[Aaron Cadieux] “Venting my frustrations here has prevented me from losing my cool at work. 3 + years working somewhere without even a cost of living increase is enough to make anyone bitter. “

Ok I think your real beef has absolutely NOTHING to do with the fact that they are having you work on personal projects, and it had EVERYTHING to do with the fact that you feel you should be getting payed more.

Your using the personal projects thing is just a bogus excuse. You feel under paid and are unhappy about it, so you are looking for any excuse you can to harp on your boss.

I agree three years is a long time to go with out a pay increase, especially if you are pulling as much wait in the company as you say.

I may be wrong but Im betting that you started with them as a young editor who didn’t have much experience, and you now feel that your skills are more developed and that because of that you should be payed more. Now while your skills may be better, you are till in an entry level position, there for you are still getting payed entry level wages.

Sit down with your boss and explain to him that you feel you should have a raise, say that you know the company is doing well and brining in plenty of work, so much so that they can also afford to spend time on nonpaying jobs. Tell him you fell under appreciated and under compensated for the amount of work you do (especially if you are truly the only editor like it sounds like)

Just don’t be to greedy in how much you are asking for, that only tells them that you are unreasonable, and they may start looking to replace you with someone else.

There are no “technical solutions” to your “artistic problems”.
Don’t let technology get in the way of your creativity!

[Steve Wargo]

sounds to me like they’re treating you like one of their children, not an employee. But, that is the feeling that slides in when you’re working in a home based business like you’re in and like we have.

If we have a job that is away from the norm, I ask my guy how he feels about doing it. If it’s during normal business hours, he’s working for his salary. Nights and weekends, he makes something closer to freelance money. If it’s something that he doesn’t want to do, I hire outside.

I think that your main problems are their assumption that you’re “one of the family” and your failure to speak up.

Have a company meeting and clear the air. You might be surprised at the result.

Last year, I found out that one of my employees was very unhappy because she posted it in a blog on her “private” myspace page. Her friends read it, forwarded it to me and then asked for her job. It seems like the things she hated were perfectly acceptable to others.

Steve Wargo
Tempe, Arizona
It’s a dry heat!

Sony HDCAM F-900 & HDW-2000/1 deck
5 Final Cut (not quite PRO) systems
Sony HVR-M25 HDV deck
2-Sony EX-1 HD .

[Mark Suszko]

Whoa, I’m glad I don’t have “friends” like that! I curious Steve, as to what you think of those people asking for the job in that way? Are they just ambitious, or snakes?

[Bob Zelin]

Wow, what a great thread.

1) Ron Lindeboom should be required to post the “Grinders” article in this forum once a month.

2) I have been taken advantage of in the past greatly. But when I look back, I was given great opportunities by the people that were “too cheap” to hire someone that was actually qualified. Opportunites that “real companies” would never have given me.

Learn what you can, and move on. Always look out for yourself. If something bad happened financially in their family, they would not worry about you or your medical insurance. Whenever you are in a bad situation, LEARN EVERYTHING YOU CAN – everything from equipment, to who their clients are. Be as ruthless as the next guy.

Bob Zelin