Last week I worked overtime. Generally, the Boss has a policy that we are not to work overtime, because he doesn’t want to pay the time and a half. If someone winds up going into overtime, it gets distributed as vacation time rather than as money. I don’t really want more vacation time, so I haven’t worked any overtime hours. I keep track of my time worked in a spreadsheet (because I’m a geek like that), and am careful not to exceed 40 hours per week.
A couple of weeks ago Freda was out sick. As a result she got behind and needed me to work some extra hours to help her get caught up. She talked it over with the Boss beforehand, and got his approval to pay me in money for the overtime. So last week I worked about seven hours of overtime, helping her get caught up. Yey.
Monday morning we had a bit of a row. The time clock is connected to Queenie’s computer, and she prints the time sheets, so she saw the overtime. And she had also gone over 40 hours, frankly because she makes a lot of mistakes and spends a lot of time fixing them. So she turned in her time sheet for overtime payment as well. And Freda explained to her that the Boss was still giving her vacation hours instead of money for her overtime, and I was getting money because we had cleared it with him ahead of time. It was the Boss’s call.
So we had some stupid office drama going on Monday, because Queenie is convinced it’s Freda’s doing somehow (because she perceives Freda as her main competitor in the power struggle to be Queen Bee of the office). Of course, Queenie could always talk to the boss about getting approved for overtime pay, but she knows she’d get turned down so she just steams about how we’re getting preferential treatment. And Freda doesn’t care if she grumbles, and I don’t care, so Queenie basically spends a few days being worked up and agitated while the objects of her ire go on about life unaffected. It must be very frustrating for her.
