Found a loophole in my time clock system that nobody told me about

I work at a bar in Portland and for months I was clocking in 5 minutes early like everyone else. Turns out our system rounds down to the nearest 15 minutes, so clocking in at 4:53 was literally giving the boss 7 minutes free labor each shift. I changed to hitting the punch exactly at 5:00 and after 3 weeks my paycheck went up by $28. Has anyone else checked how their time system actually calculates, not just what the display shows?

2 comments

2 Comments

alice_wilson7313d ago

I read somewhere that something like 60% of hourly workers are losing money to rounding systems without knowing it. That $28 might not sound like a lot to some people, but over a year thats over $300 in free labor for the boss. I had a buddy who worked at a restaurant where they rounded both clock in and clock out to the nearest 15, but they did it in the boss's favor every time. He started writing down his actual hours and comparing them to the paycheck, found out he was losing about $50 a month. It's shady how these systems are set up to look fair on the screen but actually cheat you.

the_ben13d ago

Oh come on, @alice_wilson73, I gotta push back on this one a bit. Rounding systems can actually work in the worker's favor too if you think it through. I've seen guys who punch in three minutes late every day and punch out four minutes early and the rounding system saves their bacon because the boss is rounding to the nearest quarter hour. That $50 a month your buddy lost might just be the cost of not having to shave off a few minutes here and there himself. Plus, most of these systems are written up in the employee handbook you signed, so it's not like it's a secret... it's just people not paying attention to what they agreed to.