Blind Prophecy

I got my second write-up for tardiness at work today. I somehow broke my alarm clock last night, and didn’t wake up until about 11 am, so I missed two hours of work.

What pisses me off is being written up over it. When I first started working for this company, I pretty much made my own hours and was more than happy to work a noon to 10 pm shift (I’m soooo not a morning person). I was happy, my boss was happy, it worked for everyone.

Then about 6 months ago, we got caught up in the “professional” kick. You have to understand, I don’t get paid overtime – ever – while I’m not technically on salary, any hours over 40 per week are uncompensated. I rarely leave the office for lunch and usually take my break time by playing on the web. Still, I usually put in well over my 40 hours per week because I’m still expected to attend special events, take pictures at nightclubs and I have no choice but to pull as many hours as are necessary to meet deadlines for the magazines.

So far, both write-ups have been simple “warnings” – but the first time my pay is docked in any way, I’m going to have to raise a shit-storm. I understand that a certain amount of professionalism is required in my job capacity, but one of the reasons I chose to work for a small company was flexibility and friendliness instead of hard rules and corporate mentality.

So tonight, while I’m stuffing 350 envelopes at home for our election endorsement questionnaire, I’ll be bitter about the extra work that often goes unnoticed while every mistake gets documented and added to my personnel file. This weekend, when I’m running around taking pictures of different 4th of July events because no one else from my office can be relied on to do this, I’ll be bitter. And soon, very soon, they’re going to ask me to attend an event when I don’t want to, and I’m going to tell them to go screw themselves because my hours are 9 to 5.

Filed under: livejournal by Jere Keys