“To be Pissed or not to be Pissed”

That’s what I get paid. Obviously, I’m generalizing. And then again, it might not be true, but still.

My current dilemma/pissed-offness stems from a query whether I’m being paid by my company (company 47) for the time I spend on my seat? Am I being paid for the work that I do? Is my payscale determined by my job responsibilities? Or by my job profile @ 8 hours per day?

If I were to lean to time-based payments, then there would be an overtime policy in-place. But there isn’t. I can work my ass off and go home at 12 pm and return at 7 am continuously, and I won’t be paid a single dime extra for it. But if it is work based, then there are no major milestone policies in-place. (There is something initiated and loosely applicable within my department only, but that’s something we’ve implemented ourselves, just to help the annual employee evaluation process be transparent-er). It is not something at the corporate/company level.

So, time or work? There are circulars floating around requiring not to leave before off-time and to come at on-time. There is also a card/fingerprint timing system in place. So that means it is time-based. But then why no overtime?

Associated problem: The management is not required to use the timing system, nor are they required to be in on time. That comes with the fact that official functions can, and do, carry over into the night, often requiring 12/14 hour days. But I have a management-member-boss who implements to 9-5 on himself. He is there, bright and shiny, always before 9, and leaves after 5. He mentions that whenever he leaves his office, he does mention it to his boss (who is the penultimate boss, btw); so he expects us to do the same. So, governed by management rules, I am not required to follow the 9-5; governed by boss-rules, I’m expected to follow the 9-5, strictly, and the mgmt-member-boss always has himself as an example.

Come end of month this month, I see red-marks all over my presence sheet. Asking for an explanation gets me the “I come at 8:30″ mini-speech,  and now I’m stuck, weirded out, and pissed.

What to do?

-FK

Company 47

Okay,  so what I actually started this blog for.  If one was to start at one end of the Omani Labor Law (OLL) and read through, and in the other hand hold a policy document of any sufficiently large company of Oman and compare the two, I think there shall be enough material to fuel a blog till the year 4112 AD when WordPress is no longer pronounced as such and instead has been transmuted into squarlks and bleerps, when the internet no longer exists on servers, but instead inside heads and minds (we shall have 13 elders to keep alive always. They shall be the DNS Root Servers. Each Elder shall be living on his/her own planet, doing nothing but resolving addresses for us lesser minions). I digress!

So there are going to be numerous discrepancies. My workplace, Company (which I shall arbitrarily name) 47  (yeah, I like Hitman somewhat, but not the movie!) is sufficiently large to fit the sufficiently large category. And daily you see things happening, which, I think, in another society, another world, another dimension (in which ‘normal’ laws would apply) would be the basis for tonnes of complaints, lawsuits and legal wranglings. Over here? It’s all ‘Bah!, Whatever!’

e.g. we issue travel tickets to employees. If the employee is not eligible, it comes out of his/her salary. 47 billed an employee R.O. 200 for a flight. The travel agency, later, sent over an invoice of R.O. 190. The dearest low-level-lowly accountant responsible for updating the system with the difference, does NOT credit the employee, breezily states “This goes into company profit” and earns a spiteful glare from me. Too bad he didn’t vanish or the system didn’t correct itself as a result. Oh, and he earns this post & tonnes of bad karma.

OLL, where art thou?

Moral Labour Law, where are thou?

-TFK