Employers making us stay til 3pm. Spouse thinks they are putting me in danger

[Anonymous]

OP, just curious whether your employer reversed course later in the morning and sent people home. My office was originally open, but when the weather projections changed, told people to leave by noon. The earlier projections had said it wasn't going to start until later in the day, so I think some reasonable people may have initially thought it would be okay to keep offices open until 3.

[Anonymous]

Yesterday, my husband told all his direct reports to work from home today instead of reporting to the office. His boss commended him for taking care of the issue, but his peers gave him a lot of crap. Their teams were expected in the office today. I worked for a miserable boss for a number of years. Now that my husband is a boss, he makes sure to be a good one since he lived through a bad one with me for so long.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DH is stuck at work until 3:30 he has coworkers who are there until 5. At worst they will put them up in hotels if it isn't safe to go home. Unfortunately, some jobs just have to get done in the office and can't wait. It does suck though.

If you don't have one of those jobs, making staff stay is pretty hard to justify. Of course, probably some of us who have been saying that it sucks for you to be stuck at work are also taking advantage of others being stuck at work when we go to Starbucks, CVS, Safeway etc and those stores are open and staffed.

OP here. They finally called and let us go at 1pm. Fwiw, if I had gotten off at 3pm, I would have missed my bus miles from the metro. It started snowing at one. Not a drama queen. I'm realistic. Literally nothing I do at work could be considered essential.

Starbucks closed early. Everything but super markets and even they have the decency of closing early. Of course we are thankful to those people who have to stay late.

I can't imagine people staying until 530. The roads did not look good.

I just cannot fathom why am employer (other than a hospital, needs to be open during a state of emergency.

[Anonymous]

I think OP works for a small family owned business.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am truly disgusted and sick to my stomach right now. They won't let me leave. I already asked.

There is no "let" here. You are an adult.

+1

Let me tell you a story.

Some years ago I was interviewing for a job at Bank of America. I flew into Charlotte and checked into my room. I set an alarm on my phone for 7am and went to bed. At 6am I got a wake up call, didn't think anything of it immediately and went downstairs for breakfast, where I ran into anther friend also interviewing. He joked that I had set up his wake up call and that's when we figured out the company had done so for us. Kind of weird - can't you trust candidates to get themselves up for an interview?

Fast forward to lunch - interviews are done and we are supposed to have lunch with employees. For whatever reason there aren't enough employees to have one at every table so I'm just eating lunch with other candidates. My flight was at 7pm though so I had lots of time to kill - I check to see if there are earlier flights, and there one at 4. Realizing I'm done for the day anyway, I go find the recruiter and excuse myself, thanking him for the opportunity to interview. He replies "Lunch isn't done yet, you can't leave". I explain there are no employees at my table, so there's little benefit to staying and I'd prefer to make the earlier flight. He repeats his assertion. Stunned and unsure what to do, I go back to the table. The other candidates are confused and perplexed by my story. It then dawns on me how ridiculous this is and I get up, wave goodbye to the recruiter and leave.

I got the job offer anyway (and turned it down).

They don't own you. Go.

I like this story. I am wondering if you and the other candidates were right out of college when you interviewed there. I also received this kind of treatment when I was interviewing for jobs after receiving my degree. We were treated like children and it was bizarre.

No! I was 28 and out of a prestigious graduate program as were the other people there (Harvard, Stanford, etc). Crazy right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is one of the 1,000 reasons why I will never support a Republican candidate on any level. We need much more progressive workplace laws to address creepy sounding employers like this.

I look forward to becoming an economy like Greece where they young (if they can find jobs) have to support the pensions of people that retire at 50 and live to 90 plus pay taxes

THat's a real good idea.

NP here. It's not workplace protections that got Greece into trouble.

Understatement of the year .... The workplace protections were barely relevant.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People have lost the work ethic.

I'd sort of see this but if OP's boss has left but expects others to stay ...

[Anonymous]

This is the type of experience that makes one start looking for a new job.

[Anonymous]

Not OP but I work for a big pseudo fed agency (not fed) i.e. we don't follow federal agency shutdown and not all fed holiday and they don't have formal telework policies. They leave it at the discretion of the department and supervisors. Our dept (web/marketing) and supervisors don't encourage telework and actually don't say a word during these inclement weather situations i.e. telework is ok, stay til x time. But everyone makes insane efforts to be in office- an old lady in our department fell last year because of slippery conditions. But yeah they never on their own say do this or that. You have to say you're going to telework and hope for the best. I have learned though that they can force you to use PTO if they feel not gracious enough to let you telework. Apparently it depends on how they feel that day.

I need a new job I'm also a non essential employee- I work on making websites pretty for christs sake. Hardly an emergency.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don't leave at noon-- leave at 11:30. Once the federal government lets out, there is going to be a cl@sterf@ck, especially if it is snowing.

Seriously now is the time to say "I'm putting in for 4 hours leave. I need to leave at 11:30 because I don't think I can get home safely if I leave any later." Put it in writing (ie, email it). If need be CC: their manager. No one really wants the responsibility of holding employees who are not absolutely essential, and then having them get into an accident.

OP here. They are the owners. There is no HR!

Are you looking for another job? And you should totally shame this sham of a business

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yesterday, my husband told all his direct reports to work from home today instead of reporting to the office. His boss commended him for taking care of the issue, but his peers gave him a lot of crap. Their teams were expected in the office today. I worked for a miserable boss for a number of years. Now that my husband is a boss, he makes sure to be a good one since he lived through a bad one with me for so long.

Is your husband hiring experienced lawyers?

[Anonymous]

Glad it worked out OP, but I would look for another job when you can.