| The distinctions between wage and salary employees are very often smeared around by employers for their own benefit. I, for instance, am technically a salaried employee. But I also have to fill out weekly time cards and account daily for the time that I work. My pay is even calculated by the hour. The way salary used to work is that the salaried employee would answer some weekly questions. Did you work this week (yes/no)? If no, are you using one of your remaining vacation weeks (yes/no)? If the answer to either question was yes, the employee was issued a check for 1/52nd of their annual salary. If not, there might be further questions about unpaid or partially paid leave categories, or sabbaticals. But now we have this bizarre hybrid with salaried employees logging their time by the hour, and with PTO balances instead of sick leave or vacation. On top of that, many of us at "at will", and can be fired at any time, for any reason, or no reason at all. In my situation, I don't even have a contract, and it is obvious to me that I am only "salaried exempt" as a flag of convenience that allows my employer to skirt around certain legal protections for wage employees, most notably overtime pay. As such, I'll invent anything I like when I'm not on the clock at work. My obligation to my employer starts and ends with the daily ration of working hours. If they want to claim ownership of whatever it is I do on nights and weekends, they might just end up paying me time-and-a-half for it, plus fines for breaking labor laws. |