Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by msie 2094 days ago
Only a few janitors (5) are making more than their base salary because they take all the overtime slots. Read the article.
1 comments

My cousin works for the government and talks about how overtime is very easy to abuse if you want to. In his case, he manages water works, which involves testing water regularly and inspecting equipment.

At any point during the weekend or holidays, he can just decide to go in to do an inspection and run up some overtime hours. As well, they have an alert system that notifies him by phone if some of the machines are acting up. He can change the sensitivity of the system so that it alerts him for minor things, requiring him to come in and get overtime. On paper, this all looks legit - it’s just a guy who cares about his job and wants to keep everything running smoothly - but he quietly admits to the family that the work is never needed and he’s just doing it for the overtime.

I can definitely see how a janitor could abuse overtime, there’s always something you could argue “needed” to be done.