[danaris]

If their supervisors believe "exempt" means "abuse this person with all the unpaid overtime", and don't respect their time and autonomy and expect them to respond to every interruption and get all their own stuff done, it's very unlikely that documenting those interruptions and "planning appropriately" will actually make a positive difference. More likely it'll just get them told they're being insubordinate.

Now, the ideal answer in a situation like that is to leave and find a better job. But if everyone in a situation like that could just leave and find a better job, we wouldn't have situations like that for long.

[milesvp]

Yeah, I’ve worked in some very toxic workplaces. The other reason to document, is that now you have ammunition that you can take to progressively higher levels of management. Bureaucracies hate paper trails, and the sooner you can establish a paper trail the better off you are. But I do get it, often “heads down, do your work” is the only path due to factors outside of work.

[danaris]

I dunno; I'd say "bureaucracies love paper trails—they just want the bureaucracy's official paper trail to be the only one," heh.

But yeah; if you're in an organization that is not totally lost to corruption (of whatever stripe), or one that has to answer to higher authorities, like federal laws and the SEC, then documenting can be an extremely effective way to force, if not necessarily genuine changes of heart, at least skin-deep changes of behavior.

The case where I saw stuff like this happening second-hand (it was to a family member), the rot came, unfortunately, from the top. My family member was doing absolutely amazing work supporting the stated mission and values of the organization, and was having to fight tooth and nail to make it happen. Unfortunately, the organization's actual mission and values were much more along the lines of "make lots of money and pander to the people who will give it to us," so the job description was changed overnight to one supporting part of the organization that they had made perfectly clear over their years in that position they would have nothing to do with (because it was the part that most strongly violated the stated values). This was sufficient evidence that, after they quit and applied for unemployment, the state agreed this was constructive dismissal and paid out in full.