I hate timesheets
At our weekly department meeting yesterday, Christine told us that we’d need to start filling out timesheets daily. ARGH! That’s one of the things I absolutely hated having to do when I worked for The Monster Board four years ago. Except for the occasional consulting job that required me to count my hours, I have been free of timesheets since I left Monster.com in 1999.
Having to account for every minute of every day is not only a pain in the ass, but it’s completely unnecessary when I’m not doing work that’s billable to a client. …and since we aren’t doing any hourly type of work, it’s obviously just so they can micromanage us.
I had to do timesheets at The Internet Company too, but they at least only expected 6 hours of “real work” and accepted up to 2 hours of fluff like checking e-mail, getting coffee, etc. …all the stuff that is part of any employee’s typical work day. Monster wants eight hours. Period. If it’s not related to a project or client (like taking a couple minutes to get a soda, taking ten minutes to read company e-mail, taking a lunch break, etc) then it doesn’t count. That’s bullshit. Nobody, and I mean nobody, in our department regularly works exclusively on project or client-related stuff for eight hours a day, five days a week. If we really had that much work, the stress would be killing us and we’d be going home at around 9pm every day.
…and then there are times when it’s just slow. For example, I finished up all my work a few days before Christmas (at least anything that wasn’t waiting on someone else) and literally had nothing to do for a few days. What the hell are we supposed to do when it’s a slow day there’s just simply no work to do? Of course, it’s not like we’re over-staffed since there are busy days too. There just isn’t always eight hours of work waiting for us each morning.
I’m not happy at all. Timesheets suck and I absolutely hate being micromanaged (or at least watched so closely). My morale just took a serious nosedive.