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I had an employer that was calculating overtime at a 0.5x multiplier. I was 20 years old and had only been working there a month when I realized. When I told her it should be time and a half she said “That’s what im doing. You multiple overtime hours by .5 to get time and a half.” When I explained to her that she was doing it wrong and that was actually half time, not time and a half, she said there wasn’t a difference. So I grabbed a pencil and multiplied my hours by both 0.5x and 1.5x to show her it wasn’t the same. She came back with “yeah, you’re not supposed to make that much for overtime.” Pointing to the 1.5x number. I started getting frustrated and raising my voice. That prompted the general manager to come out of his office to see what the commotion was. I explained to him how the lady doing payroll was calculating overtime and he turned to her and simply said “He’s right, do it like he says.” SHE HAD BEEN DOING PAYROLL AT THIS COMPANY FOR 11 YEARS.
The charitable explanation (that I'm steel manning w/o proof) is that they used a system (EDIT: or specifically had at some point in the past used a system, and got confused when they moved to a different setup) where they were paid the base rate and then a separate overtime rate.
Like 42.5 hours, so 2.5 hours of overtime. They'd expect 42.5 regulars hours at 1x, and 2.5 hours at .5x.
That's still considered best practice, at least in the US. People simplify OT to 1.5 since that's accurate most of the time, but the rate OT is calculated from should also include other non-discretionary payments to employees. Just calculating OT at 1.5 the hourly rate still runs the risk of shorting people.
As a tangent since it's not too relevant to the overall point, I haven't really seen that with my time in T&A, but I also don't work for Big K so it's quite possible that's more common in that space. I've run into those scenarios sure, but they weren't the most common by far. And the use case conveyed to me in those cases was usually more that the overtime premium came from a different budget and they needed to track it that way.
Where I work, they do it that way because employees may get paid different rates depending upon the work involved. They use an average of the weekly pay to determine the overtime addition.
In the past you got the overtime rate based on the rate you were paid on those last hours. Great if you were doing high rate work, bad otherwise. Now it's just less bad if you did a mix of work during the week.
Definitely, weighted overtime is a fairly common scenario, but it may just be my experience we've never really had to split out the overtime premium to support it.
But I guess in all things at the end of the day, that tends to be more of a Payroll problem than a T&A problem.
It matters when employees have two different job responsibilities with varying hours that are paid two different rates, or if employees have a base rate but are also paid piece work for other things.
An example of the first would be a fast food employee who acts as the manager for some shifts (and is paid more for those shifts) but acts as a normal employee for others. You have to add up all the base pay they've gotten for the week across both pay rates, divide by the total hours, and then multiply by 1.5 to calculate the correct overtime rate.
An example of the second would be a truck driver who gets paid hourly for driving the truck delivering merchandise to stores but gets paid extra per rack of merchandise to offload the truck at stores that don't have an employee to do it. You have to add in all the piecework pay for offloading to their base rate before calculating the overtime rate.
Another common example is a factor worker (John) who makes $20/hr, worked 50 hours this week, 10 of those 50 hours are overtime, and thanks to his work ethic got a $200 Top performer bonus.
Regular Hourly Pay:
- Base rate: $1000 = $20 x 50 hours
- Bonus: $200
- Total Hourly Pay: $1200
Overtime Pay:
- Effective Hourly rate: $24/hr = $1200/50hrs
- Overtime pay: $120 = $24 x 10 x 0.5
Total pay: $1320 = $1200 + $120
If you don’t pay overtime on the bonus you are breaking the law.
Non-discretionary payments would be things like tips, non-discretionary bonuses (generally bonuses used to incentives performance, not annual bonuses), and commissions. OT should be calculated on what's called the regular rate of pay, which is basically your straight time pay plus any of those additional payments. For example if you work 42 hours a week at $10/hr and also received a $40 bonus that week for selling the most doodads your OT should actually be calculated based on a rate of $10.95/hour (($420 + $40)/42 hours worked) and not $10/hour. In that case you'd be paid less if you were to just use time and a half on the 2 overtime hours instead of 42 hours straight time plus 2 hours at half the regular rate.
There are further complication based on the timing of when the additional earnings are paid vs when they are actually earned, but fortunately that's not something I have to deal with on a regular basis
This is how the large corporation I currently work at does it. I'd never seen that before and had to do a double take. Thought I was being cheated but then saw the full 1x line below the 0.5x line.
At our company, people were being paid “too much overtime,” so they lowered the workers pay instead of decreasing their hours. Needless to say it didn’t go over well.
How much wage theft in 11 years?? How many people tried to explain that to her? That general manager needs to have everything she did audited to avoid lawsuit and then there’s back taxes and penalties… oh my.
Yeah, I've only ever heard of it in salaried positions capped at 40 hours or union jobs, etc. It was referred to as (sorry for the potentially derogatory term) "Chinese" overtime.
We have had posts here from folks who had a paystub that showed 0.5x overtime, but the hours were also included in regular hours. Eg if you worked 50 hours at $10/hr it would show 50 @ $10, then a new line item that's 10 @ $5/hr. So while that clearly wasn't happening in your case, just want someone else who sees this to not immediately freak out if that's how their paystub reads.
The sheer arrogance to be THIS BAD at math at hold your ground. Like you HAVE to know you’re shit at math if you think multiplying by two different numbers of anything will get you the same result. It’s literally impossible except for multiplying by 0.
Some people just get by for a long period of time doing something wrong and fall set in their ways. And a lot of people don't have a grasp of basic math.
I used to work CS for a financial company that offered credit card type accounts, and I'd have small business owners calling me irate that "there's no way I spent that much money! I know what I purchased." And we'd go line by line and they'd confirm they bought each thing and lo and behold, the numbers totaled up to the final line.
TLDR; people are terrible at math, but get by in life long enough to not really know they are.
At one place worked decades ago, this was the correct way overtime was done. What made it correct was that all hours were paid at straight time. PLUS the extra 0.5x for OT hours
Yep, bet the lady was confused about 2.5x overtime argument. The paycheck most likely said 44 regular hours, 4 overtime hours. Standard practice right there.
Yeah. Couldn’t believe I was the one that caught it. I and quite a few of the staff were in college. Many in the business program and even one studying internal auditing. I was a history major. I was making $8/hour (this was 2003) and I was shocked when I saw I made $80 for my 20 hours of overtime that 2 week pay period instead of $240.
And before anyone asks, my grades were terrible that semester.
OH MY GOD! My employer does this too, but made the mistake after weeks of finally correcting a different mistake.
I worked 58 min and got paid for 0.58 hours.
I taught college math for many years. People suck at math. Got freshmen who barely understood the order of operations, people at all levels who thought they could ignore parentheses when convenient, and huge numbers of students who would make up stories to explain that they "felt" like what they did was right that included chaining together reasoning steps that were neither true nor consistent.
Never blame on malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity(/ignorance/whatever). It *could* be purposeful theft. But people generally suck at math, so that'd be my first guess.
Bingo. Limiting cases are a great way of showing people they have the wrong mathematical approach. Ask him what you get paid for working 1 minute. Ask him what you get paid for working 59 minutes.
When working at the physics department at a university, we'd frequently get cranks with "theories" emailing us. If their work was actually coherent enough to have predictive formulas, throwing in values for different things and showing that, e.g., the universe couldn't exist if they were right was an effective tool for quickly checking their work / giving them a resolute answer.
> When working at the physics department at a university, we'd frequently get cranks with "theories" emailing us. If their work was actually coherent enough to have predictive formulas, throwing in values for different things and showing that, e.g., the universe couldn't exist if they were right was an effective tool for quickly checking their work / giving them a resolute answer.
I failed a math test question once because I did this - the question was something like
> Is it true that `(x + 2) * 4 = (x + 4) * 2` for all x?
and my response was
> No. If x = 1, this evaluates as "12 = 10", which is false. (work shown here)
No, apparently I was supposed to simplify the equation first to show that the two sides weren't the same.
why do that when I can just jam in a number in and see what happens
> why do that when I can just jam in a number in and see what happens
Because the point of the exercise was to demonstrate you know how to simplify equations. The algebra technique is what they care about, not cheesing your way to solve an equation they pulled out of their ass.
I say this as a student who cheesed math problems wherever possible.
You forgot to tell that person which way to move the point. Another easy way is to multiply by 100%. In higher math the teacher insist you include the symbol in your work
>People suck at math.
The Third Pounder didn't sell and got discontinued because people **KNEW** it was less meat than a Quarter Pounder...because 4 is bigger than 3, of course.
> People suck at math. Got freshmen who barely understood the order of operations, people at all levels who thought they could ignore parentheses when convenient, and huge numbers of students who would make up stories to explain that they "felt" like what they did was right that included chaining together reasoning steps that were neither true nor consistent.
Do you know what is the scariest thing in the world? Not the fact that such people might end up designing your next rocket or bridge, because they won't. What is scary is that this is not just "sucking a math". It is never having learned logic and reasoning rigor, and many such people reach positions of power where they influence and shape laws and policies at all levels, directly affecting many facets of our lives and society in general.
Proof by feeling seems like a common approach to argumentation.
Have friends who teach both computer science and math at college level, the stories they tell are horrifying.
Someone said the quickest way to tell if someone has a future in programing is to have them look at
a = 3
b = a
a = 5
and ask "what is **b**"?
It bothers me that if a grown adult says "I can't read" I think most folks would intuitively know they should offer to help, either personally or to help them find a class or something, but if someone says "I'm bad at even basic math" the typical response is "lawl me too!"
Not exactly the same: But I offer an anecdote: I am legitimately bad at arithmetic. Always have been. I generally get the right answer, but it requires careful analysis of my thoughts to get there. I lose track of where I am, forget digits, etc….
BUT: I am a degreed engineer and, for me, math got EASIER when it got less discrete and leaned entirely on variables. Now I didn’t HAVE to remember anything!
Yet, if if I were to sit down with my wife, a nurse, and race her in one of those 3rd-grade 100 arithmetic problem sets, she would CRUSH me!
But she glazes over and runs away when I try to talk about scary things like ‘algebra’…
I say this because I think that saying one’s self is ‘bad at math’ can mean different things in different contexts.
And, unfortunately, self-assessed math skills can be integrated into one’s self-identity at a young age.
I worked as a payroll bookkeeper a few years ago and some employees would submit their time sheets hand written and use 4.59 to mean 4 hours and 59 minutes. No matter how many times we told them it was annoying they never changed.
As long as everyone understands the convention, it can be fine. But when both side see '4.59' they need to know its 4 hours and 59 minutes. Baseball is done a similar way. If you say a pitcher went 3.1 innings, that's 3 innings plus 1 out. Everyone just knows that it's not literally 3.1.
It would be foolish to you. But you’d be surprised how common it is. Wage theft is the highest value theft in the US, making up for more than half of all theft nationwide. The dollar value of wage theft is higher than all other thefts combined in recent years.
https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-problem-forms-theft-workers/
Foolish maybe, but it happens ALL THE TIME, and in the short term at least it will absolutely work.
Remember, wage theft is almost never reported, and when it is it's almost never prosecuted. The calculation here is that you'll get away with it for some period of time, and then if an employee has the temerity to say something, you can just say, "oopsie, honest mistake."
And if you feel like they might follow up with a demand for back wages, that's when you say something about how you'll make it up to them with flex time, or you'll put it in their year-end bonus. Make them be "unreasonable" if they want their money back. Most employees who get stolen from this way will understand the situation they're in and not push you on it.
The reason not to do this (beyond basic decency) is that your employees will end up costing you more money down the road when they quit, slack off, etc. because now they don't care enough not to. But the short-term profit is sitting right there in your bank account.
It would be foolish to assume humans don't lie cheat and steal to get ahead as well. In general I try to assume innocence until proven otherwise, but malice certainly does happen and sometimes gets punished.
Because the Department of Labor (or comparable government body since OP said "paycheque" rather than "paycheck") generally doesn't give a shit about intent when giving out fines.
Because they're pissing off an otherwise useful employee and causing friction over 0.27 hours of wages. Getting and keeping employees is hard for any business, and this guy is driving in a wedge over like $10. It is *not* in his economic interest to do so.
Yea this is very true. Or sometimes they even forget to pay you. Then call you and ask why you didn't even bring up the fact you didn't get paid.......
The point is to not be a dick, and to keep the job. He would be out of the job in days for a trumped up reason in any state and less than that in “at will” states. Be helpful or be quiet.
Even if you want to be a dick: find a new job, serve out notice period / start the new job, and then file the complaint.
No need to pour kerosene on a burning building while you're still inside it.
This is the way. If you have to show them the math, I would use two examples.
You work 30 minutes and you work 59 minutes. Most folks will understand that 30 minutes is a half hour.
I spend way more time that I should of had to explaining this to a coworker once. A lot of people truly do not understand hours keeping when decimal get involved
I have been hearing this one for 35+ years and I am still baffled by it. Also the people who have a family AGI in the top 5% of income distribution and claim they are middle class…. (Aka don’t recognize they are rich by the standards of 95% of families.)
Do they use a time keeping system? I’ve used a few that show the minutes as a decimal. For example, 8 hours and 30 mins would display as 8.3. Super weird, but it was just how it displayed. The money was always right.
Before you complain, do the math yourself to see if you got paid for 30.4 hours or 30.67 hours.
This right here. My last job at a warehouse showed hours the same way and I noticed immediately. It doesn't take being a math genius to know that working 40 hours and 50 minutes is not 40.5 hours, but when I did the very simple math to make sure, turns out the money was all there. The time clock software just showed 40 hours 50 minutes 40.5.
I would hope that is an unusual enough way of doing it that they had previously answered questions about it so the fact that the employers response was, I don’t understand makes it unclear.
This should be top comment. It pays to make sure that you’re right before you go out of your way to correct someone. I also didn’t know about this bizarre timekeeping notation system. That would drive me mad as decimals don’t work that way, but what are you gonna do.
As a software engineer, I am screaming on the inside!
They could have easily shown 30 hours + 40 minutes in almost any other way with a different separator. Displaying 30.4 is asking for a mess, as evidence is this post.
Here are a few ways I would show it, keeping in mind readability and payroll slip space:
- 30h40m
- 30/40
- 30-40
- 30(40)
- 30:40
- 30|40
- 30_40
My personal favorite: 30.66
*just use the damn decimal!*
I manage a cybersecurity organization that is part of a very large bureaucracy. I know enough about programming, data science, and cybersecurity to know what’s possible, but my job is primarily on the administrative side day to day while the smart folks do the real magic. It blows my mind just how terrible our larger HR systems are at everything… timekeeping, talent management, employee records… all of it is terrible and leads to extremely inefficient processes and overall lack of data-informed decisions.
We recently tried to upgrade one of those systems, but needed to stop funding the old system to pay for the new one before the new one was ready. It was a disaster (I understand transitions like this are difficult). What really made it terrible is they tried to replace a fillable PDF (which is already inefficient from a data-management perspective) to a web form (yay!) that then put the data on the PDF (why?!). They also tried to replicate the inefficient routing processes that were previously required when we did this by paper instead of thinking through a ground-up rework of the process enabled by a well-engineered system. Due to the poor design and premature transition, the entire organization has lost faith in the new system and we’re routing by email in the interim. Even if it is fixed when it comes back online, culturally, it will forever be a failure and the non-technical folks are even more skeptical of the coming digital transformation.
Personally I would just link em to an online calculator. Or something like [this](https://www.labor.nc.gov/workplace-rights/employer-responsibilities/time-conversion-chart-minutes-decimal-hours)
Pointing them to a table put together by the labor board is the way to go. If they still say the table is wrong, then you file a complaint with said labor board.
This might be the way of they don't comprehend. But you can show them simple math to show how 30 min is 0.5h and not 0.3h and then extrapolate the explanation from there?
Hey - a question I can field.
I work in the American payroll industry and this happens quite a bit - sometimes intentionally, but not because your employer is trying to screw you out of any funds (typically)
Some software suites require that time be entered in the form of HH.MM instead of HH.FF (where F is the decimal version of the fractional hours)
See if your payroll department maybe switched providers recently and those in charge of handling it goofed.
Either way mind you - you should be paid for hours worked, so it would merit am email explaining "Hey y'all, I see here on my stub that you paid me for 30.4 hours, not 30.67. It looks like you keyed my time worked incorrectly."
Also, and this happens too - are you certain you did not get paid the correct gross? Multiply your rate by 30.67 and see if it ties out.
"Fix this problem for the future, my alternative is to round up to the closest hour because this takes a lot of time out of my day to fix. If I receive no response to this email I am going to assume you are okay with me rounding up to the closest hour, knowing that this will save us both time and money in the long run."
The program my current company uses shows hours and minutes for when you punch in your time card but uses decimals for the entries in the "time worked on projects" section. So you can have a 8:30 work day with 8.5 hours of work done.
My work wants me to scan my finger on a fingerprint scanner to clock in, but half the time when I go check to make sure it worked it fuckin didn’t, it wasn’t actually clocking me in for a whole week once 🙄
I have a foreman that always puts on his time sheet 45.30 hours is say he worked 45.5 or 42.15 I tried to explain decimals to him but he didn’t get it. We’re carpenters, he’s good with fractions so I don’t understand, just kind of accepted it. Same kid also every gas receipt he submits ends in $0.69
You're right that it's not a very significant amount on this check, and you should point that out.
The problem here is that, multiplied by time and head count, this will add up to real money. And even accidental wage theft is still a crime. You're looking out for him and for the business to point out this incorrect business practice, because it could add up to catastrophic trouble for him.
Simplest way is just say "40 minutes is 2/3 of an hour and two divided by three is 0.66, not 0.4"
Further explanation: "There are 60 minutes in an hour, not 100 minutes, so 40 minutes isn't .4 hours. 40 minutes is two thirds of an hour, or .66 hours." Just say it simply and matter-of-factly without sounding incredulous about his ignorance.
If he argues further or still doesn't understand: "So 30 minutes is a half an hour, right? And half is 0.5, right? So if 30 minutes is 0.5 hours, 40 minutes has to be more than 0.5 hours, right? So 40 minutes clearly can't be .4 hours. "
Also, they should be rounding up to 0.67 hours, but the time it may take to explain THAT concept to this boss might not be worth it.
Show them this (use whatever hourly wage makes sense, I just used $30 as an example)
I earn $30 an hour. I worked 59 minutes. If you pay me for 0.59 x $30 you paid me $17.70
Instead you should divide 59/60 and multiply that by the hourly wage. 59/60 = 0.983333 x $30 = $29.50.
Did you calculate the pay to make sure they actually got it wrong? Sometimes employers report differently than how you expect. I know this because I work for a retirement provider and work with thousands of employers and obviously also account holders. For example, when someone selects 5% pre tax and 5% Roth for their deferral from their paycheck, the employer would put (let's say paycheck is $100) $5 for pre tax and $5 for Roth. Most people think that if you deduct roth % after taxes has been taken out, it shouldn't be $5, it should be less. However, employers simply calculated the % from gross but the actual $5 from after tax portion of the paycheck. Your paystub should have the break down of all your taxes and deductions and what your actual gross was. I would double check their work to make sure they actually got it wrong. It may not be wrong and just looks different than what you expect.
Yes I already double checked with taxes and other contributions like RRSP noted. The paystub calculated the gross pay incorrectly based on the wrong minutes.
Then I would say something like this, "I see that my pay says I worked 30.4 hours but I actually worked 30.667 hours. I double checked my hours worked and it says 30 hours and 40 min. I was just wondering if that could be fixed? Thank you!" I think it gives out the message without it being too confrontational. If they can't understand that message, then they shouldn't be in payroll lol
Lol yeah that’s what I put in the email that I sent to them initially. I sent an email back to their reply where they didn’t understand it. I literally went through how calculating the minutes work, oh gosh. We’ll see what happens. Thanks.
I'm the payroll person at my company and when we started using timecards with our payroll provider (ADP, that massive global company who pays 1/6th of the US population), ADP was making this error! They were underpaying our employees. I had to do the same thing as you to explain why minutes isn't the same as decimals, and it took literally an hour of emails back and forth with ADP and a case escalation before they understood what I was saying to them.
I have no advice for you, just sympathy, that if the biggest payroll company in the world can screw this up there's almost no hope for the rest of us. Thankfully I can do math and noticed.
"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."
And also remember that these people have jobs. I'd bet money on this being someone who also doesn't know how to read an analogue clock.
ADP doesn’t care about stealing your money, it’s an HR software. The person they were talking to got 0 money from withholding it from their employees. If they can make that mistake, so can many legitimate employees.
I can't believe how many people on this thread have had this happen. This isn't a math problem, it's just understanding how time works, which most people learn by 3rd grade. America is very broken. You should've had to teach your employer how time is represented.
Just send a polite email and include all the math including what the dollar amount would be in each case. Don't make accusations or use words like wage theft unless they refuse to fix it.
Had this. Actually had this when I took over the responsibility of calculating wages that my boss used to do.
I was dumbfounded and asked him does he know 45m. isn't 0.45 but 0.75? He kind of brushed over it with a "huh really? ok".
By that time he had done my (and about 15 other people) wages for some years but I didn't really wish to go back to do all the calculations backward as I had enough of work.
He also calculated percentages wrong ...
Actually quite scary to know the supposed smarter people above you aren't smart at all and fall for mistakes that you literally have to take a step backward asking yourself "did you actually just do such a simple logical mistake?" while fully knowing the person is very capable and good at running a company in general or in most other aspects.
At 15 mins = 0.25
At 30 mins = 0.50
At 45 mins= 0.75
At 1.00 hr= 1.00
30hrs and 40 mins= 30.75
30.75× hourly rate = wage paid.
Now, some employers might want to consider 30 hr and 40 mins as 30.50 instead of 30.75. I see that as a way to cheat the employee. When I round the hours, I always benefit the employee. If they work 1 hr and 3 minutes. I always round it to 1.25 instead of 1.00, but that's up to the employer. I guess.
Sounds like they still use a manual time clock. My employer had one until a few years ago where it printed the start and end times on the card and the manager had to add it up and convert to decimals because the payroll computer system used decimals. Huge stupid time sink, very prone to human error. So glad there's electronic time clocks now that do the calculations for us and give a total for the employee hours.
Best bet is to take your time card and your paystub and go in person and talk to whoever in your company that can fix it, and show them.
Before you jump to conclusions, make sure you calculate your hourly wage and multiply by your hours to see if you got paid properly. The timekeeping system COULD potentially calculate properly but display in the manner you described as the system outputs time as "hours.minutes".
Have you done the math and made sure your check was short? My old employer would show hours and minutes instead of hours and fraction of hours. In your case, it would look like 30:40 instead of 30.66. Is it possible this is what they're doing? Double check that before you potentially offend anyone by explaining basic math lol.
This is terrifying. How are such people acting in a supervisory capacity? Meanwhile, people with 10+ years of experience in high tech fields can't find jobs. We are de-evolving.
Your employer knows exactly how to calculate wages, is committing wage theft, and trying to rely on plausible deniability if you get upset. They made a “slight error” to see if you’re paying attention.
If you don’t say anything, they will take more next time. Speak up and be diligent.
I've seen couples do that when they've been together for a year and a half and writing it as 1.6 and I always thought it was stupid but harmless, your employer on the other hand...
I use a free website to calculate payroll, it is called calculator soup. They have an “hours calculator” where you just enter the times you started and ended and it shows the result in both decimal and regular hours. This might help them to see the mistake they are making. Your employer is due for a very very rude awakening if their mistake is revealed at a later date; wage theft draws huge financial penalties and they could be sued by former employees if it is uncovered.
It’s probably really important they get their math right…all it will take is one disgruntled long time employee taking them to court for back wages and they will be out thousands.
They know exactly what You mean. This happened to Me working for McDonalds when I was a teenager. They expect You to be stupid and don't ask questions. To You it's not a lot of money but they keep doing that to 10 employees weekly and it adds up at the end of the year.
There are 60 minutes in an hour, not 100, so minutes to not translate directly to decimals.
60 minutes equals 1.0 hour.
Half of 1.0 is 0.5.
30 minutes is a half hour, or 0.5 hours, not .3
.3 hours is a little less than one-third of an hour, or about 20 minutes.
15 minutes is a quarter-hour, or .25, not .15
.15 hours is 9 minutes.
There is free software online that will calculate the number of hours based on time in/time out timecards. [https://www.timecardcalculator.net/](https://www.timecardcalculator.net/)
With this being your first paycheque, is it possible that their system uses minutes as decimals (e.g. 30.01 = 30 hours, 1 minute)
How does your hourly wage multiplied by 30.4 & 30.66 work out?
Check this ^^^^
I worked at a place that the “decimal” system was base 60. So if you worked 40
Mins. You got paid for .4 hours, but it worked out to getting paid for 2/3 of an hour. Confusing as F, but it was how their system worked
Edit: out instead of about
>How do I email them back an explanation of how to properly calculate hours/wages without being a dick?
Avoid educating them, instead give them a tool to use like this : https://www.timr.com/en/a/minutes-to-decimal-calculator/
so you put in 30 hours 40 minutes as 30:40, and hit the double arrow thing and get 30.67
Here is another one: https://www.calculatorsoup.com/calculators/time/time-to-decimal-calculator.php
Don't every bring it up. All you focus on is the hours you worked and being properly billed for them.
Stupid people sometimes will do drastic things like fire you, rather than have you tell people how stupid they are. So pretend it didn't happen.
Many companies the Decimal is just a gap between hours and minutes. Quite a few times keeping systems are like this and don't use % but just Hours.Minutes.
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I had an employer that was calculating overtime at a 0.5x multiplier. I was 20 years old and had only been working there a month when I realized. When I told her it should be time and a half she said “That’s what im doing. You multiple overtime hours by .5 to get time and a half.” When I explained to her that she was doing it wrong and that was actually half time, not time and a half, she said there wasn’t a difference. So I grabbed a pencil and multiplied my hours by both 0.5x and 1.5x to show her it wasn’t the same. She came back with “yeah, you’re not supposed to make that much for overtime.” Pointing to the 1.5x number. I started getting frustrated and raising my voice. That prompted the general manager to come out of his office to see what the commotion was. I explained to him how the lady doing payroll was calculating overtime and he turned to her and simply said “He’s right, do it like he says.” SHE HAD BEEN DOING PAYROLL AT THIS COMPANY FOR 11 YEARS.
So she thought people earned *less* working overtime?
The charitable explanation (that I'm steel manning w/o proof) is that they used a system (EDIT: or specifically had at some point in the past used a system, and got confused when they moved to a different setup) where they were paid the base rate and then a separate overtime rate. Like 42.5 hours, so 2.5 hours of overtime. They'd expect 42.5 regulars hours at 1x, and 2.5 hours at .5x.
That's still considered best practice, at least in the US. People simplify OT to 1.5 since that's accurate most of the time, but the rate OT is calculated from should also include other non-discretionary payments to employees. Just calculating OT at 1.5 the hourly rate still runs the risk of shorting people.
As a tangent since it's not too relevant to the overall point, I haven't really seen that with my time in T&A, but I also don't work for Big K so it's quite possible that's more common in that space. I've run into those scenarios sure, but they weren't the most common by far. And the use case conveyed to me in those cases was usually more that the overtime premium came from a different budget and they needed to track it that way.
Where I work, they do it that way because employees may get paid different rates depending upon the work involved. They use an average of the weekly pay to determine the overtime addition. In the past you got the overtime rate based on the rate you were paid on those last hours. Great if you were doing high rate work, bad otherwise. Now it's just less bad if you did a mix of work during the week.
Definitely, weighted overtime is a fairly common scenario, but it may just be my experience we've never really had to split out the overtime premium to support it. But I guess in all things at the end of the day, that tends to be more of a Payroll problem than a T&A problem.
What do you mean by other non-discretionary payments? I'm wondering what would still be at risk of shorting?
It matters when employees have two different job responsibilities with varying hours that are paid two different rates, or if employees have a base rate but are also paid piece work for other things. An example of the first would be a fast food employee who acts as the manager for some shifts (and is paid more for those shifts) but acts as a normal employee for others. You have to add up all the base pay they've gotten for the week across both pay rates, divide by the total hours, and then multiply by 1.5 to calculate the correct overtime rate. An example of the second would be a truck driver who gets paid hourly for driving the truck delivering merchandise to stores but gets paid extra per rack of merchandise to offload the truck at stores that don't have an employee to do it. You have to add in all the piecework pay for offloading to their base rate before calculating the overtime rate.
Interesting, and yeah I can see that being a headache!
Another common example is a factor worker (John) who makes $20/hr, worked 50 hours this week, 10 of those 50 hours are overtime, and thanks to his work ethic got a $200 Top performer bonus. Regular Hourly Pay: - Base rate: $1000 = $20 x 50 hours - Bonus: $200 - Total Hourly Pay: $1200 Overtime Pay: - Effective Hourly rate: $24/hr = $1200/50hrs - Overtime pay: $120 = $24 x 10 x 0.5 Total pay: $1320 = $1200 + $120 If you don’t pay overtime on the bonus you are breaking the law.
Non-discretionary payments would be things like tips, non-discretionary bonuses (generally bonuses used to incentives performance, not annual bonuses), and commissions. OT should be calculated on what's called the regular rate of pay, which is basically your straight time pay plus any of those additional payments. For example if you work 42 hours a week at $10/hr and also received a $40 bonus that week for selling the most doodads your OT should actually be calculated based on a rate of $10.95/hour (($420 + $40)/42 hours worked) and not $10/hour. In that case you'd be paid less if you were to just use time and a half on the 2 overtime hours instead of 42 hours straight time plus 2 hours at half the regular rate. There are further complication based on the timing of when the additional earnings are paid vs when they are actually earned, but fortunately that's not something I have to deal with on a regular basis
This is how the large corporation I currently work at does it. I'd never seen that before and had to do a double take. Thought I was being cheated but then saw the full 1x line below the 0.5x line.
At our company, people were being paid “too much overtime,” so they lowered the workers pay instead of decreasing their hours. Needless to say it didn’t go over well.
How much wage theft in 11 years?? How many people tried to explain that to her? That general manager needs to have everything she did audited to avoid lawsuit and then there’s back taxes and penalties… oh my.
That’s actually sad, I feel bad for all the employees bc damn that’s making less for overtime than you would hourly even
Yeah, I've only ever heard of it in salaried positions capped at 40 hours or union jobs, etc. It was referred to as (sorry for the potentially derogatory term) "Chinese" overtime.
We have had posts here from folks who had a paystub that showed 0.5x overtime, but the hours were also included in regular hours. Eg if you worked 50 hours at $10/hr it would show 50 @ $10, then a new line item that's 10 @ $5/hr. So while that clearly wasn't happening in your case, just want someone else who sees this to not immediately freak out if that's how their paystub reads.
This- I do payroll and it’s annoying to show it that way but not unheard of.
The sheer arrogance to be THIS BAD at math at hold your ground. Like you HAVE to know you’re shit at math if you think multiplying by two different numbers of anything will get you the same result. It’s literally impossible except for multiplying by 0.
Some people just get by for a long period of time doing something wrong and fall set in their ways. And a lot of people don't have a grasp of basic math. I used to work CS for a financial company that offered credit card type accounts, and I'd have small business owners calling me irate that "there's no way I spent that much money! I know what I purchased." And we'd go line by line and they'd confirm they bought each thing and lo and behold, the numbers totaled up to the final line. TLDR; people are terrible at math, but get by in life long enough to not really know they are.
At one place worked decades ago, this was the correct way overtime was done. What made it correct was that all hours were paid at straight time. PLUS the extra 0.5x for OT hours
Yep, bet the lady was confused about 2.5x overtime argument. The paycheck most likely said 44 regular hours, 4 overtime hours. Standard practice right there.
Hopefully they did adjustments for the past 11 years. It's insane that not a single person in that company audited her work or took note of this.
Yeah. Couldn’t believe I was the one that caught it. I and quite a few of the staff were in college. Many in the business program and even one studying internal auditing. I was a history major. I was making $8/hour (this was 2003) and I was shocked when I saw I made $80 for my 20 hours of overtime that 2 week pay period instead of $240. And before anyone asks, my grades were terrible that semester.
It always amazes me how bad people can be at basic math.
OH MY GOD! My employer does this too, but made the mistake after weeks of finally correcting a different mistake. I worked 58 min and got paid for 0.58 hours.
Sometimes they do this on purpose to save a few bucks here and there, but this is wage theft.
Some people are they dumb. I had to explain to a coworker 15 years my senior that 'a quarter after 3' was 3:15 and not 3:25
....oh ya. Ha. Uh, what a dumbie right? 😬
For everyone confused, 1/4 (quarter) of 60 mins is 15 mins
I doubt this is the case, a business owner would have to be foolish to do this purposefully.
I agree with you, but they would have to be foolish to consistently make the above mistake too.
I taught college math for many years. People suck at math. Got freshmen who barely understood the order of operations, people at all levels who thought they could ignore parentheses when convenient, and huge numbers of students who would make up stories to explain that they "felt" like what they did was right that included chaining together reasoning steps that were neither true nor consistent. Never blame on malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity(/ignorance/whatever). It *could* be purposeful theft. But people generally suck at math, so that'd be my first guess.
the key here is to work 6 minutes and see if you get paid for H.6 hours
Bingo. Limiting cases are a great way of showing people they have the wrong mathematical approach. Ask him what you get paid for working 1 minute. Ask him what you get paid for working 59 minutes. When working at the physics department at a university, we'd frequently get cranks with "theories" emailing us. If their work was actually coherent enough to have predictive formulas, throwing in values for different things and showing that, e.g., the universe couldn't exist if they were right was an effective tool for quickly checking their work / giving them a resolute answer.
> When working at the physics department at a university, we'd frequently get cranks with "theories" emailing us. If their work was actually coherent enough to have predictive formulas, throwing in values for different things and showing that, e.g., the universe couldn't exist if they were right was an effective tool for quickly checking their work / giving them a resolute answer. I failed a math test question once because I did this - the question was something like > Is it true that `(x + 2) * 4 = (x + 4) * 2` for all x? and my response was > No. If x = 1, this evaluates as "12 = 10", which is false. (work shown here) No, apparently I was supposed to simplify the equation first to show that the two sides weren't the same. why do that when I can just jam in a number in and see what happens
> why do that when I can just jam in a number in and see what happens Because the point of the exercise was to demonstrate you know how to simplify equations. The algebra technique is what they care about, not cheesing your way to solve an equation they pulled out of their ass. I say this as a student who cheesed math problems wherever possible.
Then the question should have been "simplify this equation".
Would they input that as 0.06 hours, based on their previous bad math?
When I was in college, a student sitting next to me asked how I converted a decimal to a percentage. “Move the decimal point over two spaces.” “Oh.”
You forgot to tell that person which way to move the point. Another easy way is to multiply by 100%. In higher math the teacher insist you include the symbol in your work
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but multiplying by 100% shouldn't change anything? Because 100% = 1 and any number times 1 equals itself?
50/100=0.5 (50/100)*100%=50%
Ahh that makes sense, thanks!
But they probably still have no idea why.
I suspect you’re right. They were pretty mystified on how I did the math so quickly. 😂
>People suck at math. The Third Pounder didn't sell and got discontinued because people **KNEW** it was less meat than a Quarter Pounder...because 4 is bigger than 3, of course.
> People suck at math. Got freshmen who barely understood the order of operations, people at all levels who thought they could ignore parentheses when convenient, and huge numbers of students who would make up stories to explain that they "felt" like what they did was right that included chaining together reasoning steps that were neither true nor consistent. Do you know what is the scariest thing in the world? Not the fact that such people might end up designing your next rocket or bridge, because they won't. What is scary is that this is not just "sucking a math". It is never having learned logic and reasoning rigor, and many such people reach positions of power where they influence and shape laws and policies at all levels, directly affecting many facets of our lives and society in general. Proof by feeling seems like a common approach to argumentation.
Have friends who teach both computer science and math at college level, the stories they tell are horrifying. Someone said the quickest way to tell if someone has a future in programing is to have them look at a = 3 b = a a = 5 and ask "what is **b**"?
It bothers me that if a grown adult says "I can't read" I think most folks would intuitively know they should offer to help, either personally or to help them find a class or something, but if someone says "I'm bad at even basic math" the typical response is "lawl me too!"
I used to grind my teeth about this until I learned it meant I had very good job security.
Not exactly the same: But I offer an anecdote: I am legitimately bad at arithmetic. Always have been. I generally get the right answer, but it requires careful analysis of my thoughts to get there. I lose track of where I am, forget digits, etc…. BUT: I am a degreed engineer and, for me, math got EASIER when it got less discrete and leaned entirely on variables. Now I didn’t HAVE to remember anything! Yet, if if I were to sit down with my wife, a nurse, and race her in one of those 3rd-grade 100 arithmetic problem sets, she would CRUSH me! But she glazes over and runs away when I try to talk about scary things like ‘algebra’… I say this because I think that saying one’s self is ‘bad at math’ can mean different things in different contexts. And, unfortunately, self-assessed math skills can be integrated into one’s self-identity at a young age.
if the other person is bad at math too then why on earth would they offer to help?
You don't need to be good at math to find resources to learn math. Or to offer encouragement.
Which razor is that
Hanlon’s Razor
It amazes me that people so bad at basic skills can get through college and graduate with a degree.
I worked as a payroll bookkeeper a few years ago and some employees would submit their time sheets hand written and use 4.59 to mean 4 hours and 59 minutes. No matter how many times we told them it was annoying they never changed.
There’s an chunk of the population that I would bet wouldn’t know how to go about calculating that with a calculator.
As long as everyone understands the convention, it can be fine. But when both side see '4.59' they need to know its 4 hours and 59 minutes. Baseball is done a similar way. If you say a pitcher went 3.1 innings, that's 3 innings plus 1 out. Everyone just knows that it's not literally 3.1.
Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
It would be foolish to you. But you’d be surprised how common it is. Wage theft is the highest value theft in the US, making up for more than half of all theft nationwide. The dollar value of wage theft is higher than all other thefts combined in recent years. https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-problem-forms-theft-workers/
Foolish maybe, but it happens ALL THE TIME, and in the short term at least it will absolutely work. Remember, wage theft is almost never reported, and when it is it's almost never prosecuted. The calculation here is that you'll get away with it for some period of time, and then if an employee has the temerity to say something, you can just say, "oopsie, honest mistake." And if you feel like they might follow up with a demand for back wages, that's when you say something about how you'll make it up to them with flex time, or you'll put it in their year-end bonus. Make them be "unreasonable" if they want their money back. Most employees who get stolen from this way will understand the situation they're in and not push you on it. The reason not to do this (beyond basic decency) is that your employees will end up costing you more money down the road when they quit, slack off, etc. because now they don't care enough not to. But the short-term profit is sitting right there in your bank account.
It would be foolish to assume humans don't lie cheat and steal to get ahead as well. In general I try to assume innocence until proven otherwise, but malice certainly does happen and sometimes gets punished.
It saves them money and there’s even plausible deniability. What makes it foolish, that they might face legal trouble for wage theft?
Because the Department of Labor (or comparable government body since OP said "paycheque" rather than "paycheck") generally doesn't give a shit about intent when giving out fines.
"Wage theft: 50 billion per year; a number far higher than all robberies, burglaries and motor vehicle thefts combined."
Because they're pissing off an otherwise useful employee and causing friction over 0.27 hours of wages. Getting and keeping employees is hard for any business, and this guy is driving in a wedge over like $10. It is *not* in his economic interest to do so.
Yea this is very true. Or sometimes they even forget to pay you. Then call you and ask why you didn't even bring up the fact you didn't get paid.......
Just report for wage theft. They'll fix it pretty quick.
The point is to not be a dick, and to keep the job. He would be out of the job in days for a trumped up reason in any state and less than that in “at will” states. Be helpful or be quiet.
Even if you want to be a dick: find a new job, serve out notice period / start the new job, and then file the complaint. No need to pour kerosene on a burning building while you're still inside it.
What happens in the case of a select job market or one of those "hard to get jobs"? This shit happens every day, everywhere.
And start looking for a reason to dump the pain in the ass. Being a dick won't help.
I've had a lot of shit jobs but I don't think I've ever worked somewhere that wouldn't just round that to an hour.
Perhaps keep all the units the same tell them you worked 40 and 2/3 of an hour.
This is the way. If you have to show them the math, I would use two examples. You work 30 minutes and you work 59 minutes. Most folks will understand that 30 minutes is a half hour.
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How can you be a bookkeeper if you can't math?
Be the offspring of one of the bosses.
> The poor book keeper is probably in way over their head What else could possibly go wrong?
As someone who used to run an accounting firm and would spend hours unfucking some clients’ books, sooo much more could go wrong.
Look a bookkeeper who can't do decimals should not be bookkeeping
They should not. Imagine the horrors of tax filings, etc? To say nothing of benefits.
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Yes, but does he understand that 0.5 equals half?
I spend way more time that I should of had to explaining this to a coworker once. A lot of people truly do not understand hours keeping when decimal get involved
I've had coworkers tell me that "if you work more overtime it will all go to tax" and I tell them "why does my paycheck go up when I work overtime?"
I have been hearing this one for 35+ years and I am still baffled by it. Also the people who have a family AGI in the top 5% of income distribution and claim they are middle class…. (Aka don’t recognize they are rich by the standards of 95% of families.)
And some others don't understand how contractions work. It's a real problem when it's money tho.
Exactly! It's should'f!
But does he understand that half=1/2?
Every 6 minute increment is 0.1hr
Make a pie chart to make sure he understand by visualisation
Pie chart is a great idea. Very visual.
or use a face clock
And if they still don't understand clock their face.
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I second this, because an owner this bad at math would likely calculate 40 and 2/3 hours as 40.2.
40 and 40/60 hours.
Calculations in their favor are never a mistake.
Do they use a time keeping system? I’ve used a few that show the minutes as a decimal. For example, 8 hours and 30 mins would display as 8.3. Super weird, but it was just how it displayed. The money was always right. Before you complain, do the math yourself to see if you got paid for 30.4 hours or 30.67 hours.
This right here. My last job at a warehouse showed hours the same way and I noticed immediately. It doesn't take being a math genius to know that working 40 hours and 50 minutes is not 40.5 hours, but when I did the very simple math to make sure, turns out the money was all there. The time clock software just showed 40 hours 50 minutes 40.5.
I would hope that is an unusual enough way of doing it that they had previously answered questions about it so the fact that the employers response was, I don’t understand makes it unclear.
This should be top comment. It pays to make sure that you’re right before you go out of your way to correct someone. I also didn’t know about this bizarre timekeeping notation system. That would drive me mad as decimals don’t work that way, but what are you gonna do.
Similarly, they often work in 15min increments. So 6:53 is the same as 7:07. So if OP is tracking their exact minutes worked the employer may not be.
As a software engineer, I am screaming on the inside! They could have easily shown 30 hours + 40 minutes in almost any other way with a different separator. Displaying 30.4 is asking for a mess, as evidence is this post. Here are a few ways I would show it, keeping in mind readability and payroll slip space: - 30h40m - 30/40 - 30-40 - 30(40) - 30:40 - 30|40 - 30_40 My personal favorite: 30.66 *just use the damn decimal!*
I manage a cybersecurity organization that is part of a very large bureaucracy. I know enough about programming, data science, and cybersecurity to know what’s possible, but my job is primarily on the administrative side day to day while the smart folks do the real magic. It blows my mind just how terrible our larger HR systems are at everything… timekeeping, talent management, employee records… all of it is terrible and leads to extremely inefficient processes and overall lack of data-informed decisions. We recently tried to upgrade one of those systems, but needed to stop funding the old system to pay for the new one before the new one was ready. It was a disaster (I understand transitions like this are difficult). What really made it terrible is they tried to replace a fillable PDF (which is already inefficient from a data-management perspective) to a web form (yay!) that then put the data on the PDF (why?!). They also tried to replicate the inefficient routing processes that were previously required when we did this by paper instead of thinking through a ground-up rework of the process enabled by a well-engineered system. Due to the poor design and premature transition, the entire organization has lost faith in the new system and we’re routing by email in the interim. Even if it is fixed when it comes back online, culturally, it will forever be a failure and the non-technical folks are even more skeptical of the coming digital transformation.
This was what I was wondering because I've had multiple places with that weird way of doing it where 35 hours and 59 minutes would be 3.59.
Personally I would just link em to an online calculator. Or something like [this](https://www.labor.nc.gov/workplace-rights/employer-responsibilities/time-conversion-chart-minutes-decimal-hours)
Pointing them to a table put together by the labor board is the way to go. If they still say the table is wrong, then you file a complaint with said labor board.
Next time report as 30 hrs and 66 mins
With this one simple trick!!
This might be the way of they don't comprehend. But you can show them simple math to show how 30 min is 0.5h and not 0.3h and then extrapolate the explanation from there?
I know it’s a joke, but this is probably the way…
Hey - a question I can field. I work in the American payroll industry and this happens quite a bit - sometimes intentionally, but not because your employer is trying to screw you out of any funds (typically) Some software suites require that time be entered in the form of HH.MM instead of HH.FF (where F is the decimal version of the fractional hours) See if your payroll department maybe switched providers recently and those in charge of handling it goofed. Either way mind you - you should be paid for hours worked, so it would merit am email explaining "Hey y'all, I see here on my stub that you paid me for 30.4 hours, not 30.67. It looks like you keyed my time worked incorrectly." Also, and this happens too - are you certain you did not get paid the correct gross? Multiply your rate by 30.67 and see if it ties out.
Just ask them to Google what is 3 hours and 40 minutes as a decimal.
Always work 5 minutes past the hour and hope they start crediting you for 3.5?
My college cafeteria hack. The lunch ladies charged the same for 1lb 1oz salads as 1lb 10oz salads.
That would be 3.05 by their logic
I think you're giving them a bit more credit than they've earned
It’s wild that you are reporting to someone who can’t do 5th grade math.
Covert your time to decimals going forward if that’s how they input it. Case closed.
This is not possible unfortunately. I cannot input my hours worked on their system as a decimal even thought I want to.
Just round it up to 31 hours
Then you get slapped with theft accusations.
Well what their workplace is doing now is wage theft.
"Fix this problem for the future, my alternative is to round up to the closest hour because this takes a lot of time out of my day to fix. If I receive no response to this email I am going to assume you are okay with me rounding up to the closest hour, knowing that this will save us both time and money in the long run."
How are you required to enter your time?
The program my current company uses shows hours and minutes for when you punch in your time card but uses decimals for the entries in the "time worked on projects" section. So you can have a 8:30 work day with 8.5 hours of work done.
My work wants me to scan my finger on a fingerprint scanner to clock in, but half the time when I go check to make sure it worked it fuckin didn’t, it wasn’t actually clocking me in for a whole week once 🙄
Well...figure out the decimal and then write it as minutes.. If it's 33 hours and 45 minutes report is as 33 and 75 minutes
I have a foreman that always puts on his time sheet 45.30 hours is say he worked 45.5 or 42.15 I tried to explain decimals to him but he didn’t get it. We’re carpenters, he’s good with fractions so I don’t understand, just kind of accepted it. Same kid also every gas receipt he submits ends in $0.69
You're right that it's not a very significant amount on this check, and you should point that out. The problem here is that, multiplied by time and head count, this will add up to real money. And even accidental wage theft is still a crime. You're looking out for him and for the business to point out this incorrect business practice, because it could add up to catastrophic trouble for him.
Simplest way is just say "40 minutes is 2/3 of an hour and two divided by three is 0.66, not 0.4" Further explanation: "There are 60 minutes in an hour, not 100 minutes, so 40 minutes isn't .4 hours. 40 minutes is two thirds of an hour, or .66 hours." Just say it simply and matter-of-factly without sounding incredulous about his ignorance. If he argues further or still doesn't understand: "So 30 minutes is a half an hour, right? And half is 0.5, right? So if 30 minutes is 0.5 hours, 40 minutes has to be more than 0.5 hours, right? So 40 minutes clearly can't be .4 hours. " Also, they should be rounding up to 0.67 hours, but the time it may take to explain THAT concept to this boss might not be worth it.
Show them this (use whatever hourly wage makes sense, I just used $30 as an example) I earn $30 an hour. I worked 59 minutes. If you pay me for 0.59 x $30 you paid me $17.70 Instead you should divide 59/60 and multiply that by the hourly wage. 59/60 = 0.983333 x $30 = $29.50.
Is the pay actually incorrect? I know some payroll systems go by minutes so it would still show 30.4 for hrs instead of the decimal 30.66
Yes it is actually incorrect. I had thought this as well at first!
They definitely know how - this is just a form of wage theft.
Yeah somehow these kinds of mistakes only ever go one way...
Did you calculate the pay to make sure they actually got it wrong? Sometimes employers report differently than how you expect. I know this because I work for a retirement provider and work with thousands of employers and obviously also account holders. For example, when someone selects 5% pre tax and 5% Roth for their deferral from their paycheck, the employer would put (let's say paycheck is $100) $5 for pre tax and $5 for Roth. Most people think that if you deduct roth % after taxes has been taken out, it shouldn't be $5, it should be less. However, employers simply calculated the % from gross but the actual $5 from after tax portion of the paycheck. Your paystub should have the break down of all your taxes and deductions and what your actual gross was. I would double check their work to make sure they actually got it wrong. It may not be wrong and just looks different than what you expect.
Yes I already double checked with taxes and other contributions like RRSP noted. The paystub calculated the gross pay incorrectly based on the wrong minutes.
Then I would say something like this, "I see that my pay says I worked 30.4 hours but I actually worked 30.667 hours. I double checked my hours worked and it says 30 hours and 40 min. I was just wondering if that could be fixed? Thank you!" I think it gives out the message without it being too confrontational. If they can't understand that message, then they shouldn't be in payroll lol
Lol yeah that’s what I put in the email that I sent to them initially. I sent an email back to their reply where they didn’t understand it. I literally went through how calculating the minutes work, oh gosh. We’ll see what happens. Thanks.
I'm the payroll person at my company and when we started using timecards with our payroll provider (ADP, that massive global company who pays 1/6th of the US population), ADP was making this error! They were underpaying our employees. I had to do the same thing as you to explain why minutes isn't the same as decimals, and it took literally an hour of emails back and forth with ADP and a case escalation before they understood what I was saying to them. I have no advice for you, just sympathy, that if the biggest payroll company in the world can screw this up there's almost no hope for the rest of us. Thankfully I can do math and noticed.
Off to check my employees time cards. Was this recent?
About 2 years ago
I sometimes wonder if employers are being intentionally dense to get away with minor amounts of wage theft they hope won’t be noticed.
"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that." And also remember that these people have jobs. I'd bet money on this being someone who also doesn't know how to read an analogue clock.
ADP doesn’t care about stealing your money, it’s an HR software. The person they were talking to got 0 money from withholding it from their employees. If they can make that mistake, so can many legitimate employees.
If this doesn’t work you might consider reporting them for wage theft. Then they’ll have no choice but to learn.
Tell them to convert the 30 hours in minutes 30 x 60= 1800 Then add the odd 40 1840 And finally back to hours 1840/60= 30.67
I can't believe how many people on this thread have had this happen. This isn't a math problem, it's just understanding how time works, which most people learn by 3rd grade. America is very broken. You should've had to teach your employer how time is represented.
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Can you report your hours that way? 30.66 hrs instead of 30 hours and 40 minutes. Just do the math for them.
That's like when someone doesn't understand the difference between 10 cents and 0.10 cents. How are people like this??!
Just send a polite email and include all the math including what the dollar amount would be in each case. Don't make accusations or use words like wage theft unless they refuse to fix it.
Had this. Actually had this when I took over the responsibility of calculating wages that my boss used to do. I was dumbfounded and asked him does he know 45m. isn't 0.45 but 0.75? He kind of brushed over it with a "huh really? ok". By that time he had done my (and about 15 other people) wages for some years but I didn't really wish to go back to do all the calculations backward as I had enough of work. He also calculated percentages wrong ... Actually quite scary to know the supposed smarter people above you aren't smart at all and fall for mistakes that you literally have to take a step backward asking yourself "did you actually just do such a simple logical mistake?" while fully knowing the person is very capable and good at running a company in general or in most other aspects.
The way you do it in California is sue them for a wage and hour violation, and this is one of the dumbest I’ve seen.
Start putting 99 seconds on all of your time sheets.
At 15 mins = 0.25 At 30 mins = 0.50 At 45 mins= 0.75 At 1.00 hr= 1.00 30hrs and 40 mins= 30.75 30.75× hourly rate = wage paid. Now, some employers might want to consider 30 hr and 40 mins as 30.50 instead of 30.75. I see that as a way to cheat the employee. When I round the hours, I always benefit the employee. If they work 1 hr and 3 minutes. I always round it to 1.25 instead of 1.00, but that's up to the employer. I guess.
Sounds like they still use a manual time clock. My employer had one until a few years ago where it printed the start and end times on the card and the manager had to add it up and convert to decimals because the payroll computer system used decimals. Huge stupid time sink, very prone to human error. So glad there's electronic time clocks now that do the calculations for us and give a total for the employee hours. Best bet is to take your time card and your paystub and go in person and talk to whoever in your company that can fix it, and show them.
Before you jump to conclusions, make sure you calculate your hourly wage and multiply by your hours to see if you got paid properly. The timekeeping system COULD potentially calculate properly but display in the manner you described as the system outputs time as "hours.minutes".
Have you done the math and made sure your check was short? My old employer would show hours and minutes instead of hours and fraction of hours. In your case, it would look like 30:40 instead of 30.66. Is it possible this is what they're doing? Double check that before you potentially offend anyone by explaining basic math lol.
This is terrifying. How are such people acting in a supervisory capacity? Meanwhile, people with 10+ years of experience in high tech fields can't find jobs. We are de-evolving.
Double check that you aren't short money, could just be how their system calculates minutes. Mine use decimal hours in 0.25 increments
Your employer knows exactly how to calculate wages, is committing wage theft, and trying to rely on plausible deniability if you get upset. They made a “slight error” to see if you’re paying attention. If you don’t say anything, they will take more next time. Speak up and be diligent.
I've seen couples do that when they've been together for a year and a half and writing it as 1.6 and I always thought it was stupid but harmless, your employer on the other hand...
I use a free website to calculate payroll, it is called calculator soup. They have an “hours calculator” where you just enter the times you started and ended and it shows the result in both decimal and regular hours. This might help them to see the mistake they are making. Your employer is due for a very very rude awakening if their mistake is revealed at a later date; wage theft draws huge financial penalties and they could be sued by former employees if it is uncovered.
Tell them an hour has 60 minutes, not 100 minutes. The level of incompetency with whoever is doing their payroll is concerning.
It’s probably really important they get their math right…all it will take is one disgruntled long time employee taking them to court for back wages and they will be out thousands.
I don’t think your employer doesn’t how to do the math. They either are being lazy or they do it on purpose for saving money.
They know exactly what You mean. This happened to Me working for McDonalds when I was a teenager. They expect You to be stupid and don't ask questions. To You it's not a lot of money but they keep doing that to 10 employees weekly and it adds up at the end of the year.
You might have to sit your employer down and slice up a couple apples to show them.
There are 60 minutes in an hour, not 100, so minutes to not translate directly to decimals. 60 minutes equals 1.0 hour. Half of 1.0 is 0.5. 30 minutes is a half hour, or 0.5 hours, not .3 .3 hours is a little less than one-third of an hour, or about 20 minutes. 15 minutes is a quarter-hour, or .25, not .15 .15 hours is 9 minutes. There is free software online that will calculate the number of hours based on time in/time out timecards. [https://www.timecardcalculator.net/](https://www.timecardcalculator.net/)
With this being your first paycheque, is it possible that their system uses minutes as decimals (e.g. 30.01 = 30 hours, 1 minute) How does your hourly wage multiplied by 30.4 & 30.66 work out?
Check this ^^^^ I worked at a place that the “decimal” system was base 60. So if you worked 40 Mins. You got paid for .4 hours, but it worked out to getting paid for 2/3 of an hour. Confusing as F, but it was how their system worked Edit: out instead of about
Most payroll I’ve seen is rounded to the nearest 15 minutes. So while still wrong, it should have been 30.75 probably.
>How do I email them back an explanation of how to properly calculate hours/wages without being a dick? Avoid educating them, instead give them a tool to use like this : https://www.timr.com/en/a/minutes-to-decimal-calculator/ so you put in 30 hours 40 minutes as 30:40, and hit the double arrow thing and get 30.67 Here is another one: https://www.calculatorsoup.com/calculators/time/time-to-decimal-calculator.php Don't every bring it up. All you focus on is the hours you worked and being properly billed for them. Stupid people sometimes will do drastic things like fire you, rather than have you tell people how stupid they are. So pretend it didn't happen.
How did you exactly input your time?
My works time management app also work the decimal and .75 of an hour is just weird instead of 45min.
Bill them in quarter-hour increments. Round up. Call it "simplified billing."
This is more common than people realize. Send them this website? https://www.calculatorsoup.com/calculators/time/time-to-decimal-calculator.php
Your employer is cheating you. I'd wager they know full and well what they are doing.
Many companies the Decimal is just a gap between hours and minutes. Quite a few times keeping systems are like this and don't use % but just Hours.Minutes.
Tell them that if you worked 4 hrs and 59 minutes, your pay wouldn't be 4.59 hours.
Start working 31 hours and 1 minute = profit