Should I put in time for when I check my blackberry?

June 11, 2009 9:57 AM

Is it ethical to submit an extra 15 minutes of work per day because I got a blackberry?

I work for a large corporation and for about 5 years, I've gotten away with not having a blackberry. When I'm needed during off hours, my boss called me on my cell phone and it's been fine.

Recently, I missed an e-mail sent on a Sunday night asking to come in early Monday. (We have the ability to access e-mail through a website but we have to go through about 4 pages of security logins so it's a bit of a pain. Additionally, I am not online much on the weekends.) I came in my usual time and when I logged in, I saw the e-mail and felt awful. I spoke with my boss and applied for a blackberry.

Now, every morning and evening, I spend a few minutes checking it and replying to messages, etc. I get paid hourly and consider checking the blackberry work. Therefore, I have been adding an extra 15 minutes each day to my time sheet.

Is this ethical? Is this something that could get me into trouble?

(I am in my late 20s and this is my first real job. Within the past 6 months, there has been a lot of "restructuring" within the company. Other people with my title do not have a blackberry, but I work for a small, specialized unit and do a lot more than what I was initially hired for.)

posted by anonymous to work & money (45 comments total)

...You probably won't get caught, but it still feels hinky to me. I could see you doing that if you were actually working on something at home -- i.e., you get an email from someone working late asking if you can redraft that memo or the whatever and send it back into the office for them -- but just checking email in and of itself strikes me as pushing it a little.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:01 AM on June 11 [2 favorites]

It's ethical. For your own peace of mind, why not check with your immedieate supervisor?
posted by rumsey monument at 10:02 AM on June 11

Check with your boss - if s/he wants you to use the Blackberry for work outside of your work hours, you must be paid for it since you are an hourly employee.

However, it's best to record the actual time vs. an average. It might be 10 minutes one week and 30 the next - timecard should always be accurate and honest.
posted by Twicketface at 10:03 AM on June 11

If you'd been checking your email via the website would you have submitted this as work?

Whether you're ethically justified in doing this is really irrelevant. If everyone on ask.metafilter tells you this is absolutely acceptable behavior but your boss thinks you're milking them then that really doesn't keep you from potentially "getting into trouble," does it? The real point here is whether or not your boss finds it acceptable. You need to just talk to him about it to find out where he stands and then act accordingly.

(I routinely check my email when I'm not in work and it would never occur to me to claim that time as "working," but I've always been salaried in such situations).
posted by Polychrome at 10:03 AM on June 11 [1 favorite]

Checking and replying to business e-mail is work. Your contract might stipulate something else, but I think that meets the commonsense definition of work. You're not doing it for your own benefit, but for theirs, right?
posted by bluejayk at 10:04 AM on June 11 [1 favorite]

You have officially joined the ranks of working for free. Congratulations! We've been waiting for you.
posted by fusinski at 10:04 AM on June 11 [13 favorites]

Do you subtract any time you spend taking care of personal stuff (or asking questions on the internet)? If so then I think you're justified.
posted by IanMorr at 10:06 AM on June 11 [3 favorites]

The key distinction is that he is an hourly employee. Really, they have to compensate him for time he spends doing work, or else prevent him from actually doing it. Read those Department of Labor posters in the breakroom.
posted by bluejayk at 10:06 AM on June 11 [1 favorite]

In terms of justification for or against, I will play devil's advocate for a moment: Do you use that blackberry for anything else besides work? Personal calls, internet, personal e-mail, etc? Because the company is paying for the blackberry and the service, maybe take the fact that you have a nifty new toy as payment instead of the extra 15minutes on your time sheets? (Even if you didn't want the nifty new toy in the first place)
posted by Grither at 10:08 AM on June 11

if your company is large enough, I bet they have a policy about this. Probably best just to ask.

Ethically speaking, I think if someone just sends you a message "come in at 8 tomorrow," and you read it, it's kind of hard to call that work. But if you're getting messages which require your response outside of normal hours, that is ABSOLUTELY work, and don't let any little "BUT ARE YOU WORKING EVERY SECOND YOU'RE IN YOUR CUBICLE???" narcs tell you different.
posted by drjimmy11 at 10:10 AM on June 11 [1 favorite]

Recently, I missed an e-mail sent on a Sunday night asking to come in early Monday ... I came in my usual time and when I logged in, I saw the e-mail and felt awful.

What? Don't feel awful. If they wanted to be sure you came in early on Monday they should've told you on Friday, or (though I'd consider this rude) they should've called Sunday night to be sure they got ahold of you. Blackberry or no, you shouldn't be expected to immediately read any email sent to your company account when you're not on duty.
posted by contraption at 10:11 AM on June 11 [12 favorites]

If it takes you 15 minutes to check your Blackberry, you're doing something wrong. I can look at mine and tell in less than 10 seconds whether I have something I should pay attention to. And another 30 seconds to read it - if I need to.

Go ahead and ask your boss what he thinks. Good way to get a reputation as a slacker.
posted by John Borrowman at 10:12 AM on June 11 [4 favorites]

Ask your supervisor about billing for out-of-work-hours work. If it's permissible, bill when you do something substantial outside of work. It is not ethical to just tack fifteen minutes a day onto your billing because you have a blackberry and may intersect with your work duties when you're technically off the clock.

Come up with your own rule of thumb when to bill and when not. Personally, I don't typically bill for reading a case on the bus, but if I wake up in the middle of the night with an epiphany on how to plead a case, get out of bed and make notes, I will bill for that time.
posted by crush-onastick at 10:14 AM on June 11

I don't know the details of your contract, but I currently consult. Anything that relates to a client in any way, unless it is me pitching more work, is billed. If I am required to check for notes/emails regarding Monday morning on a Sunday, that's 15 minutes billed. There is no ethical issue period here unless your contract specifically states terms on this.
posted by spicynuts at 10:16 AM on June 11 [1 favorite]

Talk to your boss. Since you work hourly and not on a salary, you need to be paid for your work. That's law, not ethics.

Ask your boss how they want you to handle it.
posted by Argyle at 10:18 AM on June 11 [1 favorite]

Does claiming the extra 15 minutes cause you to go into overtime? When I worked hourly if I put more than 8 hours on my timesheet, I would get overtime for the extra time worked. For this reason, I was very very rarely asked to work overtime.
posted by betsybetsy at 10:19 AM on June 11

Are you doing something that your boss considers part of your job description? It seems that the answer is clearly "yes." So, it seems to me that you are clearly working. Ethically, I'd say you are in the clear.

Professionally, it's a bit murkier your company should not expect you to work off the clock. But they might expect it anyway. They might even attempt to offer a justification.

To be safe, it might be best to run the practice past your boss. Beware though, once your boss knows that you are willing to "just check your e-mail" at night, he might start asking you to do a little more here and there. You'll have to be vigilant against having to do more and more work off the clock (often described as nothing more than "helping out").
posted by oddman at 10:20 AM on June 11

I saw the e-mail and felt awful. I spoke with my boss and applied for a blackberry

You applied for the blackberry? Sorry, but that's basically asking your boss if you can do a lot of extra work for free. I don't think you're justified in tacking on extra minutes to you timesheet. If I were in your boss's shoes I would be paying you for supervised work where I had a reasonable idea of what task you were working on. That means your time starts when you come to work and ends when you leave. At home checking emails or whatever other work you are thinking of doing is on your own time. If you are really upset about the extra work I suggest returning the blackberry and making sure they know to call you (but read the situation first. this might not be an option anymore).

Most importantly though:
Please, please do not ask your boss if its ok. If you really have to ask, do not mention that you've already been adding 15 minutes to your time. That will probably get you fired.
posted by scrutiny at 10:25 AM on June 11 [2 favorites]

If you're paid for your work on an hourly basis, and you spend 15 minutes or more on your Blackberry, that's real work and you should bill for that time. But I would err on the side of caution and under-estimate down to the nearest quarter-hour unless it is common practice in your industry to bill in 6-minute increments or some other more granular scheme.

I have web-based access to my work email, but I wouldn't consider billing that time just for simply checking email; however, I wouldn't hesitate for writing, responding, calendering, or even a serious bout of miscellaneous email management as long as those tasks were urgent (i.e. not just shifting work that should have been done at your desk but didn't get finished thanks to MeFi).

Also, the mere fact that your employer provided you with a toy doesn't negate the extra work. This would only be relevant when you are using that toy for personal reasons in a way that imposes costs over and above the basic service plan. I wouldn't under bill my time in exchange for a blackberry's theoretical fun-time sudoku functionality or whatever.

On preview: I don't buy that asking for the blackberry means you offered to work for free. If you asked for a second monitor for your PC and were given one, would that mean half of your desk work should be free? Whenever tasks performed on a blackberry are tasks that would have been billed for in the office, you should be paid for that time. What you don't get to do is use at-home blackberry time to pad your hours substantially for self-generated tasks (i.e. making work for yourself, rather than responding to work-making communication from others) without prior approval.
posted by onshi at 10:29 AM on June 11

Do you have an application that can track the precise number of minutes you spend doing this (a lawyer friend has one that tracks all emails to specific clients and tracks down to the .25minute she spends on them, no matter the time of day- although this relates to billing practices and not her base salary)?

Agree with the above posters who said if you add in an extra few minutes here and there, it can keep building up and up whether your boss is intentionally taking advantage or not. You aren't being paid to be 'on call'.

All of these are 'if' situations, and your supervisor's opinion trumps all. Make sure to clarify that unless you clearly work out another arrangement with him, you are simply completely offline, say 8pm-7am and weekends. Having your first thought in the morning and last thought at night be of work seems to be a lot for you to have on your mind. No matter what you decide, communicate clearly with your boss; providing you with the support of a blackberry when you pointed out the usefulness for you in your position is a good sign that he/she will work something out with you.
posted by variella at 10:30 AM on June 11

A friend of mine automatically gets 1.5 hours of comp time ("vacation" of sorts, not extra pay) if he takes a call after hours (he is also hourly). He does not have a work cell phone, but this is the policy even if he had one from his employer. He works for a large university, and has discussed this with his supervisor, so YMMV inside a private corporation. But I vote for discussing this with your boss, but I think you should be compensated as an hourly employee.
posted by sararah at 10:41 AM on June 11

Ethically speaking, you are on shaky ground. While it sounds true that you are doing extra work with the Blackberry, you should have cleared the extra work pay issue with your boss BEFORE taking the reigns.

I know a lot of companies require that hourly employees get pre-approval before they work overtime that is not scheduled. You may be violationg company policy in this respect.

I think you need to do 2 things - first stop adding 15 mins to your time card and talk to your boss and coworkers. What do they do? What does the boss want? Is it OK to add a static 15 minutes a day even though some days you may only do an extra 5 mins while others you do an extra 30? Or should your time card be totally accurate?

Secondly you should train people as much as possible that if you need to be reached out of work for an emergency (like ona Sunday night to come in early Monday) the best way to reach you is a phone call.
posted by WeekendJen at 10:45 AM on June 11

I'm a freelancer, not an hourly employee, but:

I bill for time I spend working. I don't consider checking my email to be working, because I do it routinely anyway. I do consider responding to work emails to be work, but only if the response requires thought or attention to detail on my part.

In practice the distinction is usually pretty clear: responding to "Hey are you available for a meeting at noon?" or "where is such-and-such file located?" doesn't count, unless I have to spend a lot of time digging around to find the answer, while answering "How does function X work?" does count. Unless I've already written the documentation for function X and just have to send another copy to them, in which case it doesn't.

So I'd say you're in an ethical grey area, but are pushing your luck a little bit.

(However, your example of a Sunday night email instructing you to come in early on Monday? I wouldn't find that acceptable, unless you're on 24-hour call.)
posted by ook at 10:51 AM on June 11

It's unethical to claim time that you didn't work on your time card. It is ethical to claim time that you're doing work while not at work.

Ask HR or your boss about what you can claim. If you get paid down to the minute/second on your time card then you can probably only claim the minutes and seconds you use. Which for some people could be hours a week. To help support this make sure you have "Sent from Blackberry" as part of your blackberry email footers to make auditing easier for them.

I know a few contractors/skilled hourly wage earners who have in their contracts that any client contact is rounded up to the next hour. I don't expect your company is so lavish, but they might round up to 15 minutes.

Note for future jobs: Don't apply for the business phone unless you want to work off the clock. It's not a perk for you, it's a perk for them.
posted by Ookseer at 11:03 AM on June 11

Depending on the state that you live in, your employer is required to pay you for the time that you work "after hours".

However, that being said, you really need to talk to your boss about this to see if it's okay with him, because your balckberry use would amount to an hour and 15 minutes of overtime every week based on your calculations...
posted by Hanuman1960 at 11:16 AM on June 11

It is ethical and mandatory for you to report time spent at home working for the company, but it's tough to justify simply checking your email as time spent working from home. Obviously, you bill the time you spend reading and responding to work-related emails from home, but checking to see if you got your email, that's a tough call.

Here are some guidelines: Does your work require you to spend 15 min a day checking to see if you got an email on your blackberry? Would your workplace agree with you that it requires you to spend 15 min a day checking to see if you got an email? Realistically, must you spend 15 min a day checking to see if you got an email?

Here's another question: Did you used to bill for the time you spent logging in at home to see if you got any emails? It would seem that it's a comparable act.

I don't think I'd bill for it, because it's such a passive, non-time consuming act. But that's not really the legal test. It's a pretty gray area, and can be argued both ways. Talk with your boss and co-workers about it, then your HR rep if you have one.
posted by jabberjaw at 11:20 AM on June 11

maybe take the fact that you have a nifty new toy as payment instead of the extra 15minutes on your time sheets

A nifty new toy? More like shackles when it's from your company. You are now on call 24/7. My husband's company was nice enough to give him such a neat toy and it's taken all of my willpower not to stomp it to bits in a rage on countless occasions. Like weddings and dinner dates and vacations.

Ahem.

Anyway, I don't think you are on ethically shaky ground, just that you need to clarify with your boss what your company's policy is in these circumstances.
posted by JenMarie at 11:23 AM on June 11

I bill for work done on a blackberry.
posted by Ironmouth at 11:32 AM on June 11

15 minutes a day is 5 hours a month or better than a full week every year. If you are truly spending that much time responding to emails on your own time then ya you should be getting compensated. However your boss my not want to pay you for those out of office hours in which case you should curtail that time to the bare minimum.
posted by Mitheral at 11:53 AM on June 11

I think you've made a mistake here.

When you applied for and accepted a BlackBerry from your employer, you signed a social contract, even if you don't realize it. If your immediate supervisor knows that you got one, they will likely take that as a sign that they can get in touch with you 24/7 about anything and expect a quick response, and I seriously doubt they would consider paying you for that extra time. If you're not prepared to accept that kind of responsibility and extra work, give back the BlackBerry. Don't feel bad for missing emails that come in when you're off-the-clock.

However, the real answer is to talk to your boss or someone at your company who knows the policy. Maybe they will pay you for that time, and if so, that's good. But I highly suspect that they will not pay you and that they will view you as a "slacker" (I'm not saying you are one) for even asking.
posted by joshrholloway at 11:56 AM on June 11

I agree with IanMorr. It's okay to add 15 minutes for Blackberry checking time as long as you subtract every minute that you spent doing personal stuff (browsing the web, reading Ask Metafilter, etc.)
posted by pravit at 12:22 PM on June 11

I vote against asking them what their policy is. You're an hourly employee and you bill for what you work. You owe them honesty, but nothing else, especially as an hourly employee.
posted by apetpsychic at 1:03 PM on June 11

I know labor law varies from state to state, but in Massachusetts, if you are an hourly employee, and you work outside your normal work week hours, you are technically obligated by law to report this as overtime and your employer is legally bound to pay you for that time.

I'm an hourly employee, I often get paid for overtime, and I have a Blackberry. I check my email a lot, but if nothing requires action, I do not put in for that time. If it requires immediate action (rescheduling a meeting that is happening the next day, modifying travel plans, etc) then I, of course, submit that as overtime. If you're nervous about it, I would clarify with your supervisor what is expected of you in terms of the Blackberry and any work it might trigger. I think submitting a blanket 15 minutes a day is probably not okay, but if you spend those 15 minutes working on something that cannot wait until your normal working hours, than by all means, submit with a clear conscience. The key is the time sensitive nature of the emails and if they require further action, not whether you read them.
posted by katemcd at 1:08 PM on June 11

if your job has a "no overtime without approval" stipulation, you've already fucked yourself.

do they pay for the blackberry? do they require you to check it every morning and every evening? why are you checking it every morning, you'll be at work in an hour anyway. do you read emails in those checks that you could have easily read during company time but now that you have this leash you have the compulsion to read them earlier than you would have needed to?

it really sounds like you felt social pressure to start doing more work and now you're doing even more than you were pressured to do. ask your boss to put something in the subject line if the email is time sensitive and don't read any of the others. something tells me this will take your "working off the clock time" to about 5 minutes a week at most.

you need to work this out with HR/your boss.
posted by nadawi at 1:38 PM on June 11

It is probably technically ok to do it (but nthing the "check with your supervisor") but most emails I get on my BlackBerry off-hours can wait until the morning to respond to them. If it's not an urgent matter or it's not a "Please come in early", can't you disregard those emails until you are back on the clock?
posted by getawaysticks at 2:02 PM on June 11

I'm a consultant, so this might not apply. When I'm on an hourly project, I don't charge for checking email, and I check it a lot. I also don't charge for a 1-minute response. Anything more than that, and I start my timer app and log the time I spend on the email (using Freshbooks). However, I also stop the timer app whenever I wander off to Metafilter or otherwise do non-billable work.
posted by PatoPata at 2:39 PM on June 11

contraption: "Recently, I missed an e-mail sent on a Sunday night asking to come in early Monday ... I came in my usual time and when I logged in, I saw the e-mail and felt awful.

What? Don't feel awful. If they wanted to be sure you came in early on Monday they should've told you on Friday, or (though I'd consider this rude) they should've called Sunday night to be sure they got ahold of you. Blackberry or no, you shouldn't be expected to immediately read any email sent to your company account when you're not on duty."

Shit, I agree.

I'm surprised that they expect that an hourly employee is checking email regularly over the weekend. I thought this was only for obsessive salaried managers and above.
posted by radioamy at 3:08 PM on June 11

When you applied for and accepted a BlackBerry from your employer, you signed a social contract, even if you don't realize it.

BS. The employer might like to think that's so, and certainly won't discourage scared employees from thinking otherwise, but no way in hell is it a 'social contract'.

Social contracts as a philosophical/social construct are fairly specific things, although philosophers disagree on the boundaries. It's the thing that stops me from punching you in the face if you call me a dick, allows someone else to step in and help you when I do, and means you've handed over the right to decide my punishment to the courts. It doesn't mean "I've given you that - you now must do this because you owe me!" unless you're 5 years old.

The term 'Social Contract' in common usage has become like the new Hitler or something - accuse somebody of breaking one & that has immediate connotations of "evil! lawbreaker!", so they tend to reflexively submit.

Amusingly/sadly, it's behaviour conditioned by true social contracts that makes people susceptible to the term's misuse...
posted by Pinback at 4:22 PM on June 11 [2 favorites]

"You applied for the blackberry? Sorry, but that's basically asking your boss if you can do a lot of extra work for free."

"When you applied for and accepted a BlackBerry from your employer, you signed a social contract, even if you don't realize it."

"maybe take the fact that you have a nifty new toy as payment instead of the extra 15minutes on your time sheets"

These attitudes reek of exploitation. You SHOULD get paid for work that you've done (and the law backs you up on this). Don't forget it, and don't feel guilty, and don't let other people's work ethics interfere with your compensation.
posted by timoni at 4:41 PM on June 11 [2 favorites]

timoni - but what hourly employee gets to decide his hours without approval from his boss? he should certainly be paid for all the work he's expected to do, but deciding on his own that he now needs to put in an extra 15 minutes a day is not cool in any hourly job. he's deciding to exploit himself and then expecting his job to pay him for it.
posted by nadawi at 5:12 PM on June 11

I think this really boils down do you have permission to work those 15 extra minutes on your blackberry? As in you check it twice a day, but does your boss really need/want you to do that or are you more doing it as a courtesy. You say you felt bad about not being in early when you didn't check your email, was your boss actually angry/upset and tell you you should have checked your work email before you went to bed every night? If not you are basically doing your boss a courtesy by checking it. He doesn't appear to have asked you to be on call 24 hours a day.

I've been told at my job I have to check my email at least twice a day. I've been given a blackberry knockoff to do that. I don't however bill for the time I spend checking it, however if I was typing out an email or spending inordinate about time I guess I would put for comp time. But I would only do it if the matter was urgent and something that couldn't wait until I was back at work during my normal hours. You seem to have taken this upon yourself and I would be annoyed if my employee basically found a way to do extra work that I neither asked for and probably don't find much value in.
posted by whoaali at 5:30 PM on June 11

According to the department of labor a person is employed whenever the employer "suffers or permits" work. It's really sad that this is not generally recognized, but legally your employer is not allowed to let you engage in work activity while not being paid. It's not really ambiguous, the OP is legally entitled to be compensated for the time he's spent e-mailing at home, and if his employer doesn't want to pay him/her for that, then it must tell him not to work outside of the office, otherwise, they've gotta pay. If the company tacitly permits him to do work outside of normally posted hours, it owes him compensation for that work.
posted by bluejayk at 6:14 PM on June 11 [1 favorite]

and then his company can write him up and eventually fire him for doing work that wasn't approved.
posted by nadawi at 7:25 PM on June 11 [1 favorite]

If the company tacitly permits him to do work outside of normally posted hours, it owes him compensation for that work.

That's the issue. Is pulling out your blackberry to see if you got an email considered work? And does it take 15 minutes a day to pull out your blackberry to see if you got an email from work?

If you do get an email and read it, then that is work. Similarly, if you respond to or send a work-related email, then that is work. Both should be billed.

But, for example, as an hourly employee working from home, you may be on call, but not working. If you get a phone call, then you should bill. But, you can't bill for simply hanging out knowing that you might get a phone call. (Note that there are exceptions to this "on call" rule that may require compensating for just waiting, but none of those facts have arisen here.)

The blackberry situation is similar - it's similar to waiting for a phone call, but dissimilar in that you actually have to pick it up and look it every so often to see if any new work-related emails have come in.

If your blackberry buzzes every time you get an email, but they are not work-related emails, you don't bill for checking your email. This is the same as when you answer your phone at home, and it isn't work calling - the mere fact that you were picking up the phone with a chance that it might be work calling isn't really billable.
posted by jabberjaw at 12:02 PM on June 12

Personally, I use my Blackberry to check my work email off-the-clock and check my personal email on-the-clock and call it a wash.
posted by Jacqueline at 2:33 PM on June 18