Also, I feel the phone is a big time waster in many cases because then people feel the need to chat: “Hi, how are things? What’s new?” … that sort of thing. Even if I talk to a client five times that day there seems to be this rule about being polite and asking them how they are (and vice versa) every time we talk, whereas you can get to the point quicker in email.

I disagree profoundly that there is a difference in intelligence or quality between hourly and salaried workers. My IT guy is smarter than my boss, for example. My friend who is the general manager of a restaurant and is paid hourly is very smart and talented and could have a much better salaried job if he wanted to, but likes being his own boss.

HOWEVER, Mike is absolutely right that salaried workers are not being paid to work as fast as they can from 9 to 5 and then peace out. They are paid to get their work done, and in some cases, to be available to respond to unexpected time-sensitive tasks during a certain time of day (say, 9 to 5). This means that it is NOT STEALING for them to spend a couple of hours looking at cute kittens in the middle of the day, and that it is NOT UNREASONABLE for them to have to spend “non-work hours” working to get their stuff done.

Introverts and extroverts also have very different ideas of how much social contact at work is excessive and distracting. I highly recommend the opening chapters of Marti Olsen Laney’s “The Introvert Advantage,” especially if you’re an introvert in a sea of extroverts, to understand how different human brains are wired differently in regard to most effective work styles.

As for gossip/politics at work, unfortunately, as you point out, we can’t always completely ignore it. We need to be aware of what’s going on so we can deal with it effectively instead of keeping our heads in the sand till it’s too late. My own guideline is to try to avoid engaging in “gossipy” or otherwise harmful communication myself, try to keep anything I say constructive. If I would be comfortable saying it TO the person in question, then I will also say it ABOUT the person in question.

On unnecessary emails, I have one coworker who forwards everything to the entire office. Not jokes, but just random mass emails about weather or street closures. She’s on lists available publicly, so there’s no need to disrupt everyone–they can access this information themselves.

I also disagree with the hourly v. professional argument. I am a salaried professional, but there is an assumed hourly committment associated with that. As a consultant, my time is billed to clients on an hourly basis, and the equation to get to my salary is based on that. I think all positions should be based on deliverables, but that’s just not the way it is. And, my company’s policy is to limit “time theft” and use of company technology for non work uses no matter if the person is paid an annual salary or by the hour. It’s an ethical issue that extends to all employees.

Not really. You’re comparing different forms of “intelligence.” There are plenty of people who are highly intelligent (as in above-average IQ, conceptual intelligence) who are working in hourly jobs. And I’ve met people in so-called “professional” jobs who know how to fit in with the subculture but aren’t particularly flexible or adept when it comes to probing different ideas and concepts. In a word, they’d make lousy philosophers. And in the greater scheme of life, maybe the philosophers are truly more valuable, even if they aren’t seen to be so in market terms.

I don’t see the difference between the hourly jobs and the contract-based jobs as one of greater or lesser intelligence or capability, but rather as different workstyles. Hourly jobs still depend upon getting a certain amount of work done, not simply upon being a warm body occupying space for X hours per day. Last I checked, hourly employees are, like their salaried counterparts, held accountable for productivity. And a GOOD manager allows a measure of flexibility and autonomy for hourly employees and recognizes that most human beings thrive under such conditions. Again, it’s a matter of a reasonable balance.

Salaried employees are paid on the assumption that they will work a minimum number of hours per week, or at least produce the amount of work expected to be produced in that minimum number of hours per week. If you are an exceptional person who can crank out top-quality work in the labor equivalent of cramming for the final exam, well, lucky you. Most people find they work more hours, not fewer, than the non-salaried, hourly employees, and “company time” is usually too filled with either productive things to get done or else the endless meetings everyone else is b*tching about.

Frankly, if I were an employer (and I am a supervisor in my current position), I would be less than impressed with the attitude of entitlement your posts are suggesting, as well as with the condescension towards your hourly-wage coworkers as some kind of lesser beings who aren’t capable of the same kind of autonomy as a salaried project-based employee. The view you are espousing is not an immutable truth but rather one way of viewing and valuing work. Other ways are possible–and, in case you didn’t guess by now, I would say desirable.

Still, during a particularly flush week here at Unclutterer Central, Erin probably finds herself with the odd spare hour here or there and can either devote it to her family, to growing her business, or to goofing off. My bet would be that she’s doing a lot of the first two and not much of the third.

@Karyn wrote: “I think what all of us owe our employers is a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay.” NOT TRUE. Hourly employees yes, professionals no. I don’t owe my employer one clock minute, and neither does any other professional. What we owe our employers is performance according to the terms of our contract. That means deliverables turned in on time and of sufficient quality. That’s it. This isn’t grade school; there is no extra credit and we don’t get brownie points for being in our seat when the bell rings. My time is mine, my methods are mine, my approach is mine… all that matters at the end of the day is: Did I meet the bottom line? And if I did, I get paid and my contract continues. If I did not? Fired and contract ends. Very simple. This fundamental shift of responsibility from overseer to laborer is the very essence of the difference between hourly employee and professional, and is at the root of why hourly employees who goof off are stealing from their employers and pros are not.

That’s why I’m here on Unclutterer right now. I’m ahead of schedule on all my projects so I can goof off a little. My employer doesn’t care one whit. But if I was hourly and I sat here reading blogs and ignoring incoming customer calls, then we’d have a problem, right? And to complete the analogy, if I fail to complete a deliverable, my employer doesn’t care why. Whether I goofed off or was sick too many days or was incompetent or was just unlucky — not my employer’s problem. There are no excuses in a professional’s world. The word “excuse” ceases to exist.

Look at the example of Karyn’s hourly work with her overnight job. Her responsibility was to be there during the scheduled time interval and intervene to whatever extent was necessary to keep the reports going on time. If she sat there surfing the web while a report was failing to print, and her boss caught her, she would have gotten in trouble. That’s because it was her boss’s responsibility to see to it that her post was covered. If she is surfing the web as an hourly employee and her boss doesn’t find something else productive for her to do, her boss is the one who answers to the upper-ups, not Karyn.

In point of fact, I think you GENERALLY CAN judge a person’s brain by the label of their position within a company. That’s why companies are set up the way they are — because it generally works. Everyone thinks they’re a unique snowflake and that they’re the exception, but in most cases a cigar is just a cigar. In fact, yes, the MBA who wears a monkey suit and speaks in business buzzwords IS usually smarter than the junior assistant IT guy. The IT guy THINKS he is smarter because he has specialized knowledge about a subject PHB doesn’t, but the truth is that PHB has more useful knowledge about the broader picture of how the business functions and the landscape of the business’s market, and that knowledge produces more money for the company. Bottom line. So IT guy can snicker all he wants that PHB didn’t know the difference between GSM and CDMA. The company doesn’t care, because IT guy doesn’t know the difference between East Asian market liquidity and South Asian market liquidity, but the PHB does, and the latter is more useful knowledge for the company to make money.

Those of you who think I’m just being a big jerk or whatever: get over yourselves and read again. I’m telling you the road map to getting a better job. The fundamental concept that people stuck in hourly jobs have failed to learn is that you have to be willing to stake your job on your performance. After all, if YOU won’t bet on yourself, why should someone else? Until you understand that, you’re going to be stuck punching a clock and resenting the micromanagement of a pointy-haired supervisor. Improve yourself, maximize your skill in a specialization, and then put your stones on the table and earn your just reward. Best of luck to all of you.

Ethical principles apply to everyone, not just to those with less power and prestige in the corporate structure. Whoever you are, if you’re at work, you’re not getting paid to dink around on the Net. I realize that effective work includes taking brief respites, but that’s true of everyone: If it’s O.K. for one employee to take a short brain break, it’s O.K. for any employee to take a short brain break.

And, as many of you reading Unclutterer probably know, you can’t judge the caliber of the employee’s brain by the label on her or his position in the company.

That being said, I’d also like to point out that sometimes hourly-wage jobs do have “down” time, gaps in which one might be able to read, write, or surf the Net without penalty. Some years ago I worked overnight computer operations, and my primary duty was to cover the shift and make sure the overnight end-of-day processing ran smoothly and that all reports were printed and distributed. On slow nights, everything went smoothly, there were relatively few reports to print, and if there were no odds-and-ends projects to work on I was free to do whatever I damned well pleased, short of stripping and dancing naked through the halls. In contrast, I’ve known salaried “professionals” who never had a free minute all their own, in or out of the office.

I think what all of us owe our employers is a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay. That means neither screwing off nor selling our souls, hardworking but humane and sane.

You might be a professional who is letting your company treat you like hourly (in which case you’re getting the short straw), or you’re an hourly employee, plain and simple, and don’t have the pull you think you have.

Ask yourself: If your current project FAILS, are YOU the one who will be held responsible (meaning get fired)? If so, you might be a professional getting treated (unjustly) like an hourly employee. But if your supervisor is the one who will get sacked, not you, then sorry, you’re not what you think you are.