Not allowed to leave work during Lunch break?

ohreally

Ask them to pay for your break if they insist you remain on-site.

While your on-site how do they define you are having a break if you may be called upon to provide cover during this time?

carolannjo

I agree with the other posters. You are not in charge and responsible for the safety of the one person left if you exit your workplace..............they are!!!! As the break is unpaid you do not have to do as they request. If they do insist then you should make sure you are being paid for it.
It does sound however that you don't really want to rock the boat as it were and take this up with them. I can understand this as you have mentioned having been made redundant. If this is indeed the case you may be stuck with the situation until your other colleague comes back.
Have you already explained about your doggy?????

Stageshoot

ohreally wrote: »

Ask them to pay for your break if they insist you remain on-site.

While your on-site how do they define you are having a break if you may be called upon to provide cover during this time?

We extend lunch to cover any lost time,

EG today my lunch was 1pm - 2pm my collegue took a call whilst I was on lunch so I returned to my desk for 10mins and logged my phone in just in case another call came in whilst she took the initial call, after she finished I logged out and returned to my lunch and extended it to cover the xtra 10 mins,

Not so bad when it happens once, but some times you can get 3 calls in the hour, then you are bouncing back and forward like a loon for nearly 2 hours! :rolleyes:

Stageshoot

carolannjo wrote: »

I agree with the other posters. You are not in charge and responsible for the safety of the one person left if you exit your workplace..............they are!!!! As the break is unpaid you do not have to do as they request. If they do insist then you should make sure you are being paid for it.
It does sound however that you don't really want to rock the boat as it were and take this up with them. I can understand this as you have mentioned having been made redundant. If this is indeed the case you may be stuck with the situation until your other colleague comes back.
Have you already explained about your doggy?????

In a way I am reluctant to rock the boat, like you say this is a fairly new position after I was made redundant when my last employer closed down their weekend out of hours operation, and to be honest finding an employer that does this type of work and pays a decent wage for working just weekends is hard enough.

So I am lucky to have a job that fits the hours I want and pays enough to live on. It has got a lot more regular over the last 6 weeks as we have a person in the team taking a lot of sick or holiday time, so with luck when that resolves things will calm down a bit, but with only 3 staff there will always be about 30% of the time when there is someone off!.

Dont want to stick my head above the parapet too much at the moment, but will pop in and speak to management during the week and try and get some general clarification.

Thanks Guys for all the comments and help, it is appreciated :beer:

carolannjo

Good luck with it, hope it all works out for you. Can fully respect your reason for not sticking your head above that parapet, cos I am sure I would be exactly the same!!

juliescot

I agree that in the real world rather than on here the reality can seem a lot trickier to deal with that batting posts back and forth.

Perhaps you can think of solutions that will help the company and yourself of course.

Management tend not to look kindly on people who appear and say, there is a problem, but have a much more benign attitude to those who recognise that there may be some issues and come up with suggestions for solving them.

Not for a minute suggesting that you rewrite company policy, however if it is important to you that you get home to let the dog out, for example, and the company are putting obstacles, of whatever sort, in the way can you think of a way round this?

Savvy_Sue

Reading your latest posts, it sounds as if you want to think quite carefully about what you do.

If the management reconsiders their attitude to lone working over the lunch hour, how long might it be before they wonder whether they actually need 3 people in all day? Might they not want to change the working pattern so that no-one works a full day, but lunchtime is covered?

And what effect does THAT have on your pay packet?

If there is no direct risk from the public, and it's a normal office environment, then it's not difficult to work out safeguards for lone working. And if you don't NEED 3 people there, why pay 3 people for a full day?

Out of interest, what happens if one of the two people contracted to work goes sick on the day? ie you've already got one person off, and then another person is unable to work at short notice?

I do agree that thinking of solutions is always worthwhile. Could you take the dog to work with you?

Stageshoot

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

Reading your latest posts, it sounds as if you want to think quite carefully about what you do.

If the management reconsiders their attitude to lone working over the lunch hour, how long might it be before they wonder whether they actually need 3 people in all day? Might they not want to change the working pattern so that no-one works a full day, but lunchtime is covered?

And what effect does THAT have on your pay packet?

If there is no direct risk from the public, and it's a normal office environment, then it's not difficult to work out safeguards for lone working. And if you don't NEED 3 people there, why pay 3 people for a full day?

Out of interest, what happens if one of the two people contracted to work goes sick on the day? ie you've already got one person off, and then another person is unable to work at short notice?

I do agree that thinking of solutions is always worthwhile. Could you take the dog to work with you?

We were told when we started that the 3 people was a short term prospect as the business grew this new project, the eventual plan is to go 24/7/365 in house rather than subbing out the nights to a message facility and that the teams would get bigger therefore negating the problem.

As for staffing, weekday is over 150 people, so 2/3 rattling around the place at weekends is really minimum.

As for what happens if 1 is sick and 1 on holiday, the emergency person is 2 hours drive away, so the 1 left sits outside till the EME arrives unless the sick one informs the night before.

After 5 months this has not happened yet although today we found out the company has won the client that my old employer lost which led to my redundancy in the first place, so with this large client coming on board then that should speed up the shift increases. (We can only hope)

As for taking the dog to work!

You really would not want this 70lbs of stupid running around the office.

MothballsWallet

It sounds to me like this company has put their procedures in place for a small group, and then never bothered to improve or update them as they got bigger - which is stupid and short-sighted of them, but often very typical of some companies in this country.

borders_dude

How very odd!

I am a lone worker, so going by the thinking off the bosses of the OP I must be in danger!

The argument someone cant be left alone at work is complete tosh I would have said!