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Thursday, August 11, 2011

What do you mean there's no 7-minute rule?

We got jacked up today right at the end of the day by the project manager. This guy never gets pissed, and he was PISSED. This leads me to believe he caught some shit from the client over our various shortcomings, but he jacked us up pretty good, over two things in particular.

The first is a common sin with the advent of the smart phone and its subsequent kudzu-like spread. Many temp projects do not allow internet access, so smart phones, such as iphones, fill the gap. People are always checking their email, listening to music, watching TV, whatever, using their smart phones. I still have a dumb phone, but I have Tetris loaded on that bad boy, so I play like a fiend while coding. I like to think of it as multitasking. Neither Tetris nor coding takes up much of my brain capacity (and this would still be true were I an aardvark) so neither activity really suffers from insufficient attention. Nonetheless, the project manager, in his late-day tirade today, let us know that constant attention to our cell phones was not confidence-inspiring for the people who believe we should be paying constant attention to the documents we are supposed to be reviewing. Fair point, at least as far as the perception of the client goes. On the other hand, I ain't no aardvark. But I digress.

The second part of his tirade (this was a pretty mild tirade, by the way -- he was only a little pissed, but this guy never gets pissed, so a little pissed for him is a tirade. I do not mean to imply that he was in any way wrong. We're temps -- we'll take advantage any way we can.) involved a time-honored tradition known as th 7-minute rule. A little background: Temps usually bill their time in 15-minute increments. Obviously, a temp's actual time worked does not always fit these parameters. For instance, consider a project that allows a 10-hour maximum, requires a half-hour break for any work over 8 hours and only allows a 10.5 hour window to achieve the 10 hours, say, 8:30 am to 7 pm. Under that scenario, if you arrive at 8:35 am, you cannot work 10 hours and thus are screwed. Enter the 7-minute rule.

You are allowed to round, a wonderful mathematical concept that allows you to turn 3.5 into 4 and 8 minutes into 15. So, if you arrive at 8:35 am and stay until 7 pm, and take your mandatory 30 minute break, you can round up from 9 hours, 55 minutes to 10 hours. Basically, if you get 8 out of 15 minutes, you can round up to the full 15. I think trying to do this for every quarter-hour of the day would be a good way to get fired, but temps have been doing this with regard to the last quater-hour of the day since time immemorial. In other words, the temps will arrive at 8:30 am sharp, but leave at 6:53 pm and round up. The 7-minute rule.

Well, apparently too many people have been doing this too often on this project, because that was item number 2 in the project manager's tirade. We were informed in no uncertain terms that "There is no such thing as the 7-minute rule." My guess is, the client gave him some shit because pretty much everybody seemed to be leaving at 6:53. They apparently have this crazy notion that they are paying for a full 10 hours. Supifdat?

Anyway, my prediction is that a lot of people who have been arriving at or before 8:30 am will now arrive at 8:37 am. Math still rules, and rounding is a rule of math. Suck it, bitches.

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