>All your overtime are belong to us

>

[Administrative person] sent an email the other day. I won’t quote the full email here, as I don’t dislike her, but her decision (if it is in fact her decision) boils down to this:

Our overtime will now come at the end of the semester.

This is a contract job. We agree to work a set number of hours each month for a basic salary. Any hours above that number are over the time we specified (overtime? Hmmm) and we receive a special hourly pay rate. Normally, this is tallied and added on to the basic salary the month following.

For example, I work 70 hours the month of March. 64 of those hours net me 4000 RMB. In February, I worked 76 hours, 12 over the set number. Multiply it by the overtime rate, add it on to March’s basic salary, and BAM, I can now afford large coffees with several espresso shots.

Seems simple? She doesn’t think so, which brings me to her reason: unknown.

She said she has trouble adding it up each month, and doing this will make it easy for her. For her. As random as it seemed, there might be a good reason for it.

One that’s as closely guarded as the end of the semester. As all information here is.