Can work force me to stay?

Have you ever felt trapped at the office?

What if you actually were trapped? Locked in so you couldn’t leave? And what if no one knows you’re there?

It sounds like the beginning of a hilarious story you tell at happy hour.

Or the beginning of a horror movie, depending on where you left your cell phone.

But in the early 20th century before the invention of cell phones, the question was mostly...

Do we have to pay this person for the time they were trapped inside?

Back in the day,

before they discovered that the working poor have feelings, too,

it was common to lock the workplace doors.

Not to protect workers from the dangers outside, but to keep the workers INSIDE.

For convenience.

Once the workday began, supervisors locked all the doors except the one. An armed guard was stationed at the only unlocked door to make sure that no one left early without authorization.

With everyone leaving at the same time, it was easier to pay everyone for the same hours and make sure that no one slacked off while they were on the clock.

Convenient, right?

Except what if there’s a fire?

Or what if you’re late in leaving at the end of the day?

There were cases of people being locked in the workplace overnight before they were discovered. Probably at least one poor schlub was trapped for a whole weekend.

Which raises an interesting question:

If you’ve been trapped in your workplace unable to leave,

eating Doritos from the vending machine for dinner and sleeping under your desk,

Should you be paid for that time?

The company’s position: You were idle. They don’t pay you to take naps and eat Doritos.

The worker’s position: I was trapped, you sociopaths! Some overtime is the least you can do.

The regulations took a different tack:

→ “Off the clock” doesn’t exist if you can’t leave. If you can’t leave, you’re under the employer’s control. If you’re under the employer’s control, it’s compensable time. Even if you’re not actually working.

→ The end of your shift is a legal boundary, not a courtesy. To force someone to stay on premises when they’re not being paid for it is unjust imprisonment.

→ Workers must have an unimpeded exit at all times. Within reason, I guess. If you’re a submarine captain or flight attendant, it’s challenging to let someone walk off the job mid-shift. But you get what they mean.

These precedents also led to concepts like show-up pay, on-call and standby rules, and rules about fire exits.

Which I think we can agree are all good and fair developments for workers.

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Is your team not as productive as you'd like when they're on the clock? Do you feel like locking your workers in is the only way to make them work hard enough? There's a better way.

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