The Boundaries Of Time Theft

A concern of tyrannical and legitimate business owners alike, time theft is the act on the part of an employee of exaggerating hours worked, doing nothing during paid hours, or (sometimes) working unauthorized overtime hours, all of which deprive the employer of money not earned properly if paid out.  Even so, actions that do not really steal from employers are erroneously considered time theft by some.  For instance, is having a 5-10 minute conversation with a coworker about things unrelated to the job or company while on the clock stealing from an employer?  Is there always work that demands attention at all moments across all jobs?

Hypocritically, some of the same people who think the answer is yes might hold to the contradictory idea that it is nonetheless office conversations like these that are so important to personal and corporate growth that employees must give up remote work for the good of industry.  As in, laughing about non-professional matters with coworkers is supposedly terrible because it detracts from profit-generating labor (as opposed to potentially making them emotionally invested in their office culture), but it is also so "foundational" to sustaining the workplace that remote work is a monstrous scourge.  Neither of these things is true!

As long as the work gets done each week on time, it gets done, even if there are regular breaks for eating or talking.  There is no need to rush to finish a week's worth of work on a Monday (if the work schedule is standard; it might not be), even though some employers or managers might make assumptions regardless.  If you finish the work for the full week or most of it, depending on if this is doable given the job, early in the workweek, they might think you are simply being lazy and frivolous for the rest of the week.  If you do it throughout the week, there likely will be "free" time, which they might likewise object to even if there is nothing automatically valid about this response.  Certain managers truly have nothing to do for their own role other than contrive excuses to micromanage employees, and illogical charges of time theft might be an easy way to fill their own time.

They can overlook how some jobs by their very nature involving waiting time, like a receptionist position at a small business.  The role is needed, but there is not necessarily a constant flow of work to be done throughout the entire shift.  Part of the job is by nature objectively reactive.  No matter what a productivity-obsessed employer believes, there is literally not always something to do at every job while someone is clocked in.  Some jobs might require constant, direct labor.  Others do not.  All the same, the latter sort of jobs might still call for having someone in a paid standby position, though hours might pass without anything getting done or truly needing attention.  Having someone available to perform tasks as they arise and paying them during that waiting period is still vital, and the employee talking with coworkers or engaging in personal reading on the clock in such an interval would absolutely not be time theft.

Companies that ruthlessly react to even non-cases of time theft like this are very likely to steal from their employees by underpaying them for their hours or years of labor, not paying for all time spent working, or some other such bullshit.  Oh, and Biblically, withholding wages past the very next sunset after a worker's shift ends is theft (Leviticus 19:13, Deuteronomy 24:14-15).  Practically all conventional companies in America are guilty of this!  The most devastating and widespread time theft occurs when thriving corporations that could easily pay their workers genuinely livable compensation or better fail to pay wages this promptly.  Legitimate employee time theft from these same companies is trivial by comparison.