Shutterstock

Imagine working at a summer camp where the kids stay overnight. It could be a lot of fun!

What would you do if you were told not to work overtime? Would you stop hanging out with the kids right at 5pm unless you were scheduled to work overnight, or would you interact with them anyway because that’s what camp is all about?

In this story, a summer camp used to pay their employees a flat weekly rate, but when they switched to an hourly rate, they told the employees to stop working at 5pm. That made a noticeable change in the employees’ take home pay and the enjoyment of the camp for the children.

Let’s read all about it.

“You must clock out at 5” or How to Alienate an Entire Team Doing Free Overtime.

Over a couple of summers, I worked for an overnight summer camp program for a local college. This program specializes in teaching kids technical skills (i.e. Programming, Robotics, etc).

My job was to plan, create, and instruct a weeklong course based on a specific technology.

During the day, we would focus on teaching, while we did typical summer camp stuff during the night.

Here’s how the employees got paid.

For those who haven’t worked at a camp, typically the industry standard is to be paid at a weekly rate.

The hours working can vary wildly between whether or not one worked overnight on a certain day or was helping with camp duties. Thus, a per week rate simplifies the process.

People who worked overnights were paid a premium, but everyone considered the pay fair “for a week’s work.”

Now, here’s the problem with the class OP was teaching.

For my program, I was tasked with teaching a class about a set of hardware. Every student would get to take this hardware home with them at the end of the week.

So, in the class, we would set up the hardware, show off some cool things they can do with it, and then let them loose at the end of the week to use the hardware.

The issue was, however, that the hardware is the anti-thesis of reliable. Each day, a quarter of the class’ new hardware would break down. There were a couple parts in the hardware that had a 1 in 2 chance of failing within a couple hours of installation.

If a student had lucked out with perfect hardware, they were golden. However, many would have to have their hardware parts cycled out multiple times until it would be consistently working.

He took it upon himself to make sure the hardware worked.

By the end of each program, we were usually able to ensure that the student’s hardware would be in reliably working fashion for them to take home. However, that assurance did not come without sacrifice.

Every night I had off, every break I was given, every moment I could spare was spent in the classroom working on the various non-functioning hardware. This hardware was necessary for me to be able to teach the class.

At the end of the program, the parents and the students expected the hardware to be perfectly functioning by the end of the week. Parents could not just send the hardware back for repairs, y’know.

Thus, I understood that it was my responsibility spend my free time fixing the hardware. After all, I was getting paid “for a week’s work.” It wasn’t too bad to fiddle with cables in an air conditioned room away from kids.

Here’s the reality…

However, I won’t sugarcoat and say that it wasn’t an frustrating experience.

But I was able to make it work and the parents always left the program satisfied with what their child brought home.

In addition, I was not the only one doing things for the camp outside of working for kids.

There were various activities that counselors worked on and helped out with that would make camp more exciting and fun. This involved preparing pranks, skits, activities, or even just briefly joining an on-duty night counselor’s activity to lighten the load.

It sounds like they worked well as a team.

Even if you were not on-duty during the night, you were usually doing something for the camp.

This involvement helped create a fun and engaging camp experience for both campers and counselors.

These summers were some of the most enjoyable and rewarding experiences I have ever had.

However, going into what would become my final season, some major changes were made.

The payment system changed.

The administration announced that for the next season we would be getting paid on an hourly rate.

This move immediately came off as weird to most of us. I mean, weekly rates have always been the industry standard at every camp job I worked before.

There was a rumor that one of the new guys that quit last year complained that he was being ripped off for how many hours they worked, but no one could prove if the rumor was true.

Quick aside: Weekly rates when divided by hours worked can look like a ripoff. But this is no industry secret. You’re getting paid to hang out with kids. Most of the time, it’s pretty laid back. Regardless, one’s weekly take is still higher that what one would make at a 40-hour minimum wage job.

This could be a really good thing for the employees.

Either way, our director (who reports to the administration, but is typically on our side and handles in-the-moment personnel and client issues) assured us by showing that the hourly rate is higher than what the weekly rate was considering our hours.

I like money, so I was excited to finally get a pay raise going into the new season.

First day of the season was pretty typical of how first days go. I had the first night off, so I was preparing myself to fix the Mt. Kilimanjaro of hardware already on my desk.

During training, they were instructing us that we needed to clock out at 5 if we weren’t working at night.

They didn’t think admin was serious.

Now, that is typically when those who have off are let free.

However, since everyone usually did something for the camp during their off nights, we figured that we were supposed to just punch out whenever we were done with our tasks.

No one actually thought that they expected us to *STOP* working at 5.

Well, 5:12 comes and I am still just cleaning up my room from the day, when for some reason an admin walks in.

Uh-oh!

Admin: What are you doing?

Me: Oh, just cleaning up, then I got to…

Admin: Did you clock out?

Me: Well, no I still…

Admin: You MUST clock out at 5.

He understood.

A switch flipped inside my brain at that moment.

You see, I was no longer being paid “for a week’s work.” I was getting paid for how many hours I worked and the administration would not allow me to go over their allotted hours.

My mentality changed immediately.

Time to comply.

So I responded:

Me: Ok. Sounds good.

I leave the room as is and lock the door.

Admin: Don’t do it again, or you will be written up.

It was actually a bad deal for the employees.

It didn’t take long for us to realize that was a veiled scheme for the administration to cut everyone’s pay.

By offering a higher hourly rate than what we got before, they were able to convince most of the veterans to come back thinking they were getting a raise. When, actually, we were forced to work less hours.

Everyone’s weekly take was significantly less than what they were in previous years.

In addition, since it was a flat hourly rate, overnight counselors made twice as much as those who did not. Even though the overnight gig requires significantly less focus, preparation, and effort compared to the day programs.

This sounds like it’ll be a worse experience for the kids.

Everyone was mad.

It soon became the norm that once their “shift” ended, they were done for the day.

Gone are the prepared skits and activities. Those who had their nights off simply retreated to their room or went out.

We weren’t getting paid “for a week’s work” so why bother making it special.

This is awful.

In the case of my class, that meant that I stopped repairing hardware in my free time. I then only repaired hardware during class periods.

This caused the class to slow to a halt.

By the end of the first program, my class was only able to get through about half of the material and 20% students had to go home with non-functioning hardware.

I felt terrible, I genuinely did. But what could I do?

Nobody was happy.

Camp received some pretty rotten emails from those parents that week, but everyone stood up for me knowing how much time was taken from me to fix.

That’s pretty much how much of that summer went. The magic of camp was lost and in its place were increasingly upset parents.

Most of the veterans, including all directors and leads, left at the end of the summer.

The camp still continued on, but for my friends and I, it was no longer the place that was pretty alright “for a week’s work.”

I feel the saddest for the kids. They probably wondered why all the extra fun stuff like pranks and skits ended too. I’m sure kids and parents who had been to this camp before noticed the change. And let me guess. They probably increased the cost to go to the camp too.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

When will they learn?

This person thinks they know which camp it is.

Another person thinks they worked at this camp.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a cashier and manager who came together to help a truck driver from another country.

This person currently has the same job as OP at this camp.

It’s sad that they tricked the employees into taking a pay cut, but it’s even sadder for the kids. They’re paying the same rate for camp (or possibly more), but the experience isn’t as great since the employees are told not to work overtime.

Nobody wins in this situation. The employees are unhappy. The kids are unhappy. The parents are unhappy. This sounds like a camp that won’t survive.