{"id":6043,"date":"2025-05-24T18:50:59","date_gmt":"2025-05-25T00:50:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/?p=6043"},"modified":"2025-05-26T11:38:21","modified_gmt":"2025-05-26T17:38:21","slug":"zeitmeister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/?p=6043","title":{"rendered":"Zeitmeister"},"content":{"rendered":"

While I was employed by Schneider Electric<\/a> (an energy conservation business) one of my many tasks was to collect \u201ctimecards\u201d or \u201chours worked\u201d by our large group of field project management people. <\/span><\/p>\n

All these people including myself were salaried employees but the accounting department wanted reports on actual hours worked and especially where. They said \u201cfor job costing\u201d to apply hours as a job cost factor.<\/p>\n

Salaried employees are suppose to be exempt from reporting hours as we are paid and judged by performance, not hours worked. Most of us expended well over the \u201cnormal\u201d 40 hour work week. <\/span><\/p>\n

None of us ever \u201cpunched a time clock\u201d and we could not be docked for hours short or rewarded (overtime) for more hours worked. <\/span><\/p>\n

But the time reporting was still a company requirement.<\/p>\n

I became the \u201ccontact person\u201d in our construction department to whom everyone reported their weekly time. One of my tasks was to contact any \u201clate reporter\u201d for their time. Accounting thought it would be \u201cfriendlier\u201d if a Construction department manager put on the squeeze for collection. Actually it just took the time and effort out of their<\/b> duty work load.<\/p>\n

Since my surname is German, I was tagged as the \u201cZeitmeister\u201d A reasonable invention of german words Zeit (time) and Meister (master). No idea if it is a real German language word. But is sounds like it should be one.<\/p>\n

It was also a bit humorous. Since I talked and had contact with most everyone in every department, I was a known friendly face for the Zeitmeister. The joke was, \u201cGet you time reported, or the Zeitmeister will be looking for you.\u201d. It wasn\u2019t me. It is the Zeitmeister calling them.<\/p>\n

Search the internet and there is a line of watches called Zeitmeister, So I think the name works.<\/p>\n

One employee bought me a German woodcarving (like a nut cracker but not) of  <\/span>male figure with a lot of clocks. It was displayed in my office at Schneider (U.S.) corporate headquarters. It always created an conversation topic.<\/p>\n

Now retired from Schneider Electric. BTW – Schneider sounds like a German company but is actually a French owned corporation. I took my wooden German Zeitmeister home with me. <\/span><\/p>\n

What I have been doing with all my free time is enjoying my many creative \u201cmaking\u201d hobbies. One of them is 3D printing.<\/p>\n

A small part of that, has been designing and creating 3D printed clocks. Maybe I will bring the Zeitmeister back as a real time keeper in the form of plastic printed clocks. Ha! Just musing but we will see what happens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While I was employed by Schneider Electric (an energy conservation business) one of my many tasks was to collect \u201ctimecards\u201d or \u201chours worked\u201d by our large group of field project management people.  All these people including myself were salaried employees but the accounting department wanted reports on actual hours worked and especially where. They said \u201cfor job costing\u201d to apply hours as a job cost factor. Salaried employees are suppose to be exempt from reporting...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6042,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,83],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-musing","category-schneider-electric"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6043"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6046,"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6043\/revisions\/6046"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}