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Janitor made $270K last year in pay and benefits

madoka

madoka

Diamond Member
I should consider changing my job to something that allows me to exploit government incompetence.

http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/11/01/bart-janitor-grossed-270k-in-pay-and-benefits-last-year/

Liang Zhao Zhang’s job is to clean up BART stations in downtown San Francisco and clean up he does: He swept in $162,000 in overtime pay last year, records show.

Call Zhang the super janitor, an extraordinarily high earner in a field where the beloved school custodian rarely brings home more than $50,000 a year.

Zhang grossed $235,000 in 2015, four times more than his base pay as a janitor. Benefits brought his total cost of employment at the rail agency to more than $270,000. And records show this isn’t the first time he raked in six-figure compensation at BART. Zhang received a combined $682,000 in pay and benefits over the last three years.

“Where do I sign up?” joked Lionel Hsu, a BART rider on Tuesday.

But Hsu, who commutes by BART from his home in Contra Costa County to Oakland, said he doesn’t fault workers who take advantage of OT shifts to make more money. “It’s BART’s fault too,” he said. “It’s poor management, it’s poor financial planning.”
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They only have to pay health care and other benefits once, so overtime can make more sense than hiring a second employee. In this case it sounds like they should add 2 more people instead.
 
Considering all the crazy stuff that happens at BART I'd say he probably earns his pay. I don't even want to start thinking about the kind of stuff that gets found in the bathrooms. He sure earns it a hell a lot more than big head honcho CEOs working in ivory towers making millions.
 
Fenixgoon said:
404 outrage not found. dude worked OT - take it up with BART for allowing an infinite amount of OT to the point where a janitor does make 270k.
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If you've ever set foot in a BART station, you'd know no one cleans anything there. Nothing that would warrant regular pays, let alone $270k worth.
 
Any REAL employer with a MANAGER that isn't RETARDED would realize the overall monetary costs of paying someone time and 1/2 isnt't reational. The point simply being, I blame the manger for paying obscene princes that are unworthy in the real world
 
^This is, technically, the real world where he made that kind of money.

However, the SF is a horrible place to live COL wise. I'm not in a low-cost place now, but I would need three times the income to break even if I moved to SF, more if it was the city proper.
 
So he makes like $29/hr. Assuming time and a half for anything over 8 hrs. and Saturday and double time on Sunday which is pretty much union standard he would basically need to be on the job like 24/7/365 to pull in $235K. If he worked 12 hours days for 7 days with never a day off that would only be $153K. So, we're talking a lot of 16 hr. days. I hope he doesn't have a long drive home. If he were to fall asleep at the wheel and die in an accident any employer would be deemed negligent for allowing someone to work those hours. The elephant in the room says he sleeps 8 hrs at work. Hope he's got cable too in his hiding place at work.
 
IF he worked 16 hours per day, at $30/hr, using the BART MOU for utility worker with 5 years experience, (rounded to $30/hr, NOT counting the value of his benefits plan...which would be substantial) His first 5 days of each week would be 8 hrs @ $30 = $240 + 8 @ $45 = 360 = $600 per day.
His 6th day of the week would be at time & a half...16 hrs @ $45 = $720/day
His 7th day of the work week would be all at double time...16 @ $60/hr = $960/day

Add that up...$4,680 per week.
Times 52 weeks in a year = $243,660 per year.
Factor in a few days each year when he took his paid vacation...or sick days, $235K is very doable.
PLUS, each day he works over 12 hours, he gets paid $6.00 for a meal allowance.

I used to work construction...and I worked a BUTTLOAD of overtime every week...usually 6-12's, but sometimes 7-12's or more.

for me, 7-12's was pretty lucrative. I made about $4500 per week for 7-12's...but I COULD NOT do that day in, day out, every week...after a few months, I'd cut back to working 40 hours per week for a few weeks...then back to the grind. (keep in mind, I USUALLY commuted 4-6 hours per day on top of my work hours)

Is it POSSIBLE? Yes. IF the guy lived close to his work location, and IF he had no life outside of work.
 
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lupi said:
His base pay is 60K, that would be the first problem.
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It's San Francisco. $60k is like $10 an hour everywhere else. In NJ, that's close to what beginning teachers make.

He worked his ass off. I give the guy credit. He might be an immigrant from China so he realizes the opportunities in our great country.
 
“He is signing up for time that is also available to others — if he doesn’t take them, someone else will. Station cleanliness is a priority for us.”
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Wonder if that means they award OT by seniority so no one below him ever gets a chance to make more?

Squisher said:
So he makes like $29/hr. Assuming time and a half for anything over 8 hrs. and Saturday and double time on Sunday which is pretty much union standard he would basically need to be on the job like 24/7/365 to pull in $235K. If he worked 12 hours days for 7 days with never a day off that would only be $153K. So, we're talking a lot of 16 hr. days. I hope he doesn't have a long drive home. If he were to fall asleep at the wheel and die in an accident any employer would be deemed negligent for allowing someone to work those hours. The elephant in the room says he sleeps 8 hrs at work. Hope he's got cable too in his hiding place at work.
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gorcorps said:
Sounds like he works harder than 75% of the people bitching
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If his work is indeed 'backbreaking' as claimed I doubt like Squisher that he is actually working hard all day. Plenty of research out there that shows your work suffers a steady decline the more hours of work you heap on. For example Stanford shows the weekly productivity of a person working 60 hours a week is actually less than one working 40 hours a week. And it only gets worse the more hours you add on. Given how many hours this guy supposedly worked the numbers don't bode well for his productivity.

A spokeswoman for the Service Employees International Union, Cecille Isidro described his work as “backbreaking.”
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I'm sure there are some aspects of his job that are physically demanding but I'm sure a lot of it is walking around looking for trash to pick up. It's hard to believe there are no checks and balances to prevent this kind of stupidity but it *is* government after all.
 
SearchMaster said:
I'm sure there are some aspects of his job that are physically demanding but I'm sure a lot of it is walking around looking for trash to pick up. It's hard to believe there are no checks and balances to prevent this kind of stupidity but it *is* government after all.
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And if there were those checks and balances we'd be hearing about how the big evil government doesn't want hard workers to excel because it would make ethno-queer millennials feel inadequate, or something.
 
Ruptga said:
And if there were those checks and balances we'd be hearing about how the big evil government doesn't want hard workers to excel because it would make ethno-queer millennials feel inadequate, or something.
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He's not excelling (as far as I can tell from the article). He's just doing two workers' jobs for four workers' pay. If he were revolutionizing the way janitorial services were being done, then by all means rewards his ingenuity with extra pay. I have nothing against the guy - he's certainly working hard and I hope he's putting away a lot of money and is able to enjoy life at some point.
 
SearchMaster said:
He's not excelling (as far as I can tell from the article). He's just doing two workers' jobs for four workers' pay. If he were revolutionizing the way janitorial services were being done, then by all means rewards his ingenuity with extra pay. I have nothing against the guy - he's certainly working hard and I hope he's putting away a lot of money and is able to enjoy life at some point.
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He's going far above and beyond what's expected, that's excelling. People that bust ass day in and and day out should receive more, yes even disproportionately more. For a long time that kind of thing was billed as the American Dream. There's definitely a double standard here.
 
Keep in mind just because he's clocking in for 16 hours a day doesn't mean he's doing anything during that time. He might be sitting on his ass on his phone for half of that.
 
SearchMaster said:
I'm sure there are some aspects of his job that are physically demanding but I'm sure a lot of it is walking around looking for trash to pick up. It's hard to believe there are no checks and balances to prevent this kind of stupidity but it *is* government after all.
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Trust me with government agencies there isn't any checks and balances to prevent this. When my sister worked juvenile corrections for the state of Nevada they had mandatory furlough days. Basically you had a to take a day off un-paid every 2-week pay period. However it was corrections and there was minimum staffing levels and it wasn't like the detention facility was being run with more than required for staffing. So someone had to come in and work OT to cover the furlough day of another employee. So basically the state took a shift that could have been filled by someone working straight time and made it into a shift that was covered by someone working OT. Talk about stupid. Not to mention the additional time that it took for management to schedule the furlough day and then find someone to cover it.
 
If the guy actually worked during those hours more power to him but I feel people who put in some unrealistic hours more often than not are just gaming the system.
 
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