One row, signed at the machine, doing two jobs at once.
The act that clears a machine to run your way of working is the same act that starts the count. One line, signed by a person standing at that machine, with their own name on it. The hour that goes on the bill and the hour that goes to you both come off that line. There is no second set of books, and that is the whole point of it.
Clearing the machine and starting the count are the same act.
Nobody clears a machine and then, separately, remembers to start a clock. There is one act, it does both, and the second half cannot be skipped without the first half failing too.
Before a machine does anything with a way of working, somebody on that crew picks it by name and puts their own name to the choice. That signature is what lets the machine run it. There is no default and nothing carried over from yesterday. A machine holding on to last week's choice would be running on nobody's say-so.
That same signature is the top of the count line. The hours run from it. When the machine stops running that way of working, the line closes. So the count is not a thing anybody has to remember to keep. It is the thing that let the work start.
It is signed where the work happens — at the machine, by the person who cleared it, on the day. Not in an office afterwards, and not at the end of the month off somebody's memory.
The act that clears the machine to work is the act that starts the count. Leave the count out and the machine is not cleared.
What one line carries
- Whose way of working ran, by name.
- Which machine it ran on, and on what job.
- The moment it was cleared and the moment it stopped.
- The name of the person on that crew who cleared it.
A count of hours and a note of who authorized them. It is not an opinion about anybody, and it does not become one.
The hour they are billed for and the hour you are paid for are the same row.
Not two figures that happen to agree. One figure, read twice.
Here is how this normally goes wrong, and you have probably watched a version of it. A company keeps one record of use for its customer and a separate record of pay for the person, and once a month somebody lines the two up. Two records means one can be rounded, held over or quietly adjusted against the other, and the person on the short end finds out last.
There is one row here. The outfit running the machine is charged from it. You are paid from it. Nobody can move what is charged without moving what is paid, in the same direction, by the same amount, in the same place — because there is not a second figure to move.
The hours a job actually ran under a named way of working.
That is what the bill is built from, and a company that thinks it has been overcharged goes and reads the same rows you read.
The hours your way of working was in use.
That is what you are owed for, and it is worked out from the same rows, not from a total handed across by somebody else.
The two companies are kept apart on purpose as well. The company that holds the count and deals with the machine companies is not the company that owes you the money. Neither of them can settle an argument about the hours by asking itself.
A row stands once it is made. Hours already run stay counted and stay owed even if everything else stops: ending it reaches forward, never back.
You can read the rows, not a statement about the rows.
A figure that turns up on a page with nothing behind it you are allowed to look at is a figure you are being asked to trust. This one you can go and check.
What you get is not a total. It is the lines the total is made of: which way of working ran, on which machine, from when to when, and who put their name to clearing it. Add them up yourself if you want to. Most people will not, and that is fine — what matters is that you could.
The company running the machines reads the same lines from its side. That is what makes it worth something: a count one side alone can read is not a count, it is a claim. Two parties on one row, each with a reason to look hard at it, is how a mistake gets found early and a thumb on the scale gets found at all.
Each line is sealed when it is made. A line altered afterwards does not read as whole, and a run of lines with one taken out of the middle does not add up. That is not a promise about our good character; it is how the lines are kept, and it holds against us exactly as it holds against anybody else. It is built to still be readable years from now, by somebody who was not there and works for none of us.
You do not ask us. Your count comes to you from Even Steven, because Even Steven is who you signed with and who pays you. We hold the hours and hand them over; the paper, the money and the answering of your questions sit with them. Nothing on this site is an offer to you and nothing here asks you to sign anything.
It does not name a rate, and that is not us being coy.
What an hour is worth to you is set in the agreement you sign, and that agreement is not with us.
We do not decide what you are paid and we are not the ones who pay you. Your rate lives in your own paper, with the people who hold it, and that is the copy worth reading because it is the one that is yours. If you want to know what an hour comes to, ask Even Steven, and ask them before you sign rather than after.
What we do is narrower, and it is worth being plain about it. We hold the count, keep it where both sides can read it, and hand the same row to the company being charged and to the company that owes you the money. There is no other version of it. That is the whole job.
So take a rate question, a payment question, or a question about your own agreement to Even Steven. Take a question about how an hour got counted to the rows, which you are entitled to see. Neither of those is a conversation you have to have with us, and we would not be the right people to have it with.
Your paper, your rate and your count are all in one place, and it is not here.
Even Steven holds your agreement, sets what an hour is worth to you, pays it, and shows you the hours it was worked out from. Take anything about your own money there.