You completely disregard to concept of "minding the store." You can't be open for business 24/7 if nobody puts in the time. I don't disregard the concept of piece work.
When I was growing up some women (and maybe some men but I never knew one to do this) in my community worked for a shoe factory from home. A few popular styles of shoes the factory produced had some hand sewing. Mostly they were loafers. The women would pick up or have delivered crates of unfinished loafers and they would return them finished and they got a fix payment for each pair of shoes. The ultimate pay for performance. Same deal today for many truck drivers, they don't get paid by the hour they get paid by the load. This model is good when the pay is fair, which often seems very low.
I have been paid for presence many times in my career. I even got a bonus for being present at unpopular times.
I worked many graveyard shifts supporting launch preparations for the Space Shuttle where there might have been a couple hours work during the 8 or 12 hour shift but not having someone there to do it at its earliest opportunity (even if it was 3:30am) would cause chaos in the schedule. We worked to a 72hour 11 day schedule. The next 72 hours were scheduled by the hour and the next 11 days were scheduled by shift. Some times there was productive work to fill some of the extra hours but not always. I read a few novels during those shifts and many hours walking around the launch facility keeping tabs on progress just incase I might be able to complete my critical task early.
Some more obvious pay for presence positions are Fireman, Night Watchman, Beat Cop, Security Guard, Missileman in a Silo.
At work we have Inspectors. Sometimes they don't have anything to inspect. I still feel they should be present at work and not on call. I would make some exceptions but again when we are ready for an inspection I don't want to be waiting a hour for the inspector to show up.
In our small company, people need to wear many hats. Sometimes we just need an extra set of hands. If everyone who does not have to be present to do their job is not present, there would never be an extra set of hands. I am the Chief Engineer, I was walking by the production inventory crib just last week when the attendant asked or my help. There were a few bulky packages, I was able to ease their task by lending the needed extras set of hands (not in my job description) saving them the possible futile effort of finding an extra set of hands if everyone who could was working a flexible schedule or from home.
Also not in my job description but really in everyone, making sure we keep out work place safe. I was checking out the house cleaning in our weld development material staging area. We recently had a lot of turnover in that department. I found a couple bottles of spray paint and flammable solvents in a regular storage cabinet. It is our safety departments responsibility for training and compliance with site safety requirements but Safety Staff can't be everywhere all the time and certainly can't do their job from home (even if they try to sometimes). I raised the use with the proper shop supervisor both of the weld engineers and the safety department and since it was still unresolved the next day, I was boxing the material up to move it to a Flammables Cabinet when a weld engineer showed up and took if from me and we worked together for a bit cleaning up the area and taking care of some other housekeeping issues.
Presence usually involves more than surfing the internet in your cube.
TEK
