Asking to be paid for work you already did: overtime, travel, on-call

Framed as a favor, this ask invites a judgment call about you, and judgment calls take weeks. Framed as a records discrepancy, it goes to the people who fix records, and fixes have a process.

The other thing most advice misses: your supervisor often cannot decide this. Whether the hours are compensable turns on your classification and on wage law, which is payroll's territory. Write something payroll can act on.

Sort what you are actually claiming

Three different things get lumped together, and they are not one claim.

• Unrecorded work time. Off the clock before or after a shift, through a meal break, or on messages at home. The most common kind.
• Travel time. Ordinary commuting is generally treated differently from travel between job sites in a day, or from overnight travel.
• On-call or standby. Whether waiting counts depends on how restricted you were. Required to stay on premises is treated differently from carrying a phone with a loose response window.

None of that is settled by an article. Sort your claim into a bucket, then check your state's rules before asserting an entitlement.

Build the attachment first

The message is short; the attachment is the ask. One row per instance, nothing else:

• Date.
• Start and end time of the disputed period, to the nearest fifteen minutes.
• What the work was, in four or five words.
• Where the evidence is: a badge swipe, a dispatch log, a message timestamp, a ticket.

Pull the evidence before you send anything. Systems get archived and message history gets trimmed, and a claim you cannot document is a conversation, not a correction.

Total the hours, not the dollars. Money starts an argument about the rate on top of the one about the hours, and the rate is arithmetic once the hours are agreed.

The mild version

Use this first, for anything recent with a plausible explanation.

Subject: Timesheet correction request, pay periods ending 6/14 and 6/28

"Hi [manager]. I think some hours are missing from my last two timesheets. Attached is a list of the dates and times with what I was doing and where the record is, eleven and a half hours in total. Mostly closing tasks after clock-out, plus the two Saturday call-outs.

Could you take a look and let me know the process for correcting these? Happy to resubmit in whatever format payroll needs. Tell me if anything on the list looks wrong."

That last line is not softness. It invites a correction, which is what an honest manager will want to make.

The firm version

Use this when the mild version was ignored, the pattern goes back months, or you have been told verbally that the time does not count.

Subject: Unpaid hours, January through June, request for review

"Hi [manager]. Following up on my message of July 8, which I have not had a reply to.

Attached is a record of hours worked and not paid between January 6 and June 20, just under sixty hours. Each entry has a date, a time range, the task and a source. Most of it is pre-shift setup and on-call callbacks.

I am asking for these hours to be reviewed and, if payable, included in the next paycheck. If the position is that some of this time is not compensable, could you tell me in writing which categories and on what basis. Please copy payroll on your reply."

Three things changed: it is dated and sequenced, it asks for a written reason if the answer is no, and it copies payroll. None of that is aggressive; it is the version that leaves a record.

What to cut from both

Cut the explanation of why you did not raise it sooner, and "I know everyone's been slammed." Cut what a coworker is paid; it makes this a claim about the team rather than the records. Cut the threat in every form, including the polite one naming the labor department; you keep that option by not spending it. Cut the apology.

If nothing happens

Give the mild version a week and the firm version two. If there is still no answer, send one line asking for a decision date, then stop writing to your manager and go to HR or payroll directly.

A wage question nobody will answer in writing has already been answered. Write down the date you asked.

After that the next step is outside the company. Every state has a labor agency that takes wage claims, and there is a federal wage and hour authority too, with different coverage and different filing deadlines. Those deadlines can be shorter than people expect, so find yours early.

What the email cannot decide

This assumes US employment. Whether time is compensable is governed by federal wage and hour law plus your state's rules, which in some states are more generous, including on daily overtime, breaks and call-in pay. Your exempt or non-exempt classification changes the answer entirely, and a job title does not determine classification.

Retaliation for raising a wage complaint is separately regulated, and protections vary. This is a way to organize your ask, not legal advice. Take the facts to your state labor department, or an employment attorney licensed in your state, before relying on any of it.