Question

Mary manages the front office at a local doctor’s office and needs to figure out payroll for the front office clerk that is paid hourly. Mary also has to make sure that she keeps the front office clerk under 40 hours a week to avoid overtime pay. The front office clerk’s timesheet reads as follows:
Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
470 minutes 440 minutes 455 minutes 490 minutes 310 minutes
Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
470 minutes 470 minutes 470 minutes 470 minutes 470 minutes
22. What information are you provided?
Type answer here
23. What are the steps to solve the problem?
Type answer here
24. Does Mary need to pay the front desk office clerk overtime?

Answer 1

22. The information provided is the number of minutes worked for each weekday for two weeks.

23. Up to this point, no problem is stated. If we read ahead to question 24, the problem is to determine if the number of hours worked in a week exceeds 40. The steps to solve the problem are ...

... a) convert the times to compatible units (minutes to hours or hours to minutes)

... b) compare the total time worked in a week to 40 hours (or the equivalent), or compare the time worked each day to 8 hours.

... c) on the basis of the comparison(s) in (b), decide if overtime was worked.

24. 8 hours is (60 min/h)×(8 h) = 480 min.

Only 5 days were worked each week, and no day exceeded 8 hours (480 min), so the total time is less than 40 hours. Mary does NOT need to pay overtime.