Real-Life Math
Power line technicians often put in overtime hours. They must carefully
keep track of their time and what activities they did during that time in
order to be correctly paid.
You are a power line technician working
for a utility company. You have been working in the field repairing power
lines after a storm. There are people without power, so you and your team
must work long hours to repair the damage and restore power to these people
and their homes.
You must prepare your daily time sheet. For the first
8 hours, you are paid your regular wage of $32.64 per hour. You are paid
overtime for anything over 8 hours. Overtime is time and a half. If you work
over 12 hours per day, you are paid double time for those hours.
"I
use math to add up my hours for my time sheet," says power line technician
Wendy Kennedy. "I have to account for where time was spent during my day,
including travel time to jobs, headquarters time -- when I prepare the equipment,
and then how much time was spent at each job."
You are about to add
up your time sheet for the day. You worked a total of 16 hours. The first
hour, you were at headquarters getting your instructions and preparing the
equipment for the day. You spent 3 hours traveling to the job sites. You
worked on 4 different jobs and each one took 3 hours.
How much did you
make today?