Pick the statement about Oprah Winfrey from the list below that doesn't belong:

A. Oprah Loves You...
B. Oprah Respects You and wants all to have a work-life balance...
C. Oprah has hosted shows depicting the deplorable working conditions in third world countries...
D. Oprah works production assistants in her company 87 hours a week...

I bet you picked "D", right?  WRONG!!  Trick question.  The correct answer is "B".  Oprah wants most of you to have a work-life balance, unless you are a production assistant in her company, Harpo studios.  The New York Times reported recently that Carla Bird, an assistant at Harpo Studios, is working a LOT of OT for Oprah:

"A woman in a Chicago workplace caused quite a stir recently when she submitted her time sheet. She had worked 800 hours of overtime in 17 weeks, meaning she had been on the job about 12 or 13 hours a day, seven days a week, January through April.

Because the woman, Carla Bird, is an assistant at Oprah Winfrey’s production company, Harpo Studios, and because some seemingly jealous co-workers spread the word to the news media, her $32,000 payout was the talk of those who pay attention to workload for a living. The work/life experts were predictably appalled that Ms. Bird had logged so many hours."

OK, some quick math to see what we are dealing with here.  800 hours of OT in 17 weeks means Bird was working 87 hours a week for Oprah, and regardless of whether we are talking about a 5, 6 or 7 day schedule, that's a lot.  Also, you have to love that since the report was public, we can back into what assistants in Oprah's shop make.  About $26.40 per hour if my math skills are right...

It's easy to have fun with the story, but hard to know for sure what's going on.  It could be the employee popped up and reported this overtime in bulk, and the right thing to do was to pay it. 

Perhaps Oprah has put a "pre-approval" process in place for all OT requests from Bird moving forward?

I doubt it...