The use of 'where'

Question

I read the following from a book:
A M&S manager talks about the company: 'I work for M&S. In our shops, we have employees — people who work for our company — who have full-time jobs. Full-time employees usually work around 40 hours a week, but they can also do overtime — where they work longer and get more money.'
Why is 'where' instead of other words, such as 'which', used here?

Anton · Accepted Answer

One of the definitions of where is

Where = at, in, or to what situation, position, direction, circumstances, or respect
”where does this plan lead?”
”where am I wrong”
Merriam Webster

It is in this sense that the manager speaks: “... in the circumstance that they do overtime they work longer and ...”
Similar considerations apply to:

When = You use when to introduce a clause where you mention the circumstances under which the event in the main clause happened or will happen.
Collins

And the manager might also have said in which.
in which makes specific defence to the overtime. where suggests that overtime is place of some sort, and when suggests that the overtime is a period.
Which you use is a matter of choice and taste, where you decide, when you decide, or in which you decide.

LPH · Answer

"Which" would not do because it is either a subject or an object relative nonpersonal pronoun (CoGEL 6.33 P. 366). Here the semantic indicates that the pronoun does not do an action, nor is it subjected to one, and so it is not a subject pronoun. The pronoun is not the object of an action either, that is, the verb "work" does not bear on the pronoun, whichever that pronoun would be. When "work" is transitive, that is when it can have an object, it means "to operate" (OALD, 6).

The machine, which works all day, is a recent acquisition. ("Work" is intransitive and means "to be in operation"; as you need a pronoun to replace "machine" it must be impersonal and of the subject type; as only "which" satisfies these conditions in the non-restrictive context (both BrE and AmE), that is the pronoun you must use.)

The machine, which they work at night, is often broken. (There is an obvious subject for the verb here; it is "they"; it is obvious that the verb "work" is of the transitive sort, meaning "to operate" (something) (here operate the machine), so the pronoun, as it must stand for "machine" is of the object type non-personal and nonrestrictive, and it can only be "which".)

Use of "where"

Full-time employees usually work around 40 hours a week, but they can also do overtime — where they work longer and get more money.

In this sentence, the grammatical word needed is not a pronoun. Let' see why.  You could put the sentence this way.

Full-time employees usually work around 40 hours a week, but they can also do overtime — in overtime they work longer and get more money.

It follows that "where" does not stand for  a noun (as a pronoun does) but instead it stands for a prepositional phrase constructed with a complement found in the sentence (overtime). As this prepositional phrase modifies the sense of the verbs "work" and "get" it has an adverbial nature. It follows that that the nature of "where" is that of an adverb; as also it relates to the word "overtime" it is called a relative adverb (OALD). In this sentence the use is non-restrictive. In the next it is not.

She chose to work in a factory where there was the possibility to work overtime.

The use of 'where'

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