Workplace Issues

[drjohnhwatson]

BOY you know what??  I want to rant and I actually wanna get a feel for if it's similar in other places.  So weigh in, if you all would be so kind, of your own situations and such-like.

 

I work in a restaurant.  It's family-owned, by a husband and wife, and the husband's father started it and ran it with the husband's mother for decades.  The husband's dad still comes in every day when he's not down in Florida and it's beyond annoying, but we'll leave that aside.  It is SMALL.  Small.  Small-town, small restaurant.  Our general "crew" of people working is: one cook, one person taking orders inside, one person taking to-go orders at the phone and drive-thru (it has a drive-thru, but it's not exactly fast food.  It's made to order, so), one person getting drinks and desserts, and doing refills of drinks already ordered, and one person dressing the sandwiches and making sure the food goes where it needs to.  So FIVE people, total.  And we do CRAZY business sometimes.  Like we pull in two thousand plus some days, which doesn't sound like a lot but, as I said, we're very small and there's not many of us working, obviously, and when you get like thirty or forty people upfront and five or six cars in the drive-thru and the phone ringing off the hook, it's kind of miserable??

 

Anyway.  If I have recalled correctly, in the past year, I've asked off time twice.  I asked off a Saturday in September for my sister's wedding (which it's nice not to work Saturdays as we're usually insanely busy and I'm dressing the food which is horrible when we're slammed) and then last March I asked off a week of work to go to NYC.  That's it.  That's all.  Unless I've forgotten something.

 

We have winter hours, and so Fridays and Saturdays right now are the only days we're open full-time and into the night.  Ergo, none of the teenagers can work until Friday and Saturday.  So you'd think that they would want all the hours they could have because they haven't worked at all and they're only going to POSSIBLY get a MAXIMUM of eight days in a month, right?  WRONG.  EVERY week we're scrambling to cover Friday and Saturday because NO ONE (read: mostly pertaining to the teenagers) can work.  This Saturday is the legit worst I've seen in awhile.  NONE of the teenagers (which would be...five people) can work it.

 

Does anyone else have this?  Where you work and rarely (if ever) ask off work, meanwhile you have to pull extra hours or are guilted/leaned on heavily because no one else will pull their weight?  I might not be able to take a Saturday off for my birthday so I can (finally) have a weekend because at least one person already wants to take the day off to drink moonshine.  Not kidding.  .  I have also been planning for months to take time to go to Halifax to visit a Titanic museum and cemetery, and a girl who started working here three? weeks ago wants the same time off that I do.  Seniority doesn't exist here.  In fact--I've been shouted at/threatened with being fired when I requested time off once when I've been there the longest save the owners and one other person! I was so furious that I told her that I would quit and I didn't care (spoiler alert: that blew over; the other co-worker who has been there longer threatened to quit if I left, ha haaaa).  I wholeheartedly believe that you could add up every single day I've asked off or been sick over my NINE YEARS (!  A THIRD of my LIFE) together and it would not equal the time off that any other people ask off (and receive!) during ONE year.

 

Added note: when the teenagers DO work, it's just as well that they ought not.  Example: today I came in and the floor wasn't swept and we combine ketchups and mustards together, as you do in a Restaurant.  We have twelve total ketchups to combine--SEVEN were not done.  Seven!  So I come in in the morning and I have to do my work AND the work that the night crew didn't do for x, y, z reasons.

 

BUT YES--come talk about frustrations of your own jobs and the like.  I don't want to feel so alone, haha.

 

.

[Grumpy Alien]

OH BOY CAN I SYMPATHIZE. 

 

My own rant!

 

I work in a tiny department, basically. We're the only non-doctor/non-clerical people in neurology in the organization. There's a grand total of four of us, including my supervisor. So it's difficult to cover two hospitals 24/7 with four employees. (Mind you, "in my day," there were two of us for a few months. So it isn't impossible, just mild-moderately inconvenient.)

 

I save up a lot of hours to take off because I have chronic illnesses and I love to travel. I don't call out sick unless I absolutely cannot work. And even then, I may choose to not get paid for a sick day so I save my hours. Anyway, I went on vacation in November and visited my boyfriend in England for New Year's. For both occasions, I put a LOT of effort into figuring out when would be least inconvenient for the department. I made sure I could still work part of those weeks. I calculated how many hours I would need to take as vacation time. I worked out the on call schedule and was able to switch shifts around in a way that was beneficial to everyone. I got so much push back from my supervisor, let me tell you. So much. 

 

I ended up with the flu and bronchitis in January. I was out for a week. (Symptoms lasted for 3.) This was thrown in my face recently as "expecting [my supervisor] to cover for me." I never asked her to cover for me but there was no way I could have worked in my condition and I was contagious for part of it. I actually informed the whole department of the situation so I don't know why she felt she was targeted.

 

Now, my partner is visiting in April for two weeks. I informed my supervisor of this and she basically said having two full weeks off would be impossible due to coverage. So I said okay, I'll figure out what days I can't work and ask for vacation time for those days. That way, I can only be scheduled for so many hours during those weeks and still get off the days I needed. Well that was in February. She then granted a two week vacation to my coworker and weeks later, said she's taking her own week off the week before I wanted off. 

 

She scheduled me for my full hours both weeks. In addition to paying me the vacation time. I had to go above her and say that was unacceptable and demanded the full two weeks off. I got it in the end but there was a lot of screaming (from her, not me) over the phone.

 

Sorry, rant over!  

[drjohnhwatson]

@Graceful that's gross how they expect you to work when you're sick.  Or any place does, really.  In an office setting it's better as you're generally tucked away in cubicles, but it's bad in a hospital setting and bad in a restaurant (a co-worker literally came to work wearing a DIAPER--no JOKE--because she had bad diarrhoea  and couldn't even make it to the bathrooms and we don't have anyone to cover her).

 

And it's so irksome, the vacation thing.  As I said, it happens here, and you have to wonder why it's not OK for you SPECIFICALLY ask off but everyone else can.  My co-workers are confirming that they believe the new girl will get time off over me if our times overlap.  It's maddening, isn't it?!  But heartening that we both have a shared misery!  .