Cousin fed up of doing late shifts at work

fionajbanana

My cousin (52) works for a supermarket and is feeling very low and tired due to number of late night finishes she does (9:30pm). She is contracted only do 2 per week, but in the past 4 weeks, she has worked 14! Plus, 3 months ago, she developed a medical condition and it gets worse on days she does late nights. The condition does not affect her work in anyway, but makes her uncomfortable. Her symptoms are not as bad during her rare early finishes and days off.

She does not drive, but wants to join the local gym, which is closed on one of her days off. Other gyms are only accessible by 2 buses. It would not be economical and physically beneficial for anyone to visit a gym once a week, plus extra during annual leave. She has tried the gym before work on a week's taster pass and she became very tired, very quickly at work.

She is looking for jobs, but there is nothing suitable for her. Plus her age may be a disadvantage. There are colleagues that have kept the same shift patterns when their kids were at school. Now they have left home etc. I know she cannot force or encourage these colleagues to change their shifts. A few cannot do late nights as the final bus to home is 6pm. The rest walk or drive to work. Some colleagues with no commitments never do late nights.

My cousin lives alone, and her manager and team leaders think she can do these late nights because she has no-one at home. Rubbish! All my cousin wants is to have some time in the evening to do things. Plus she is more of an early bird and more of herself in the morning and afternoon. She would like to see her friends more often. She feels upset when she overhears colleagues that finish 5-6pm talk about their evening out last night.

What is the best way of approaching this to her manager? A letter? A phone call? A chat? She does not want to act all selfish. Any advice will be good.

hcb42

a chat, definitely.

Mojisola

fionajbanana wrote: »

My cousin lives alone, and her manager and team leaders think she can do these late nights because she has no-one at home.

She would like to see her friends more often. She feels upset when she overhears colleagues that finish 5-6pm talk about their evening out last night.

What is the best way of approaching this to her manager? A letter? A phone call? A chat? She does not want to act all selfish. Any advice will be good.

Start with a chat. Would she feel able to raise the health issue with her manager? If so, I would start with that and the fact that, as she lives alone, she needs time to be able to meet up with her friends.

Dunroamin

fionajbanana wrote: »

My cousin (52) works for a supermarket and is feeling very low and tired due to number of late night finishes she does (9:30pm). She is contracted only do 2 per week, but in the past 4 weeks, she has worked 14! Plus, 3 months ago, she developed a medical condition and it gets worse on days she does late nights. The condition does not affect her work in anyway, but makes her uncomfortable. Her symptoms are not as bad during her rare early finishes and days off.

That's still only 3 or 4 a week, leaving her another 3 or 4 days to do what she wants.

If she wants to take it up on medical grounds, something from her doctor explaining the way in which working evenings affects her medical condition would be useful.

fionajbanana

Dunroamin wrote: »

That's still only 3 or 4 a week, leaving her another 3 or 4 days to do what she wants.

If she wants to take it up on medical grounds, something from her doctor explaining the way in which working evenings affects her medical condition would be useful.

Not true as her days off are during the week and her friends work M-F so unable to do the usual Friday or Sat going out with friends.

bluenoseam

fionajbanana wrote: »

Not true as her days off are during the week and her friends work M-F so unable to do the usual Friday or Sat going out with friends.

That's not her employers concern.

Ultimately I think you're being a bit harsh with other members of staff, how do you KNOW other employees have "no commitments" which mean they can't do late shifts? I would get her to have a word with her boss, but ultimately I wouldn't expect any radical change any time soon.

mcfisco

As said, she could get a letter from her doctor and then arrange a meeting with her manager.
She needs to explain that she understands that evenings need to worked but would better like to understand how they're allocated and how she'd qualify to do a fairer share of them.
She'd be running the risk of irritating her manager though.

It could be that others get the early shifts because they make the most noise or because the manager want's to avoid the paperwork etc. that would come with lots of official flexible working requests

Savvy_Sue

How are the extra shifts allocated? And can they be changed / swapped?

I'd start with a chat, pointing out that she's contracted to do 2 late shifts per week and asking if she could be limited to that.

How long has she been there? Is she in a union? I'd recommend joining.

It may also be worth speaking to HR about this.

pinkypoopydoo

The problem with working for supermarkets nowadays is, the majority of them insist on a contract that stipulates a small amount of core shifts, with flexible hours to cover any other shifts at reasonable (24 hour) notice.

When it comes down it, it depends on her manager and personnel manager - if they are half decent they will pay attention to medical concerns, and take them into account when doing rotas. If they are under the usual amount of stress from upper store management and head office, then they might well chose to ignore it. Supermarkets in general, don;t give a stuff about staff welfare - they are too busy being hammered with unachievable targets from area managers, and will be aware that staff can be easily replaced.

Wanting to see her friends or go to the gym more often is not something that management will even consider as a good reason to not work late shifts.

fionajbanana

Thanks for the replys. She will be going to the doctors to discuss her problem and the fact it gets worse after doing work late at night and will have a chat with the manager. Her employer's store is about to start a labour matching process and my cousin was ignored last two times. I think they should look at her hours as it will be unfair if they looked and moved a colleague's hours 3 times in two years.

Hopefully, they would notice that most customers shop in the morning. There are many colleagues that start work at 9:30 and the shop is always busy before then. She starts work at 1:30pm so the shop staff are glad when she turns up. The shop goes dead after 6pm so the lack of work makes her low.