One disadvantage of this job, or perhaps I should call it a Character Development Opportunity, is that it is the kind of job where if someone calls out sick, someone else MUST cover the shift. In my experience, jobs are in three categories:
1) The kind where if you’re out sick or on vacation, you have some work to make up when you get back, and maybe someone else has to do a couple of extra small tasks, but no one has to cover your workday for you (Paul has this kind of job; my greenhouse job was like this in the off-season when we weren’t filling orders)
2) The kind where if you’re out sick or on vacation, the boss calls around to find someone to replace you, but if no one is available, everyone else has to work harder and less pleasantly that day, because the same total amount of work has to be done no matter how many employees are there to do it (my pharmacy job was like this, and so was my bakery job)
3) The kind where if you’re out sick or on vacation, someone else MUST be there to cover your shift, for legal/contract reasons (my daycare job was like this)
My current job is the third category. The upside of this category is that I can adjust my hours very quickly and easily: if Paul were to lose his job, or if he had a midlife crisis and quit and went to work at a job earning 1/4th his previous salary, or if he left me, I could start picking up extra hours that very day.
The downside…er, Opportunity, is that getting a call asking me to work is a nearly-daily occurrence, and I hate saying no. My impulse is to FIX it, to Make It Work: I feel so sorry for the person who has to call around finding a replacement. But…that’s why I’m not working the job where I have to call around and find replacements. I have to use that as one of my Coping Thoughts, as I’m saying no to an extra shift with the client I can barely handle, when in order to do that shift I’d have to call and cancel an appointment. Obviously I shouldn’t call and cancel the appointment. But it feels as if because it’s POSSIBLE to do so, I should Make It Work. I can FIX this problem! I have to squeeze my eyes and use another Coping Thought: “This is not my problem to fix.” Another is: “I don’t want to. I don’t have to.”
I think all those Coping Thoughts sound cold and rude and unsympathetic, but they’re designed to counteract an imbalance in the other direction. Overly sympathetic stress about not going to extreme lengths to rearrange my schedule at the last second have to be counteracted with the overly unsympathetic “This is not my problem.” Overly empathetic feelings for the person making the hard phone calls have to be counteracted with the overly unempathetic “That’s why that’s not my job.” Overly frantic feelings about needing to do something I don’t want to do have to be counteracted with the overly shruggy “I don’t want to. I don’t have to.”
Paul adds that it helps to think differently about how the person doing the calls is thinking of it. They’re not thinking, “SWISTLE IS OUR ONLY HOPE” (probably); they’re thinking, “Let’s quick go through the list of everyone who isn’t already scheduled to work.” They’re not thinking “Well, Swistle isn’t scheduled to work, so all we have to do is call her and she’ll be able to work!”; they’re thinking “Swistle isn’t scheduled, so maybe there is a tiny chance she’s also not doing anything else.”
Anyway. It’s good mental exercise. Those muscles are getting a daily workout.
As someone who also fits in that third category, I sympathize completely. What happens here is once you agree to pick up hours, they bump you higher up that list. The more you agree, the more they will call. That’s when it becomes, ask Swistle, Swistle can’t say no! Keep your boundaries, and don’t get burnt out!
This is exactly what I was going to say. The more you say no, the less they will call or even if they call they will have expectations which have been managed already. And if you say yes, they will call more and even if they don’t call more they will have the expectation that you can do it. I am in a job like that and I am a Fixer but in the long run, it doesn’t fix anything, because I end up doing shifts that I really can’t do and I’m mad about it, even. I like the idea of those muscles getting a workout.
+1 to this comment!
I was going to say that exactly! I struggled with that for a long time at a former job, until I realized that since my last name starts with A, they were calling me first. So I stopped answering/saying yes. Stick to your guns!!
Speaking as the someone making the calls to fill that third category job, I can tell you that I take the path of least resistance, every time. Kirsten is right, if you say yes and I know you say yes often, you get bumped up on the list.
Also, I try to use my voice and word choice to differentiate between, “Hey, we had a sick call, I’m calling down the list, are you available?” and “SOS MISSION CRITICAL YOU ARE OUR LAST HOPE!” If it’s desperate, I have been known to ask people if they can change appointments, make arrangements, take one for the team. Hopefully your employer can also cue you to how serious the shortage is, and you can use that to make mental peace with your yeses or nos.
I totally get this. I have a #2 job that in my first year I was jut a sub they called, so I could say yes/no depending if I wanted that job or if I even wanted to work that day. Then they offered me a perm slot but since I had the experience with every other place, they’d still call me if they couldn’t get a sub and I’d feel obligated to help out. And now I even feel bad when I have to be out and know my co workers will have to work harder. Even though I know it’s no big deal when one of them is out.
Another soothing Coping Thought, “I need to spend this day working at my full time job, being a mother, so I can’t say yes to my part time job today.”
You keep writing so interestingly about your experiences at that job and surrounding it, and even though it’s not one I’ll ever have, I keep finding myself nodding along to SO many of your thought processes. And this matter especially – I have a hard time saying no when I’m called because some new assignment came in and has to be covered. I found it makes a huge difference which ones of the owners calls, in how they word it. One of them says „Judith, here’s an assignment you have to do“, and the other one says „We’ve got this new assignment, is it possible for you to do it?“. You can take a wild guess which one of them I like and which one I resent (he’s got other things where he also acts like that). I’m free to say no in both cases, since I’m not actually employed but a freelancer, but it feels very different depending on how it is presented.
I’m also one of the people who want to fix things and make stuff work and feel responsible for the whole world, basically. What’s helped me in this and other cases is, surprisingly, something out of Hitchiker’s guide to the Galaxy. There’s one scene, I think some some people appear with a star ship and steal a cup (a prize cup, not a teacup) during a cricket match. The main character Arthur Dent gets all agitated and wonders why no one else is noticing or caring. His companion Ford Prefect shrugs and says „It’s an SEP – Somebody Elses Problem“. Meaning people are psychologically able to ignore its existence because they see it as having nothing to do with them.
For some reason, that concept stuck with me, and I try to identify what the things are that I should classify as an SEP and be comfortable with not feeling responsible for. Sometimes I have to mutter under my breath „SEP, SEP“, but it’s really worked as a reminder that no, I don’t need to Carry Everything In The World Or It Will Crash Down. Usually, the world will carry on just fine without my involvement. I just have to recognize the SEP when I’m confronted with one.
Chiming in as another person who occasionally had the “calling to see who can sub” job at one of those third-category jobs. (Hospital labor and delivery unit.) Most of the time, there were people on our list who we knew were hungry for extra hours, and I’d call them first. Then there were people who had other obligations, like young children or another job, and I’d call them last and without much expectation of their saying yes. Hopefully as time goes on they’ll figure out where to put you on the list. I never felt personally resentful when someone couldn’t come in — that’s above and beyond, and there are lots of good reasons someone might not be up for it.
When I’ve been on the other side of this, the person getting the calls and feeling guilty for saying no, it helps to remember that ultimately, this is the problem of whoever manages staffing. If they need more people to cover shifts, they need to hire more people. If I bend my life around to say yes every time, I’m just masking the real issue, which is: not enough staff.
Because I have a hard time saying no directly, I made a rule for myself that I could never say yes when someone called. It was either an immediate no, if I knew I was busy, or, “Let me check my schedule, I’ll call you right back.” That would give me the time and space to think, “Do I really want to go in to work this afternoon?” without the pressure of a hopeful someone on the other end of the line. (My script for the call-backs was, “I’m sorry, I already have plans so I can’t come in. Good luck finding someone!” ‘Plans’ could mean anything from having dinner guests to watching TV with my cat. They don’t need to know.) That rule saved me a lot of “said yes and regretted it the minute I hung up the phone” moments.
Oh ugh, my mother is a palliative care nurse and there have been cases where she and two other people have split the shifts for round-the-clock care for one person. She once confessed that she had strong chest pains that were radiating down her arm when she was in the car on the way to work, and was honestly afraid she was having a heart attack. She didn’t call me or anyone in the family because she knew we would have told her to go to the hospital, but she didn’t feel she could just not show up at work and have the person who’d covered the 12 hour day shift stay for the 12-hour night shift.
And of course she was very complacent when she told us about it the next weekend, because “obviously it wasn’t a heart attack” as she’d survived, and she felt she had done the right thing. And the arguement that her patient won’t be well-served if her caregiver drops dead mid-shift falls is dismissed with a wave. Makes. Me. Crazy. Because who knows if the next time something like this happens it will really turn out okay?
Sorry, just realized I made my comment All About Me. I intended to demonstrate that I totally “get” the number 3 situation, having observed the ramifications of having that kind of job.
YES. No, it didn’t seem at all like an all-about-me thing. It seemed like a perfect example of the issue.
My mom is the same way, by the way. Very Alarming Medical Situation, didn’t call 911 because didn’t want to make a fuss, then said see, she was right, because she DIDN’T die.
This. I recently started volunteering with a dog rescue. I started with the intention of only helping with caring for the dogs that live (temporarily) in their facility. I was not going to be a foster because that’s a slippery slope and we already have 2 dogs. Then one day, a sick dog urgently needed a foster dog because he was well enough to be discharged from the animal hospital but not well enough to live in the facility. I watched that request for anyone to volunteer until the last hour before he had to be picked up, and then I texted my husband. The dog has been with us for 5 weeks now. Today, I saw an urgent plea go out for more dogs that need foster homes.
I am having the hardest time NOT feeling like it is my obligation (and somewhat my desire) to step up to every request.
The dog didn’t need a foster dog. He needed a foster home.
I have never held a #3 job and it’s making me very grateful about that right now. This sounds Stressy.
I have done staffing at an agency and at a facility. Sometimes, when things got really desperate, I knew there were agencies that would offer bonuses for people to work extra, like a $50 grocery store card. I’m not saying you should try and work this angle, but it does exist. Nursing shifts for holidays were the hardest to cover and the incentives would increase depending on how needy the staffing coordinator was.
I used to have something I called my “bad attitude sign.” It said: “Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.” I know the scenario you’re describing isn’t exactly lack of planning, but having that phrase in the back of my mind has helped me occasionally overcome my own desires to “fix it” when asked to help someone out.
I also think it might help to think of it as an invitation, rather than an request for help. So, just as you don’t have to tell someone why you are RSVPing ‘No’ when you RSVP, you don’t have to tell the caller why you aren’t agreeing to work an extra shift.
Speaking of planning, I thought this was the purpose of “on call.” When my mother was a home health nurse, she had her “shifts”, but she also had days where she was, essentially, the designated back-up. So, she would get called first and she would have to go in.
I can understand that your agency might not feel that this happens often enough to set up an “on call” rotation, but I’m surprised to see nurses saying they’ve experienced the “can you come in?” calls. But maybe it’s different in a different sort of nursing care; I’m pretty sure my mom was salaried, not paid per shift. So it’s easier for an employer to say: “here, you have to be available to work this day, but we may not actually need you” because they don’t have to pay you any differently.
I have a job that doesn’t exactly fit into these categories, because as a college professor, I’m usually the only person who can teach my classes. I can cancel them if I’m sick, but then we have to reschedule them (very difficult with college student schedules), or just fall behind on content. This means that I’ve gone into work with severe migraines, flu, and even pneumonia so I won’t have to cancel class. I think I need better coping thoughts, along the lines of “the world won’t end if there’s one less French class.”
Add me to the list of nurses who can sympathize with category 3. Recently I found myself at work (on an extra shift) and really tired and frustrated and I said Something I Shouldn’t. (But it was totally true). My manager was informed, and we’re ok…. But it was a stressful conversation for me and made me realize that I was over my personal breaking point for the week. So I guess my advice is to listen to everyone else, but also recognize what your breaking point is and stick to that when picking up extra shifts.
I am a nurse and often get calls to fill holes in our staffing. I often say yes because I feel bad if I do not. However, I also am often the person who has to make the calls, and when someone says no, I just thank them, hang up the phone, and move on the next name on the list. This shows me that when I am receiving the call, I am totally overthinking it, and when I am making the calls, when the person says no, it’s a non-issue. It’s okay to have plans that you can’t cancel (especially since they must know you have a family at home), and it’s okay to say no.