Job Scheduling--a rant on things I've seen recently

Starter jobs. Just like "starter homes"? What does one do right out of high school if you haven't figured out what you want to do in life? Or, perhaps you've recently been laid off and you still want to keep some kind of cash coming in rather than being unemployed. Okay, so you apply for a "minimum-wage" starter job. That's about all a high-school education will train you for, if that. But does that also mean that an employer can treat you like crap? I don't think so. However, many employers will try to get away with all sorts of strange behavior with their minimum-wage employees--and then they'll wonder why their business suffers because of it. (Of course, perhaps they are a bit on the dense side and don't realize that their business suffers from the way they treat their employees.)

Scheduling? Some businesses put their minimum-wage employees on an "on-call" basis. The businesses can't seem to think coherently enough to create at least a week's schedule at least a week ahead of time for employees to be more aware of when they should be at work.

What generally happens is that the employee assumes that they aren't needed at a particular time (because they are not "scheduled")--and they plan to do something else during that time. Then, at the last minute, the business calls the employee and asks them to come in to work. No matter what happens, bad feelings are created.

It's better to create work schedules a month ahead of time (even longer if possible). Talk to employees and find out if they have certain life events anticipated, planned, and scheduled then create your schedules around those timeframes--this way, you won't get caught short of help, and you won't create unnecessary friction with your employees.

Many businesses also create problems by hiring the bare minimum number of employees necessary to run the business. If one of the employees gets sick, has an accident, or is otherwise rendered unavailable, the business finds itself coming up short--and resorting to calling in employees who are not scheduled to work that day.

Again, if the employees are aware that they haven't been scheduled, there's a good chance they will have made other plans that they most likely do not want to cancel. The business will be in luck if the employee decides to come in to work on that "non-scheduled" day. But the business should also understand that if the employee did not know in advance of the potential call-in, the business has no right to a temper-tantrum if the employee is not available on this non-scheduled day.

Behavior such as this on the part of businesses is not limited to the mom-and-pop enterprises. Even the big franchises sometimes seem to be totally stupid on scheduling their employees. And then acting totally assinine when the employees are hard to find or convince to come in when the employees were under the assumption they were "unscheduled" for that day.

For minimum wage, the business does not own the employee. If you don't schedule them, and then you want them to come in to work anyway, you will find that you will be having higher than average turnover with your staff.

An additional problem is that sometimes these businesses also do not schedule their minimum-wage employees for anything near what could be deemed a "full-time" job of at least 30 to 40 hours a week. They give them a few hours here and a few hours there during the week, sometimes not on the same days or same hours (before noon, after noon, evening) and they shuffle them around so that the employee does not have a "regular time" to work. It's always different. This makes scheduling even more impossible for both the employee and the business. And is why sometimes it's just better to be "unemployed" or perhaps "own your own home-based business"--because at least then you would have *some* control of your life's schedule.