I went into this job knowing I would have to work the “occasional” Saturday. Little did I know the “occasional” Saturday is actually a quarter of our days off as it’s every second Saturday, sometimes back to back saturdays. They release a schedule months in advance but it doesn’t even matter as it’s just work one Saturday, off one Saturday, repeat. I live in the Deep South, Alabama to be specific, and this plant is very open so it’s just 90-100 degrees all the time and those two day weekends barely feel like enough to physically prepare for that, much less one day.
Management tried a thing where if we ran well enough they would cancel the Saturday for that week. Well, after they had to cancel every Saturday for a month straight they stopped doing that system and from now until October it’s just rotating mandatory saturdays. I just don’t understand. Why do it for the cooler months but not the hotter ones? Why do it at all if you’re just gonna stop it and get everybody’s hopes up?
Is there ANY way to get out of these saturdays? It’s driving me nuts and I would just quit but plant jobs like this in my area are some of the better paying jobs with better benefits and I can’t lose it right now. I would just skip a Saturday now and then but we run on a point system and if you miss a mandatory Saturday “which is all saturdays” it is double the amount of points you would normally get on your average absence.