Long story short.
I signed up with a certain supermarket chain for 20 hours and during the interview, I said I was “flexible” in my working hours.
Now admittedly, I can see how this would be misunderstood.
But apparently my boss took it to mean “Ok, we have this tough week coming up, so here's over twice your contracted hours” and I just kind of went with it because I wanted to be a team player. (I ended up having a massive anxiety attack during a ten hour shift, but that's a story for another time, depending on how “the talks” about that go tomorrow…)
I spoke to my manager who was very evasive. Re : The anxiety attack, I left work 3 hours early, I said it was long hours, this week was tough, no real downtime, etc and said “Well you said (implying I lied) during your interview you were flexible!”
I had to say “YES, G[Name redacted]! That means I'm available whenever, not for massively inflated hours I didn't agree to or were consulted about! I didn't seek and enter a 20 hour contract to be given FORTY SIX hours!” (This week : 9 hour shift, ten hour shift, break day, 7 hours, ten hours, break, ten hours. I woke up at 4 AM for 2 of those and 5 AM for the last one to start early enough, which meant taking hours off to even go to bed with insomnia to barely deal with it.)
So.
Who's in the right here?
What would you think “Flexible” means in this context?
A) Whip me hard and work me daddy, I'm just rife for abuse, have no standards and lack a spine!
B)I can fill in day, afternoon or late on short-notice, especially if coworkers become unwell.
Because I very definitely intended it for it to be “B”. I have no real life, I can just up and go with a few hours prior warning to take care of my needs – instead, it was badly insinuated that I made false claims during my interview to get hired, which I don't appreciate.
Even worse, I so far have enjoyed a building sense of trust with this manager, as they otherwise seemed to be understanding of my limitations prior. Now it seems as though things I talked to warned him about weeks prior are suddenly sprung on him. Maybe because the replies at the time of “It's part of the job” just kind of brushed everything off, as if we are all the same mold and everyone can do everything the same.
I did ten hours again yesterday. I got my ass up mad early, after *maybe* six hours of sleep (Despite going to bed early) , did *three*hours of heavy lifting (Sundays we open at 10 due to outdated bad UK religious laws), handled intense focus customer transactions and scans for 2,5 hours before getting a half hour break, then coming back to do 3 hours more before the store closed and without customers taking 90~ minutes to complete all the bullshit cleaning they asked of me, alone. (Except I was so slow, a supervisor did a task). The point is.
I'm trying. I'm working. I do what I can, but there are things I *can't do well* and that's just being completely ignored. Gross.