About a month or so I was placed in a factory by a staffing agency.
For context, I've been out of work for about 9 months prior. My mother has been experiencing back issues and is basically disabled until she gets surgery. I left my last job to move back in and help out. I'd been looking for work that fit those needs for a good while, but didn't find anything until this job fell in my lap. It seemed too good to be true, and as it turns out, that was the case.
As mentioned, it's a factory job. Standard hours are overnight which was perfect for me. I could come in when my mom went to bed and be home in the morning when she woke up to help out. I was a little wary because factory jobs do tend to have some overtime and I wanted to make sure it wouldn't conflict. I was told by the staffing agency “you might have to stay an hour late some days. Perhaps some weekends.” This seemed fine.
Yeah, that was a blatant lie. They can mandate you come in 4 hours early or stay 4 hours late, and boy do they sure make people work overtime.
I do generally like what I do (for what it is at least. It's no forever job but it's tolerable for the duration of this family crisis) so I didn't want to just up and leave and go back to another long job hunt, so I put in a request to move to part time (32 hours a week, no OT) so they can't fuck with my schedule and make me unable to help out my family. It's less money which sucks, but at least I'll be confident about my availability where family is concerned which is my priority.
I put in this request my first week, well before the 28 day grace period where you're immune to OT ended.
My supervisor is a cool dude who has gone to bat for me and tried to help me every step of the way, but HR dragged their feet and left my request in limbo for weeks. I am finally going on part time starting next week, but this week I've been caught in between that and my grace period ending. They have made me stay late every day of this week so far and it's infuriating and exhausting. My shift lead who does the scheduling knows how much I hate it and my family situation, but brushes my complaints off as being lazy or unmotivated
I'm hoping when my part time scheduling starts things will settle into normalcy again and I can kind of sort of like this job again, but this week has been draining and upsetting and my tolerance for this place's bullshit is wearing thin. I don't want to leave because in a lot of important ways it's about as good a job as I could hope for right now given my situation, but I'm not keen on letting them walk over me again if they try it.