Most of the time my shifts are 6 hours with a 30 minute break, but the manager usually has me go on break an hour or an hour and a half after my shift has started, so once the break is over I am standing and working for 4 hours straight with no break. I work on the line at a fast food place and there’s literally no chairs anywhere in the employee only area except in the manager’s office.
I tried to request to make my shifts only 4 hours long with max hours per week to be 12 hours (so I’m only working 3 days a week) but my request got denied.
There’s so many studies out there that prove that standing for prolonged periods of time is terrible for your health. Because of these shifts I’ve been getting a lot of lower back pain and leg pain. I can’t even imagine doing 8 hour shifts with all that standing. Apparently prolonged standing even leads to circulatory problems too which makes sense because it messes with your blood flow. Yet it’s so common for jobs to force people to stand for super long periods of time.
I’ve also been trying to transfer to the location closer to my college and the general manager hasn’t said anything about it even though I gave her the letter a week ago. The only thing that’s changed is that I’m not scheduled next week for the current location I’m in. But there has been no communication.
I’m on the verge of quitting because of these 2 things. I’m a full time college student and I think it’s perfectly reasonable to be allowed to work shorter shifts and work in a closer location. These kinds of jobs with prolonged standing are absolutely not for me. The process of getting a job is awful. I’m thinking of maybe trying tutoring next semester instead (and being an education major should help with that).