I usually like to preface my posts about my job with saying that actually, overall where I work is surprisingly nice, but there are a few things which consistently annoy me, and I have just recently encountered another one. But for real, in general at my job (which is at a used media store) I get paid well, have good benefits, it's a healthy and non-stressful work environment, etc – it's just the things that pop up every now and again that get very annoying.
So, I've been working at my current job for the better part of a year now, and I'm getting annoyed with how slowly the benefits at this job are sorta “drip-fed” to employees. When you first get hired at my company there's a 3-month probationary period, which is pretty normal to a lot of places. But it's annoying because you're not really supposed to use time off, you don't get health insurance during it, don't get bonuses, etc.
Anyway, despite how annoying that is, it gets worse because depending on when/how you get hired, you can actually end up having to wait way longer for important things, like health insurance (which is the part really frustrating me lately). If you're hired originally as a seasonal employee, when you go from seasonal to normal part-time or full-time, you end up having another 1 month probationary period. Most people are initially hired here as seasonal. Luckily after your initial 3 months you do get access to some stuff, like bonuses and paid time off, but still no health insurance, retirement plan stuff, etc.
BUT, then if you're like me and went seasonal to part-time to full-time, it takes even longer because going from part-time to full-time means yet another 1 month probationary period before you get full benefits.
So that's already 5 months total of probation, albeit split up, but today in my own case I just found out that despite working what is considered “full-time” hours at my job for the past 2-ish months, they still never changed my status to full-time, and so I still haven't been eligible for full benefits. Apparently there was some sort of miscommunication within management where some of them thought I had only wanted to increase my hours temporarily. I can sort of understand where they're coming from because I may not have been as clear as I could have been about it, and I'm only working the minimum full-time hours (which is lower than at most other places). But even still I would've thought after working full-time hours for this long and even requesting that my schedule stay at the same hours for an upcoming schedule change, someone would have realized that I clearly wasn't going to lower my hours again?
I talked to multiple managers at my job today about this and so now they're aware that I want to be shifted into the full-time category, but I'm still concerned about how long it may take them to actually do that and if I'll end up still having to do another 1 month probation since I technically didn't even do that yet according to the paperwork.
I'm feeling stressed about it especially because, although I'm lucky enough to still be able to be on a health insurance plan from a family member, that family member has been pushing me to get my own insurance soon and either way I'm going to age-out of their plan in the near future.