I’ve been fortunate to have a desk job for most of my life: I was surprised when my friend told me their retail job keeps them part time but “oncall”. They explained the time while oncall is unpaid but must be available in case a manager needs to backfill empty shifts.
This effectively makes scheduling a second job hard because they have a part time job which occupies 60 hours of their week.
Is this common in the service industry now? I’m disgusted by the practice and think it needs to be abolished immediately. If you ask for a person’s time, you must pay them. If a business doesn’t want to pay people to be oncall they should staff their shifts with enough people to accommodate call outs.