I finally have a good one for this page.
A little back story on one of my jobs. It's a 24 hour family home for people with dementia. It's a relatively easy job, but we only have 5 workers. We each are supposed to work 3 twelve hour shifts and I was originally hired as an extra to fill in the gaps in The gaps in schedule so others could have time off. I told my boss when our 6th employee left on maternity leave that I was willing to work more hours since this was our homes only income unexpectedly. At first, he was completely down with it and promised me a full time position. While telling me this, I noticed that every week he was putting other workers down for over 50 hours a week and leaving me at 12, sometimes 24 hours a week. After his continued promise to give me full hours, I eventually gave up on hope and got a second job.
So between the two jobs I had not had a day off in over two weeks. On Thursday, I got up at seven to do my first job, got maybe a two hour break in the day, then did twelve hours at the second job, from 6pm to 6am, then went to work my other job again. After all three shifts were done, I finally was able to go to sleep at 7pm after being awake for a solid 36 hours. Today was my first day off in 2 weeks, and I have a whole bunch of things planned for today, like my friends baby shower and a dentist appointment, and my car is in the shop so I'm really unsure how I am going to do it.
So at 3 am my coworker called me asking me to cover her 12 hour shift because her sister was acting suicidal and begging her to call out of work. I thought about it for a long while and told her that I was so sorry but I could not cover her shift. She has been guilt tripping me a lot. While I understand that what she is going through is way worse than what I am going through, there is not much I can do. I need sleep. I need to get my car, and take care of my kids. I suggested that her sister go to the hospital and she told me that was a really messed up thing to suggest when all she needed from me was to cover her shift.
I hate the amount of guilt I am feeling about not being able to cover for her because of my own health. I hate my boss for over working everybody to the point that any call out is forcing the employees to work even more over time than they already are working. I hate him even more for knowing that if he had just put me on a full time schedule, this wouldn't even be a problem. Everybody would be getting a reasonable work load and covering shifts would not be such a detrimental blow to someone's health.