Exactly what it says on the tin. I work as a housekeeper in a nursing home and I very very much am an Essential part of the establishment, as without someone to keep residents rooms clean, tend to the trash, ect things will rot and the nurses and CNA's jobs will be infinitely harder. Housekeepers are the grease to the wheels, and while I do not MIND per say doing extra on top of my already stuffed day, I and my roommates and even my partner have come to the conclusion that my work is abusing me.
I do overtime every single weekday (and even some weekends, like today), hardly have time for my breaks because there are anywhere from 12 to 14 rooms per quarter of the building and I had half of the building today, on top of my bloated amount of morning chores I have to do to keep the building look presentable. I have been doing these one half of the building days for upwards of 3 or so months until two weeks ago where my manager put me on the side that has two people usually, which was great! Half the amount of work to do meant I could take my time and see to it that my residents rooms were as good as my severely OCD ass could make them. But today for some reason two people were on the other side and it was just me by myself on the side I was working.
This, normally would be fine, I'd just slam out bathrooms and trash and the floors that look the worst, I'd mop and the others would get a dusting of a sweep. But State is coming by tomorrow, on top of Housekeeping GM because a couple of my coworkers have been slacking on their duties, and we're being forced to work on extra touches because of this.
So, fearing for my job, I stayed 9 hours today so that I could finish up my work, because I cannot risk getting fired. It took me 9 months of searching to get this job, and I am a very competent housekeeper, and no where else in the area pays what my company is paying for HK (I'm making 15 an hour when most others are paying anywhere from 11-13).
What can I do? I've already discussed the issue with my union rep, and all she's told me is “Do what you can because they'll see that you can't get everything done so they'll eventually hire more people to amend it” but I can't keep that up because I'd be risking my own job due to it, and the new administration is super trigger happy right now.
I'm planning on discussing this with HR tomorrow, as she has an open door policy with employees to if there's an issue or concern to come to her and she'll at least figure out who best to forward these issues to, but I can't say for sure what to inform her. Discuss the fact that without my overtime shit wouldn't have gotten done? Bring up my issues with how much my workload has gotten, continues to be, and discuss what we can do moving forward? We consistently are understaffed and have days with just two people on the whole floor (one per half of the building) so I truly don't know what to do. I already work 5 days a week, and I'm Jewish so I take my Fridays and Saturdays for Shabbat, and I refuse to let my Shabbat be fucked with. What more can I do to make this easier on myself because I'm for real at my wits end with this shit.
TL;DR: I work 5 days a week for 9+ hours a day and sometimes doing twice the amount of work than I'm supposed to, what do???????