At present, I have a terrible work-life balance. I work five days a week, a little more than 40 hours a week in most cases. I'm marked as “any availability” because I was basically told that's what you have to be for this job. No two workweeks are the same, and no two shifts are the same, even. It feels like every day is waking up, going to work, going home, going to bed, and then waking up for work once again. One of my two days off is usually spent recovering from the stress & physical demand (i have chronic pain), and the other day is spent doing the necessities around the house and trying to spend a bit of time with my loved ones until the week starts over again.
I cannot afford to lose hours, but I want to restructure my work week, I'd like to work four 10-hour days each week. It doesn't even matter which days. But I know if I say I want this, I'll catch flack for it. I want to be understanding that “we're understaffed” but that “understaffing” is simply not hiring enough people to work shifts past midnight (since minors, that make up most of our crew, legally can't), and not putting people who can, and even WANT to work past midnight on that shift.
My boss very much tries to have the “We're just a big ol' family :)” facade, and pulls the “but we need you! what am I supposed to do!?!” manipulation tactic when people so much as go on a one-week vacation. He's notorious for cutting hours when people get too picky about their schedule, and often does this very passive-aggressive habit of, for instance, making someone work late at night one day, ad the next day having an early afternoon shift. If someone complains, it's “I only HAVE to make sure there are 8 hours between shifts.” Well, when people like myself commute nearly an hour just to work…. that's 6 hours of sleep if I can pass out the second I walk through my door. It's exhausting.
I really want to have the opportunity to have free time outside of this job without fear of getting yelled at, or having my hours cut. I know we don't have the staff for him to outright fire me. I'm also unfortunately susceptible to guilt-tripping, and I don't want to be made to feel awful for changing this. What would be the best way to bring this up with my boss?