TL:DR at the bottom.
I work for a company that does third party direct fulfillment. I am in a customer representative role where I send various reports on production to our customer and for internal management. There are only two people in this role, my counterpart and myself. They cover the day shift and I cover nights; I clock in at the exact same time they are clocking out, avoiding any lapse in coverage.
That has been the norm since I was hired on direct at the beginning of the year. The supervisor knew I had a scheduling conflict when I was a temp department lead and recommended this role as there was no need for overtime, as reporting demand did not increase with production.
3 months into the role they decided they would like reporting coverage on the weekend since the leads were incompetent at running the hourly “product not invoiced” report that is just copying and pasting data from our warehouse management system. I pushed back but eventually stopped because I needed the hours anyway. Yay, now I am on the hook for every other Saturday.
The manager has been inconsistent in his meetings and scheduling. For a few weeks now he has been scheduling meetings for the customer service reps, supervisors, and himself 15 minutes before my start time. I respond to these meeting requests explaining that I am unavailable due to childcare and transportation issues and if we can schedule the meeting 15 minutes later.
Now I am being told I must follow the same schedule as the teammates on the floor (apparently the same was said to my counterpart). This means we will be both working 12 hour shifts and overlap for about 7 hours of it with only enough work for one of us. The supervisors who have a mutual respect for me and generally approve anything I need sat me down in a solemn tone to tell me this; that this request was the manager’s and reach out to HR for any scheduling concerns.
I reach out to HR in email and request a meeting or phone call at their earliest convenience and carbon copy the manager. HR proceeds to tell me they do not handle scheduling conflicts and to seek a meeting with my manager, then proceeds to ask the manager to follow up with themselves once we have talked in the same email.
I went to my manager explaining how confused I was about the whole situation. I explained the reasons I could not come in earlier, to which he explains business demands supersede my schedule, and I counter with the customer service role demand does not increase with production. I proceed to name a few names I know have schedule accommodations for childcare and ask why it is different for myself. To which he responds accommodations are reviewed on a case-by-case basis. He proceeds to tell me we will talk about it on the 1st with HR and schedules a meeting for us within my available hours.
I’m only sticking around because I see a pathway internally through IT towards my career goal, network engineering. I left my last job making 30% more than I do now because I felt stuck and picked this up as a temp gig until I saw the pathway I wanted to take. This job does not mean as much to me as they may think it does especially when they are paying under $20 an hour, while the large metro area I am in has plenty of work I am experienced in paying $20 or more.
I would like to continue in my role though as I have a family and really don’t need the added stress of unemployment even if for a week or so, also to continue in my pursuit of IT experience (getting my foot in the door as they say).
Now my biggest question is why do we need to sit down with HR on the 1st when they do not involve themselves in scheduling?
TL;DR: Manager controls scheduling and is telling me they are changing my schedule to work overlapping hours with my counterpart with only enough work for one of us (costing the company 4 hours of overtime each day for each of us). Refuses to budge when I tell them I cannot show up earlier due to my home life schedule and involves HR when HR says they are not part of the resolution process.
How should I proceed on the 1st? I am not well spoken and sometimes have trouble articulating when making a case for myself.