Whelp, so much for that.

Next week, we're back to yo-yo scheduling. I was looking forward to having a steady sleep schedule, but alas, that happiness is not to be. Once again, I am going from opening to closing in the course of one week.

I can't tell if our new scheduler is trying to stress-test us, or just trying to make everyone dislike her. Most people are in the latter camp, from what I can tell.

What I find ironic is, our employer is big on everyone being healthy, and yet allows our scheduler to deny us proper, steady sleep cycles. Heck, most of the Department heads are required to have said unsteady sleep schedule.

Giving that there are many studies that have been published regarding the health benefits of steady sleep, I really have to wonder just how healthy our employer wants us to be, if they're allowing this. Then again, I've been wondering about it for a few years now. Back when I first started, I'd wondered to one of the managers why we weren't able to get steady schedules, and was told, "so customers know when to find you."

Um, what? They'd know when to find us if we were set in our hours, not the opposite! We still have people who call for a coworker, expecting them to be there at X time because, hey~! They were yesterday/last Monday/last week/ whenever, and are rather surprised to discover, no, they won't be in for another 5 hours, because they're closing. Or, that they're already gone for the day because they opened. Yup! Customers sure know when to find the person they're looking to talk to about their order!

My main concern with not having a steady sleep schedule is, if we're going from leaving work at 2:30 one day to leaving it at 10:30(pm) the next, and said person has been going to bed around 8-9pm, they wind up being shorted on sleep. If they've had enough opening shifts in a row, they might not be able to sleep past 8am on the 3rd or 4th day, when they have to work that closing shift, so they're denied sleep on both sides of that shift. Conversely, if they go from closing for awhile, they're not going to be able to fall asleep early enough to get proper rest before that opening (or mid!) shift.

If someone is not able to get enough sleep, for one reason or another, they can sometimes take drastic measures in order to fall asleep - alcohol, for one. Another is sleeping pills, and those also have side-effects to worry about, which can sometimes be worse than drinking yourself to sleep. Not getting enough rest, in addition to making someone lethargic and exhausted, can also lead to anxiety and depression, which I'm sure isn't something our employer really wants to deal with.

At the moment, the rumor mill at work is churning enough to say the store manager himself doesn't care about what our new scheduler is doing to us, so the only recourse we have is to call and report the problem. If enough of us call, we might be able to have something done.

It shouldn't take that kind of drastic action to have something corrected that should have never even been put into practice.