Hello everyone, thanks in advance for listening its gonna be a long one. I have a BS in biology and planned on taking a few classes this summer, two online, and anatomy and physiology at HACC. Then in the fall I would be taking anatomy and physiology II as my only class, with the hopes of applying to accelerated BSN programs that would start in May '10. I currently work at Lancaster General Hospital as a patient access representative full time M-F from 930-6. I spoke to my boss last friday and told her that I will be taking a class and i wouldnt be able to come in until 2 on tues and thursdays ( class is 8-130), but i could still work my full days on mwf leaving me with 32 hours total. She blatantly said, i cannot accommodate that! So i said, well we have a bunch of part timers who stay when people are on vacation or what not, what if i got the coverage for those hours? She said, no, youre hired as a 1 FTE (40 hours) a week and if you consistently dont work those hours HR will catch on and ill get in trouble. I told her that she wouldnt because I came from a previous job in the hospital where I was hired as a .5 (20 hours) and worked almost 40 for an entire year! She still would not budge. So i said, what if I still worked my 40 hours by doing 10 hours shift on mwf and 5 hours on tues/thurs? She said no cause im still not working the hours I was hired for! My next suggestion was, what if i work 40 hours AND find people to cover for me, that should solve every issue. Again, she said no because I dont need to pay two people when i shouldnt have to. I said, well you pay people extra when others are on vacation or call in sick, so whats the difference? She said well theyre using PTB (paid time bank) and HR understands that I need to get coverage when people are off. Ughhhh... i didnt even know what else to say.
Her option to me was to switch my lab from tue/thus 11-130 to mon/wed from 8-1030 then work the 1130-8 shift ! I said, umm, that means i would be going to class and working mon-thurs from 8-8! I told her there was no way I was going to do that. Her next offer was switching to part time 330-8, which again I told her I did not want to because I need the money, I dont want to work til 8, and have NO reason to only work 20 hours a week. We left it at that.
Yesterday, she calls me into the office again and says that the 1230-430 part time position will probably be opening up, and asked if that would work better. I said yes thats a better fit doing 8-430 as opposed to 8-8 but i still would want more hours. She said I could probably get more hours because of people taking off and what not I would be able to work a little extra. Just when i thought things seemed to be finally resolved, I asked her if come august when my class is over if I could switch back to my regular hours. She said NO, these hours would be permanent! I was shocked.. didnt even know what to say.
What has me so frustrated is the fact that my class is SEVEN weeks, SEVEN! We have people who CALL OFF more hours in one week than I would need for the whole summer class! Just last week alone we had one woman out all week and another who called off three days. Right there are the hours I would need to do something constructive, and shes not gonna give it to me? Also im telling her two months in advance so she can find coverage, not just doing it the last minute and leaving the office short staffed. Shes giving me a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
I understand how me missing 8 hours a week for 7 weeks can be a big deal but in august I would only need to miss 3 hours a week. I told her this, that my class is from 8-1030 wed and fri so i could work 3 full days then come in 11-6, which is 37 hours. She said NO again that its still not 40 hours!! Basically if I take the part time 1230-430 those would be my hours period. I could deal with the part time for the 7 week summer course which would give me more time to study, but i CANT just work part-time indefinitely. I told her that im not guaranteed to get into a program and if i dont, well then ill be available to work full time from dec until i apply for the next cycle. She still didnt care. And whats funny to me is, she cant afford for me to not work 8 hours or even 3 hours a week, BUT she can afford to cut me to 20 and be part time! How does that make any sense? And you need to understand our job, she cant just hire someone a day later and have them come in and start working. It would take at least a MONTH just to get a person hired if they were already employed at LGH and way longer than that if they were from the outside. More importantly, the training for our job is around 8 weeks. So even if she did get someone internal to work there after 4 weeks, they STILL wouldnt be doing the job and helping us until 2 months later! Again, i think me missing a total of 56 hours and having someone fill in makes a WHOLE lot more sense than trying to hire someone else because they wont be effective until 3 months later, and by then I could be working 37 hours a week!
Let me add that Im the best worker in the office, by far. I even told her that while i was sitting there coming up with a million ideas for her to let me do this. I said, honestly I could only work 10 hours week and i would still do more than everybody else here. For the first time, she said YES youre right! She agreed with me and said, you are the best worker I have and when it comes time for raises you'll get a good one and they wont get squat!!! Thats nice and all, but i would rather have my regular hours back and have her work with me on this than get a 20 cent raise.
Im stuck , I dont know what to do. I could take the part time hours and HOPE that in those 7 weeks she hasnt hired someone else so I could ask for full time back, but then she still wont let me just work 37. I really dont want to work just part time when I dont have to, and if thats her only option to me, what do i do? I could look for other jobs in the hospital but are they gonna want to hire me from the start when they KNOW im taking classes and plan to be in school by May '10. I could always work outside of the hospital, but as we all know, the economy isnt so good and i cant afford to waste months NOT having a job at all. I dont know what to do. Any advice you could give would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading.
