Only "On Call" employees wanted

[Crazy Dave]

Notice the new trend these days?

You must have at least two years of college, have a five year previous work history and you must be available (no exceptions) at all times in case the employer calls you to come in to do three to four hours of work, maybe one or three days a week.

[ellie]

1. That is how Macy's hired my husband

On call. They would call him late in the day to come in at 6 in the a.m. He doesn't work there anymore.

[Drale]

2. The problem is that employers have the upper-hand right now

and can basically hand out terms. If you don't like them, someone else will and they will hire them.

[EC]

3. I remember this happening to me years ago when I was

trying to find a part-time job to work in off hours in my full-time job. It was near impossible, because of the on-call policies of all the part-time jobs I found..and they expected the full-time employer to work around it! Makes it impossible to get two jobs anymore that will work out schedule wise.

When my daughter was young, I had three jobs and all were regular schedules, so that I could arrange the hours around my schedule with tending to my daughter's needs. Good luck with that now, employers needs are to hire someone that can cover for everyone else, therefore no regularly scheduled hours. One week you may get 4 hours and the next 20 hours, how can one live like that? Just think - that would likely be the only income you have since you have to be available to work whenever they call.

[Crazy Dave]

5. I was fired from one job two weeks ago

I had managed for a month to juggle my schedule with two places I was working but then came an unexpected conflict and one wanted me to blow off the other. Didn't do it and therefore was fired and screwed out of $75 pay.

The courts have also and conveniently made it easy for employers to screw people out of pay especially on the lower end. The last time I filed for a small claims judgment the minimum amount was $250 but there was (may be more now) a $250 fee and court cost just to file the claim.

You can literally hire and fire a different person each week to work for you three days for minimum wage and never pay a cent the way it is set up in my county.

[CrispyQ]

7. "...how can one live like that?"

Damned good question. They are making it even more difficult to be "uniquely American."

At some point TPTB are going to push too far & the damn will break.

[grasswire]

4. the local Kroger employees tell me that.

The printed schedule will have them signed for maybe three six-hour days, but then they will get usually called to come in more. If they don't agree to come in, the job is in jeopardy. Maybe that's better managerial policy than sending people home. But it sure stinks.

[Citizen Worker]

8. I was in a Kroger store yesterday buying a few, very few, groceries. There was but one staffed

checkstand opened. With so few groceries a kind person invited me to proceed ahead of her. Then there was a call for additional staff to open another checkstand. I was approached by yet another staffer to use the automated checkout. I refused saying, "I prefer the checkout with a Union worker." She replied, "we get credit for directing customers over here so we can get more hours over there," meaning the Union cashiers. If you can make sense out of that statement let me know because I missed something. At every opportunity I speak up for Union workers and loudly enough for others to hear me.

[CanonRay]

6. The Lord calling in the serfs to weed his field

is there really any difference?

[Odin2005]

9. Naw, the working times of serfs on their lord's plots was governed by tradition.

So modern workers actually have it worse.

[emmadoggy]

10. The other trend that is very disturbing to me

is the prevalence of all this "personality" testing. My hubby had to take one recently for his current employer (for whom he has worked for nearly 15 years!). Shortly after, he was demoted.

Now he's been looking around at other jobs and has had to take these tests for prospective employers, as well. The most recent one was flat out ridiculous! They said it should take around an hour (!) and it ended up taking significantly longer than that!! One section alone had 200 questions! And there were a number of sections to the test!

Total fucking bullshit as far as I'm concerned.

[golfguru]

11. My daughter has a job exactly like that at Victoria's Secret

She hates the on call thing but as a student in college,
it is not so bad because she likes the job.