Many many years ago, I had a job doing maintenance for an apartment community. It was a cool job because the repairs were never that hard and the dudes I worked with were pretty cool. I might even still be there today if not for one thing.
My boss.
As a boss, he was pretty normal except for how he scheduled us. For all the maintenance guys, he refused to schedule us fairly. In most non-9-5 jobs, you get scheduled for working different shifts. First shift, second shift, or third shift. They usually break down something like this:
First shift = 6am – 2pm
Second shift = 2pm – 10pm
Third shift = 10pm – 6am
Leave the walkie and just walk away
In a lot of places, employees start by only working third shifts (which sucks, but you’re at the bottom of totem pole, so you gotta put in your time), and eventually get to work second shift, and then first shift. Some places rotate shifts, but they’re usually careful about it to make sure no employee is working two shifts in a row or some other shit*y shift combination.
But this boss at the apartment complex I worked at didn’t have the maintenance workers all with certain shifts. He kept changing our schedules around.
Changing schedules around is hard because your sleep schedule gets crazy and you can’t plan to do anything with friends because you never know what your schedule will be next week.
This boss did one worse though and didn’t plan shifts well. He had me and other dudes sometimes working two shifts in a row, or first and third shifts in the same day… it was crappy.
Eventually it got bad enough that I knew it was time to quit. Being a shift worker is okay if the shifts are fair and are sorta employee friendly, but that’s not always the way it goes.
So one day I got called in last minute to do third shift. I showed up and was fixing this bathtub drain when my boss called me on the walkie talkie and said that I had a shower head to fix next, and that I would need to stay on for the first shift in the morning.
I put down the walkie talkie in that bathtub, walked out of that apartment, and never went back. It was time to quit and I had reached that point where either I was going to punch a hole through a wall, or I just needed to leave.
So I left.
I was young then. I know now that it’s best to formally quit and stuff. But either way, when it’s time to quit a job, it’s time to quit. And sometimes that’s just what you gotta do.
