To deliberately inconvenience my colleagues?

Why is it more moral for you to be inconvenienced than your colleague? Is your colleague more deserving of convenience than you are?

The thread title is interesting, OP. “To deliberately inconvenience my colleagues?”

How would you be ‘deliberately inconveniencing’ them when the situation is nothing to do with you but is actually only between your absent colleague and their manager?

You should look at why you think you’re the person to blame if your colleague is kept late tomorrow.

Personally I'd go in half an hour early. That means you do half an hour and nightshift do half an hour. If they've already arranged cover and you aren't needed, just chill for awhile.

Go in at your normal time, no one has asked you to do otherwise, and don’t feel guilty about it either

If you keep being the safety net, nothing will change.

It's one day's inconvenience for the night shift worker, if there's no cover - versus you picking up the slack forever more.

The work colleague who is going off on annual leave should be the one discussing with the boss who is going to cover

You are employed to work your hours.
Do your hours.
You are not responsible for anything other than your employed hours and work.
This is not your problem.
You are making it your problem!

There's no dilemma here at all, why are you taking it upon yourself to sort something out that isn't your responsibility. Why would the night shift put any blame on someone who has nothing to do with them having to stay late?

Why would you do it when nobody asked you to?

Most people people would assume they would have been asked if needed.

You seem overly stressed about a work issue that may not even occur and isn't your responsibility even if there is an issue.

Honestly, if you were on my team and you came in early to resolve an issue I hadn't raised and that you aren't responsible for, I think I would be asking you why and if there was any work related stress going on. It's not typical behaviour.

This is bonkers!
Ring colleague on the night shift?
Go off sick?
Why on earth are you making such a drama out of this

Go in, do your shift, go home

You're not inconveniencing your colleagues, are you?

Just do your job and let the managers do theirs.

Why on earth do you feel its your responsibility to manage everything OP? do you get paid extra? Do you think the company will realise how valuable you are and never let you go?? I'm sorry but you are making yourself exhausted and overthinkijf things that don't concern you for no reason.

For all you know your colleague has been asked to stay the extra hour!

You're over thinking

An possibly unpopular opinion - could you get a 24 vomiting bug that will leave you fine for the weekend and you too could be off? This is what happens when manager fail to plan.

My story is that I have the skills to provide cover for a colleague. I had been doing that job for a number of years and said I've been there, done that and while I don't mind be a safety net for a new person coming in (we had been told we'd be getting up to 4 new starters in our team over the past 12 months, none have materialised) I no longer want to be seen as the defacto cover for this colleague when they are out sick/on leave/absent for whatever reason.

This came to a head towards the end of last year as this colleague was planning on being off for a week, so I had some time to take and I matched their leave. Others had to step up and provide cover. It got covered. I don't really care if people don't like that I did that because I've been saying for months and months that I can't go back to doing that job as I really found it soul destroying in the last years of me doing it and it wasn't doing my mental health any good knowing that I had to be the one to provide the cover.

Now I know that they can manage without me it actually is such a relief because I had been told previously that I couldn't book my leave at the same time as this other colleague. That was a pile of shite as it turns out!

I would phone in sick and then make a miraculous recovery for Monday!

This is harsh but fair. It's hugely overstating the situation to say YOU would be 'deliberately inconveniencing' your colleagues by turning up to work at your contracted hours.

What's wrong with just saying "Who's covering for X tomorrow, by the way"? And then if nobody else puts their hand up, resist the temptation to jump in and sacrifice yourself; just say either 'sorry but you can't do it tomorrow', or if you prefer, point out that you did all the extra cover before so maybe someone else can do it this time. Then you head off happily, knowing everyone else has had a chance to sort it (or not) and you've helped them by pointing out the possible gap without taking on extra work...

Harsh. The OP is clearly a nice person who is worrying about the wellbeing of another colleague and worrying about not doing something, that she doesn’t have to do, all because she doesn’t want to inconvenience somebody else.

OP, if it really bothers you, message a manager this evening and say that you’d noticed Phillip was off tomorrow and that you hadn’t been asked to cover and are not able to, so just wanted to check something else was in place so that Simon wasn’t working an extra hour.

You're not inconveniencing anyone. At no time has anyone approached you. At no time have you agreed. You're simply turning up to work as planned.

If anyone asks why you didn't come in to cover for them bluntly and honestly say no one even broached you covering that day so you assumed it was already covered. If anyone gets more shirty tell them you did 7 months of cover surely it's someone else's turn to cover a single shift.