So family unfriendly! Working hours have been pushed

[Lana07]

I absolutely HATE it they force us with their STUPID flexibility to work till 22:00 (for 6 weeks for Christmas, fair enough) and 20:30 in retail.

I used to finish at 18:30 the latest.

Family evening is RUINED when I get home by 21:30/22:30.

Please DON'T tell me I am lucky to have a job.

My post is NOT about that.

And no, I am not in a position to change my job for the nearest 3-5 years minimum.

I originally DID NOT sign up these hours but they they are pushing and pushing!!!

2) Possibly Teaching IT. I would learn IT for teachers of secondary school if it's not that crazy and demanding. I know many teachers left because they were overloaded with too much often useless paperwork. So I am really not sure about that. I understand some paperwork is needed but NOT the amount it is often unfairly expected.

If working long hours and employee demands are getting you down now, really don't look at teaching as a career option!

I can't imagine being the kind of person who says "everyone loves me"

If you work in retail and don’t mind wfh in exchange for a similar working pattern you do already try applying for fraud analyst jobs at various banks / financial institutions. These are wfh home based jobs where you can pretty much set your own hours if you have retail experience.

What can sound rude to you is a need to express my true feelings and is totally acceptable for me.
Combine this with your overall attitude and unwillingness to work beyond a traditional working day, and I would suggest you lose any idea of becoming a teacher.

Also, your attitude that secondary teaching is more intellectual than primary is hugely offensive to primary colleagues and probably another reason not to consider coming to work in education.

@Bookworm20

You work in retail? The hours are shit, but surely you know this is you've been working there for 16 years. How many hours a day are they having you work?

Also you said 6 years ago they have changed it that flexibility is a must.
So you've know for the past 6 years that you were expected to be flexible, why not try to get out then?

Totally get why you are pissed off at the hours, but surely you're not doing until 8.30 every day of the week? Will the hours go back down after christmas do you think? Or have they changed them to this permanently?

I work 25 hours a week.

They have now extended it to finish at 20:00 every day.

The shop closes at 18:00, used to be 19:00 before corona and we must do food yellow stickers till 20:00-20:30 after Christmas.

So there are morning people, poor people who wake up at 4 am the latest and start at 5 am. They used to do it. Now they don't want to pay then extra for antisocial hours 5am-6am and force us who used to finish at 18:30 to do them and finish at 20:00-20:30.

I've worked in clothes for 15 years and I liked it more. They forced me to move on foods in the lockdown in a more local shop for me because understandably more people were buying online and they got rid of 50 people in a big city store where I worked for 6 years.

I was full time for 6 years to start with. I am fit, sporty and healthy at 42. Size 10-12 Thank God and my healthy lifestyle I've always had.

I was 26-31 then and worked full time. It was too much on my feet non-stop for 37.5 hours. On Friday I could barely walk when it was Monday to Friday week..

Then I started 29, then 25 hours because we moved for my husband's career and our son started school. I took our son swimming, street dance, football, karate, tennis as I had time for him how my husband wanted. Before that, we paid 50/50 crazy nursery price 80% of my salary.

I'd never want to work an extra minute on my feet.

That's why I am working on my thoughts & training so hards towards potentially earning more but not doing more hours with them ever.

For Christmas it;'s 22:00 finish for 6 weeks.

[quote Lana07]@VanGoghsDog

Yes, of course I put the money about my family time because I need the money to have happy life.[/quote]
You're not having a happy life though, are you?

The way I see it, you have two choices: either you suck it up and stay in the job and be miserable for several years whilst making this money, or you quit and find another job where you are happier, even if it is financially less advantageous.

You are the only person who can decide which is more important.

I gave up shares in a startup -which I guarantee were worth many many times what your shares are worth in a retail job- for the sake of my family and mental health. It will have repercussions financially until I die- I would have been able to retire early and still would have had at least £10k more annually in retirement income. But I made that decision and dealt with it and I don’t regret it. You can do the same or you can stay in the job and buckle down and get on with things. Or you can act helpless and angry on mumsnet and pretend you don’t have a choice.

You only work 25 hours a week, I can’t see how that’s intruding on your family life tbh.

I found, when looking for a part time job, they wanted someone really flexible. So core hours (which I can do), but some evenings and weekends!! Which I can't do because my husband works a rotating shift, including weekends! Would be nice if jobs would be more family friendly.

Sorry you are getting a hard time OP, when actually you just want to vent!

Retail is shit for families. Office jobs aren't much better for younger families who need to do school runs, although with the push over to the "totally impossible, would never work" WFH jobs this is much better than it was. Just sad it took a pandemic to make work more accessible to people.

No real advice other than speaking to work and saying you don't want to work past 6:30pm. They used to have plenty of students and teens who would, but again the job market has pushed them to ask for better than minimum wage and employers won't budge.

[quote Lana07]@VanGoghsDog

Yes, of course I put the money about my family time because I need the money to have happy life.[/quote]
Well that's very contradictory considering your original post. You seem very unhappy.

Retail and hospitality are the least family-friendly careers, aren't they? They were fine for me when I was young and shift work suited my partying lifestyle but would hate to work in those sectors now as it never really suits family life. Even my call center days were better than retail.

I work in an admin role, now. It's well paid, not onerous work and Monday to Friday, 9-5.30. Occasional overtime every few months which I don't get paid for but they are extremely flexible back when I've a doctors appointment/ off sick or will be late due to dropping my car to a garage, I'd never get docked from my salary, or even questioned as to where I am. I can work from home in an emergency without any issues, so my WFH partner has back up if he's got an occasional meeting, and that means we don't need any childcare. We close every Christmas so there's no office politics with people manipulating the best days off. My bosses are nice, and my colleagues are nice.

My work won't set the world alight and it's not the most exciting it's rather dull but I have to say, it's a sweet setup in terms of a work/life balance, with a lack of shite/stress in my work day.

I stayed in a job I found extremely stressful for 3 years - I got through by planning a route out. I moved into IT (DH is in software, which helped) - which is great. Wfh - I like coding, but don’t do a huge amount of it. Lots of clicking around the screen, problem solving with other people.

The business analysts at my company do a variety of things. Some do data analysis, some talk to people in the company who need a project done and get the requirements. They then can move in to project management, scrum master. The British computing society does a modular qualification for business analysis and sell books - so you could read up on some modules.

I did a BCS exam in software testing - just from reading the course book and doing some practice questions - it doesn’t make me a software tester, but I felt it gave me some confidence and understanding of broad concepts.

I’m not sure where you’ve got the idea from that teaching is a demanding job due to “paperwork”. Although I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “paperwork”. Is planning lessons and marking “paperwork”? What makes teaching demanding is just teaching, it’s the planning, the marking, meetings, communication with parents, intervention etc, and it’s an issue of funding. Too few teachers teaching too many students, with too few hours in the working day to complete the tasks which don’t involve standing in front of students teaching. I’m not sure how that can be streamlined? If there was a way I’m sure schools would be all over it, as there’s a massive recruitment and retention crisis as a result. But, if it is something you want to do, you may well be able to do it part time, which might give you a decent work life balance. You’ll probably feel like you’re exploited, just as you feel exploited now, when you’re working on your days off, but at least you won’t need to work until 10pm very often. That’s unless you’re full-time as a teacher, when working evenings and weekends will be par for the course, so I wouldn’t do that.

The good thing about the shares is what you pay stays with you even if you don't make a profit, the money you've paid should be safe. So it's like a saving account. It doesn't get lost as long as the company survives. It has good indications to survive and prosper

I understand this, but not the "2 years and 2 months" you kept mentioning
What does this timescale mean, and what's to stop you looking elsewhere and taking out the money you've paid so far?

@Puzzledandpissedoff

The good thing about the shares is what you pay stays with you even if you don't make a profit, the money you've paid should be safe. So it's like a saving account. It doesn't get lost as long as the company survives. It has good indications to survive and prosper

I understand this, but not the "2 years and 2 months" you kept mentioning
What does this timescale mean, and what's to stop you looking elsewhere and taking out the money you've paid so far?

The shares are for 3 years.

My husband estimates there is a good chance for them to be 5 times the amount we will pay for them in 3 years.

This fact makes me stay at this job for now.

Also, I would probably keep this job as a stable income part-time 4 days and 25 hours a week + look for other options to earn more.

.

@Orchid876

I’m not sure where you’ve got the idea from that teaching is a demanding job due to “paperwork”. Although I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “paperwork”. Is planning lessons and marking “paperwork”? What makes teaching demanding is just teaching, it’s the planning, the marking, meetings, communication with parents, intervention etc, and it’s an issue of funding. Too few teachers teaching too many students, with too few hours in the working day to complete the tasks which don’t involve standing in front of students teaching. I’m not sure how that can be streamlined? If there was a way I’m sure schools would be all over it, as there’s a massive recruitment and retention crisis as a result. But, if it is something you want to do, you may well be able to do it part time, which might give you a decent work life balance. You’ll probably feel like you’re exploited, just as you feel exploited now, when you’re working on your days off, but at least you won’t need to work until 10pm very often. That’s unless you’re full-time as a teacher, when working evenings and weekends will be par for the course, so I wouldn’t do that.

Thank you.

If you are a teacher, what subject do you teach?

Do you like it?

Is your job family-friendly for you?

@Namenic

I stayed in a job I found extremely stressful for 3 years - I got through by planning a route out. I moved into IT (DH is in software, which helped) - which is great. Wfh - I like coding, but don’t do a huge amount of it. Lots of clicking around the screen, problem solving with other people.

The business analysts at my company do a variety of things. Some do data analysis, some talk to people in the company who need a project done and get the requirements. They then can move in to project management, scrum master. The British computing society does a modular qualification for business analysis and sell books - so you could read up on some modules.

I did a BCS exam in software testing - just from reading the course book and doing some practice questions - it doesn’t make me a software tester, but I felt it gave me some confidence and understanding of broad concepts.

Thank you. Great advice.

I'll look into it 100%.

@Namenic

How long did it take you to qualify?

How quickly did you find a job?

@Namenic

What stressful job did you have before IT?

Does your husband like his IT job?

Fuck me you are full of rage over something that can be easily resolved

Healthcare. Shift work, lots on your feet, stressed me out so much.

DH is more in software than IT - I guess the difference is that he writes more code to test/develop products sold by the company. He finds it stressful - because they have tight deadlines… his previous companies in software were less stressful… also, he hasn’t worked in healthcare…

I am in in IT - so write a small amount of code - but the stuff I’m doing is maintaining a system/database - if people have a problem logging into a system, I check that they have an account, reset their password, see if they have the right permissions. Do they need to download specific drivers to connect to the system etc? I also upgrade and install systems. The code I write is generally to check things are running ok.

@Drinkingallthewine

Retail and hospitality are the least family-friendly careers, aren't they? They were fine for me when I was young and shift work suited my partying lifestyle but would hate to work in those sectors now as it never really suits family life. Even my call center days were better than retail.

I work in an admin role, now. It's well paid, not onerous work and Monday to Friday, 9-5.30. Occasional overtime every few months which I don't get paid for but they are extremely flexible back when I've a doctors appointment/ off sick or will be late due to dropping my car to a garage, I'd never get docked from my salary, or even questioned as to where I am. I can work from home in an emergency without any issues, so my WFH partner has back up if he's got an occasional meeting, and that means we don't need any childcare. We close every Christmas so there's no office politics with people manipulating the best days off. My bosses are nice, and my colleagues are nice.

My work won't set the world alight and it's not the most exciting it's rather dull but I have to say, it's a sweet setup in terms of a work/life balance, with a lack of shite/stress in my work day.

Lovely. Well done.

What daily/weekly tasks do you do at work?

Did you study/have the training to do it?