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My co-worker has huge, huge amounts of vacation built up. Most of this came from a time in (I suppose) the 80s when there wasn't a cap on how many vacation hours she could earn. Her supervisor at the time was apparently quite opposed to her taking any of it, and so she had weeks and weeks and weeks of it by the time she came to work for the Library.
By that point a cap had been instated, so to prevent her from losing newly earned vacation hours, she was taking huge chunks of vacation: two months off every summer, the entire time of winter and spring breaks (another month in total), and like that. Apparently she's now nearing the cap again, partly because her seniority means she earns like 20 hours a month. To offset her huge vacation balance, she will be working only half days (7:30-11:30 am) during the entire month of June.
Besides my sheer envy of the ability to do this*, it means bad things for me in terms of stress level. My shift is from 12:30 to 9:30, so this eliminates what I had thought was a crucial time of overlap between her hours and mine (12:30-3:30 pm). I am unthrilled by this. The busiest time of day is probably between 9:30 and 3:30. I suppose it's only fair that I should now have to do what she's been doing all along, and handle three hours of crunch time on my own, but she has only 1.5 to 2 hours before that, whereas I have 5 to 6 hours after it. More irritatingly, this utterly demolishes the half-hour lunch break the union contract grants to me, as opposed to the only semi-impossible state it had been in before.
(* - I'm taking three weeks in August, but as I don't have the necessary paid vacation time, I'm using "unpaid leave". This is just what it sounds like: I'll be out three weeks' pay. I do keep my health coverage and other benefits, although they wouldn't be very helpful, as I'll be in Canada.)
The student employees essentially cannot be left unsupervised. Even if they were independent enough to never need hand-holding to perform their duties correctly and solve problems that come up (which they're not, but that's a separate problem and one we hope to start solving in the Fall), a supervisor is absolutely needed for opening the cash drawer and to handle situations that require knowledge of the supervisory password. Without a supervisor present, there are a number of fairly frequent situations that would simply come to an impasse, interfering with normal operations. Thus, there must be at least one supervisor present at all times.
Now, as I said above, I'm supposed to get a 30-minute meal break. By the time I am hungry at about 4:30 in the afternoon, she's been long gone, so I couldn't possibly go for a half hour lunch at that point. All I could do is run and get food, come right back, and eat at my desk, and that's what I have been doing. I usually get interrupted about three to five times while I try to finish eating. To have been able to actually take 30 minutes and be gone from the lab, I would have had to go at 3:00 in the afternoon. Hardly a reasonable mid-point to my day, but the opportunity was there if I wished to take it. With no overlap between her hours and my own, however, there is no point at which I can leave.
Even aside from how it affects me personally, this new schedule means there's no time when we are all here to have staff meetings, or to interview any prospective student employees. She and I won't touch base in the middle of the day to catch me up on anything strange or need-to-know that happened in the morning, any bargains she made with students over fines, or any explanation of who is supposed to come pick up this strange package on my desk. There will even be an hour in the middle of the day between when she leaves and I come in (see above about the negative consequences of the lack of a supervisor), but there's nothing I can do about that.
By that point a cap had been instated, so to prevent her from losing newly earned vacation hours, she was taking huge chunks of vacation: two months off every summer, the entire time of winter and spring breaks (another month in total), and like that. Apparently she's now nearing the cap again, partly because her seniority means she earns like 20 hours a month. To offset her huge vacation balance, she will be working only half days (7:30-11:30 am) during the entire month of June.
Besides my sheer envy of the ability to do this*, it means bad things for me in terms of stress level. My shift is from 12:30 to 9:30, so this eliminates what I had thought was a crucial time of overlap between her hours and mine (12:30-3:30 pm). I am unthrilled by this. The busiest time of day is probably between 9:30 and 3:30. I suppose it's only fair that I should now have to do what she's been doing all along, and handle three hours of crunch time on my own, but she has only 1.5 to 2 hours before that, whereas I have 5 to 6 hours after it. More irritatingly, this utterly demolishes the half-hour lunch break the union contract grants to me, as opposed to the only semi-impossible state it had been in before.
(* - I'm taking three weeks in August, but as I don't have the necessary paid vacation time, I'm using "unpaid leave". This is just what it sounds like: I'll be out three weeks' pay. I do keep my health coverage and other benefits, although they wouldn't be very helpful, as I'll be in Canada.)
The student employees essentially cannot be left unsupervised. Even if they were independent enough to never need hand-holding to perform their duties correctly and solve problems that come up (which they're not, but that's a separate problem and one we hope to start solving in the Fall), a supervisor is absolutely needed for opening the cash drawer and to handle situations that require knowledge of the supervisory password. Without a supervisor present, there are a number of fairly frequent situations that would simply come to an impasse, interfering with normal operations. Thus, there must be at least one supervisor present at all times.
Now, as I said above, I'm supposed to get a 30-minute meal break. By the time I am hungry at about 4:30 in the afternoon, she's been long gone, so I couldn't possibly go for a half hour lunch at that point. All I could do is run and get food, come right back, and eat at my desk, and that's what I have been doing. I usually get interrupted about three to five times while I try to finish eating. To have been able to actually take 30 minutes and be gone from the lab, I would have had to go at 3:00 in the afternoon. Hardly a reasonable mid-point to my day, but the opportunity was there if I wished to take it. With no overlap between her hours and my own, however, there is no point at which I can leave.
Even aside from how it affects me personally, this new schedule means there's no time when we are all here to have staff meetings, or to interview any prospective student employees. She and I won't touch base in the middle of the day to catch me up on anything strange or need-to-know that happened in the morning, any bargains she made with students over fines, or any explanation of who is supposed to come pick up this strange package on my desk. There will even be an hour in the middle of the day between when she leaves and I come in (see above about the negative consequences of the lack of a supervisor), but there's nothing I can do about that.
