If you’re a retail or service industry worker, listen up. This could be the difference between you getting your time off or not.
Retail and fast-food work is notorious for having inconsistent hours. Sometimes, you’re scheduled to work back-to-back and are overloaded with hours, and other times, you’re lucky to get on the schedule more than twice.
Given this lack of predictability, when you do need time off or a schedule adjustment, it’s important to put it in early, or you risk your manager putting you on the schedule anyway. (Sometimes they just forget, other times they can’t manage to accommodate everyone’s requests).
Unfortunately, there are no federal legal protections for retail and fast food workers that state employers honor time-off requests. Some cities and states do have laws addressing this, and it’s generally best for morale and retention that time-off requests are honored.
Also, unlike certain full-time jobs, these requests are not paid days off; for most of these workers, the time off comes at their own expense.
After their own unfortunate experience, this retail worker issued a PSA to make sure your manager doesn’t switch up on you after they’ve approved your time off.
“Word of advice if you work in retail. Take a picture of your motherf*cking schedule every single time it is posted. Like, right when it’s posted. And let me tell you why,” Rome (@therealromeeros) says in a trending TikTok clip.
Rome explains that he had March 31 to April 3 off from work, but “somehow Mary Poppins popped the f*ck up and showed me that I’m working the first through the seventh.”
That makes no sense since he was supposed to be off for half of those days and had already made plans.
“Few days later, I check the schedule, I’m on the schedule a whole week. Not one, not two, but a whole week of work,” Rome says.
He texted his boss, letting her know she added him to the schedule when he was supposed to be off, but she insisted that he was already scheduled for that week.
“I just know you’re lying because I made plans already and I viewed my schedule. I know you’re not deceiving my eyes. You’ve lied to me,” Rome says.
The video is nearing half a million views and has hundreds of likes.
@therealromeeros Take pictures and thank me later #fypシ #zyxcba #viral #retaillife ♬ original sound – Thee Rome
“It’s the fact that managers think they can just do this to us too bc it’s our job…like babe,” the top comment read.
“My manager just says check it daily,” a person shared.
“This is why I left my old job. I will set a certain schedule made plans a week after they apparently had changed it and my boss told me it was my job to be constantly looking at my schedule for change,” another wrote.
And one former Hot Topic employee says that another manager used the schedule to sabotage their job.
“I worked at Hot Topic as a manager and the one manager tried to get me fired and she completely switched my vacation week to a work week. Then she ran to corporate like I didn’t show up to open the business,” they said. “Thank God all my co-workers only come in when I’m working. They had the original schedule that showed I was off. The nerve… She wanted to get me fired so she could hire her bestie.”
The Daily Dot reached out to Rome for comment via Instagram direct message.
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