Overtime.

There are some days that I think I'll never understand people.

We had someone phone in sick at work today. No big deal, right?

Wrong.

It's my job (as the man in charge at the time) to fill the shift. I looked at my options and I was going to have to move some people around and extend some hours to ensure adequate coverage. (We normally schedule six-hour shifts for most employees - extending them to eight would cover all my needs and still keep them in regular time.)

As it's January and business is a bit slow, we have been cutting back the staff hours a bit. Nothing too serious, but we do have staff asking for extra hours or shifts. (It's a good problem to have.) I thought that it would be easy to fill this shift - I wasn't calling anyone in from their day off, I was just giving people who were already working longer hours.

I started phoning.

I only had to make three calls. What blew me away was that each person I called acted like I was totally ruining their day. What's the big deal? You were coming to work anyway. I'm just asking you to stay two extra hours. It's not like I'm asking you to come down and blow me. (For that, the line forms to the left.)

The frustrating thing was that each of the people I talked to are ones that had been bugging me for hours. I called them because they had asked before. The response I got was akin to "I know I asked for more hours, but I didn't mean today." I could have happily slapped someone.

Maybe it's just me. It seems that most people seem to treat a job as a right instead of a privilege. They make it seem like they are doing you a favor just by showing up. I do appreciate them being here, but they do have to recall that they are being paid for their time. If the two extra hours was only going towards paying more taxes to the government I might understand the reluctance - but that wasn't the case here.

Don't saddle me with 37 employees who would rather be somewhere else. Give me 5 who want to work and do a good job and I'll work miracles.

Miracles, I tell you.

Later.