Last Saturday I was in a rather foul mood of sorts. As you may recall, I have to travel a round trip of 87 miles to work almost daily. It’s a forty minute drive and it eats up gas. Thankfully the pay makes it worth it. Well on Saturday I went in for the start of my shift at 12pm, however, at a little before 3pm, the dialer ran out of leads for us for that week and so we went home early. I was scheduled to be at work until 5:45pm. So basically I drove to El Paso for forty minutes, then drove home for another forty minutes. I wasted gas and put another 87 miles on my car for barely 3 hours of work. Pathetic.

And the Saturday before that, something similar happened as well. We left early at around 4:30pm because of the lack of leads at the end of the week. Because of the distance I travel, it is just not worth it for me to come in on Saturdays anymore, especially if I’m loosing hours on top of it. So I asked my supervisor, Vero, what day I had off this week, and once again, I have Friday off. So I requested that I have Saturday off instead and come in on Friday, thankfully they’re very happy to accommodate schedules there.

I could always come in early on Saturdays so that even if we leave early, everything is cool. Problem is, once again, the distance. If I go in at 3pm I have to leave the house at 2pm, 2:10pm at the absolute latest. I never know what traffic will be like on the freeway after all. Sometimes I’ll zip on through and get there with 10 or 20 minutes to kill. Sometimes I arrive right on time. So if I leave at 2 o’clock for a 3pm shift, that means I’m getting ready at 1pm at the latest. In order to get in at the start of the morning shift, 8am, I need to be up and getting ready at 6am on Saturday, and leaving the house at 7am. As you know, I am not a morning person - at all - so you can see the difficulty of me getting up and going on Saturdays. Casual dress day or not. I would much rather just come in on Friday and have the weekend off, after all, we’re closed Sundays.

Why not come in early for a couple of hours during the week, you ask? Simple. To make it worth the company’s time, since it takes people a while to really “warm up” on the phones, they want you to come in for at least 2 hours at a time when you’re getting extra or making up hours. Here’s my problem, the morning shift ends at 1:30pm and the dialer is shut down until the evening shift at 4pm. That’s two and a half hours of sitting around at the office doing nothing or wandering aimlessly around town wasting gas and money. Going home is pointless since it takes forty minutes to get there, by the time I get home I would have enough time to fix myself something to eat then turn around and come right back. Pointless.

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