People with full time jobs and benefits like to complain about part time workers not trying hard enough and being lazy. Otherwise they'd have two part time jobs, duh. Except it doesn't work that way. The vast majority of part time employees are hired on what's called a "Zero Hour" contract. What this means is that they're only required to schedule you zero hours a work period, but they expect you to maintain the availability with which you were hired. So when you go looking for that first job being available from open to close, even if they literally never schedule you, you are expected to maintain that availability. If you logic that out, it means no second job for the part time worker. Most people are lucky enough not to figure this out because their managers, while using Zero Hour contracts, aren't bags of dicks and understand that no one can survive under such a scheme. Unfortunately, some people (read: me) had to find this out the hard way. I got a job last year as a part time sales associate with a company that I loved. I was happy to be getting my 10-15 hours a week because I still lived at home and didn't have to pay rent or major bills. When my location got a new store manager and holidays happened, I was getting up to 29 hours a week, which was great! I could start chipping away at my credit card debt and preparing to move out. Then we found out our location would be closing for renovations for a few months and we had a choice: take a brief hiatus from work (that sounds like a terrible idea, Jack, why would you choose Door No 1?) or transfer to another location (Yay! You still has job!) until the reopening. Being a financial not-fucktard, I chose the transfer. Here's what they neglected to tell us: we weren't guaranteed any hours with our new managers. Low hours was fine for what we thought would be 2-3 months. Then that 3 became a 5. Then it became 7 months. Then it became, 7 months and you can reapply for your old job. Then the hours got less and less, to the point where my previously $500-800/month job was netting $60-75 a month. Not a week. Not a pay period. A month. Some odd things happened as my pay checks dwindled. Two people quit. Not the end of the world with three new transfers. Maybe more hours for them? Then four new hires. To be trained from scratch. But what about those transfers? Couldn't they do the job just as well? Well they could, if they were ever scheduled to work. Then I got the dreaded letter in the mail. "Dear John, Your first student loan payment will be due May 3, 2016. Your first payment due is $268.00." Something in the maths wasn't going to work there. I was betting a whopping $67 a month and had to come up with $268 by 3 May. How is that supposed to work? Easy solution! Get a second job. If you're only being scheduled 4 hours every two weeks, surely you can work something out. So I got a second job. It promised 19 hours a week, every week. But it couldn't promise a consistent schedule. That was fine. I was consistently working one evening a week at my first job, so just leave that one open. Second job agreed. Then first job changed the day I was usually scheduled. I would have to tell them. So I did. "You can't do that." "Why not?" "You can't go from open availability to 2-3 days." *You can't go from paying your bills to starving to death either. That doesn't seem to bother you...* "I know you need more hours, but I can't give them to you." *Actually, you could, but you hired 4 greenhands instead...* "Well, what would work for you?" "I can't work with that." *You only use me 4 hours every 2 weeks, why can't you work with that?* "But, what would work for you?" "You can resign." *Well that escalated quickly.* And that's how I was forced to resign because of Zero Hour contracts. They would literally rather you be starving and homeless than let you work.
