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how to get your ideal schedule

Thu, 04/27/2006 - 03:44 — redandblack

the employee availability form

some stores hide these, or don't talk about them much.

here's where you can lay it down to the boss when you can and can't work. you may have filled one out when you were hired, but then thought you couldn't change a thing.

find it on e-info, do a search in the search box for "employee availability" it should be the first hit.

maybe you got another job? are taking some weekend classes?

in place of workplace democracy, we must lie to our bosses to get what we want. oh well. it takes two to tango.

keep in mind one thing! your boss might do some shitty move like firing you because you don't fit the needs of the store anymore. well, at least you can easily get unemployment for that.

‹ Get ready for.... Frustrated...turning defeatist... ›
Fri, 04/28/2006 - 17:28 — njborn

Speaking of less than ideal scheduling... when are they supposed to post the schedule for the next week? I am full-time and have a different schedule every week. And as if that's not enough, the schedule rarely gets posted before noon on Friday for the following week starting on Sunday. If we are supposed to give one week's notice for a shift change, it makes it nearly impossible when you are given less than 2 days notice. Is there a policy for this. I have looked in the handbook to no avail. It has lots of what employees are supposed to do, but little of what Borders is supposed to do.

Fri, 04/28/2006 - 17:56 — Magus

When I was a HR manager for Borders I had to post the schedule at least 2 weeks in advance. I believe at that time it was an audit item, back in 2004. I know that things have changed but if the HR manager or the GM are unable to get their acts together to provide you with a schedule atleast a week in advance they are failing their staff.

Sat, 04/29/2006 - 00:53 — worthmore

Stores that have gone to the 3 manager set up generally don't have the HR or Operations manager position anymore and from what I saw, the GMs were picking up the scheduling. In the store in which I worked the GM rarely posted the schedule before Friday for the next week. Sometimes on Thursday, but only on rare occasions. Losing one manager might save money, but it has placed such an increased workload on the remaining managers that many things are slipping.

Mon, 05/01/2006 - 12:52 — Magus

It seems that Borders (everything above store level) has placed too many plates spinning around the managment that as soon as a new manager comes in everything crashes down.

It is pretty bad when a GM is brought in from the outside and given the basic training for running a store but has yet no true knowledge of running a book store. They tend to have a very large learning curve and many stores are hurt from this.

A bad sign I say when the basic concept of letting your staff know when to show up for work is put off for some other pressing task. (What could be more important?)

Mon, 05/01/2006 - 17:24 — fencesitter

We negotiated so the schedule is to be posted no later than Weds at 3pm. Last time out we negotiated Thurs at 3.

Availability Forms are used and Seniority has its perks.

Incremental Improvements.

Tue, 05/30/2006 - 05:30 — dragonboard

As far as I know there is no offical policy on when a schedule for the next week has to be posted. Most of the stores do it two weeks out but I have seen nothing in the handbook/best manual that says it MUST be out two weeks in advance.

Tue, 05/30/2006 - 18:18 — duckswangoose
duckswangoose's picture

The old BEST policy was that there were always supposed to be 2 weeks of schedule on the BEST board in the breakroom. That would mean that it would only have to be done one week out. It's in the section on how to set up the bulletin board.

I think the new policy coming is that the schedule needs to be up by the Thu before the week coming up. I know we got the new bulletin board stuff in this merch package.

Tue, 05/30/2006 - 22:24 — birdchirp

I have filled out availability forms just to have the manager ignore them. And forget about trying to increase hours--we are always told that sales are too flat to justify it. So the books stay in the warehouse and the customers walk out, mad and empty-handed.I am right now working on my resume!

Thu, 06/01/2006 - 01:15 — luv2read

My understanding was 2 weeks out. I've spoken to some store managers who haven't done theirs for the following week. It's just not fair to the employees who filled out their availability forms and did their best to keep us informed for us to delay unnecessarily. At the very least on the rare occasions that I didn't have the schedule up two weeks in advance, I was able to assure people that they would get the time off that they had requested.

Mon, 06/12/2006 - 16:07 — Antioch18

Ours are usually posted by Thursday, sometimes even Friday. Yes this stinks somewhat. But most of us are pretty standard work hours week to week. The one good thing is Thursday evening, nothing posted, I can still request off for a day the follow week.