Living & Working in Great Places

Beware of Split Shifts

This is something I've run into in the past with both Xanterra and DNC. It's such a critical issue, it should be considered as a deal-breaker when you are considering working for one of these companies.

In an environment such as a national park, split shifts are, to put it simply, abusive. If you work, for example, 4-on, 4-off, 4-on, for a 12-hour split shift, where do you go and what can you do for those intervening four hours? The answer: nothing, and nowhere. You can eat a loooong lunch, or maybe read a book, but you don't have enough time to hike, or go fishing, or take a ride to town. Especially since you're still wearing your uniform.

The worst part is that after your twelve-hour work day (for that's what it is; it's just that four of those hours are unpaid), you will have no energy left to do anything but stagger back to your shack and collapse. If you are lucky enough to have two days off, that will be your only free time, some of which you will have to devote to doing laundry or shopping for groceries, since your split-shift workweek didn't allow you any time to do that before or after work.

Split shifts provide a small bit of added scheduling convenience for the employer at a HUGE expense of time and inconvenience to the employee. It is my--and many others'--position that split scheduling, aside from being reprehensible and abusive, is actually illegal, as it lengthens the actual workday beyond legal limits.

I STRONGLY urge EVERYONE to demand from their prospective employers a guarantee that they will NOT be assigned split shifts, except in case of emergency, and then only temporarily. If the park concessioners cannot find anyone who will tolerate this abusive practice, then they will eventually have to stop doing it.

Replies are closed for this discussion.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Drew on October 20, 2009 at 9:18pm: A restuarant is not a factory where you can control the flow of customers to have a steady rate all day and have people working full shifts whose positions rely solely on customer service.

Permalink Reply by Kevin Lewis on October 20, 2009 at 9:28pm: There is not a single business or job in the world where the flow of customers is steady throughout the day. The way a responsible business adjusts for this is to assign tasks to its customer service employees for when business is slow. Every place needs to be cleaned. Every place needs to have supplies restocked.

Do you think it's the responsible or proper thing to do, for a business to tell its employees only to stick around when there are customers, and when there are no customers, to clock out, and go sit outside (unpaid!) until some more customers show up? What sane person would put up with that, at minimum wage? But that's exactly what split shift work is.

Permalink Reply by Drew on October 21, 2009 at 10:02am: I think you have a fundemental misunderstanding of supply and demand as it relates to the service industry or any industry for that matter!

Permalink Reply by Kevin Lewis on October 21, 2009 at 6:24pm: Yes. You think that.

Permalink Reply by Drew on October 22, 2009 at 3:01pm: I do think that, you say you would keep all hands on deck no matter how little work there is, there is something fundemetally wrong with that logic! When the demand(customers) goes down the supply(service employees) has to go down or else the supply(service employees) has too little value with respect to the demand(customers). THAT'S REAL WORLD!!

Permalink Reply by Kevin Lewis on October 23, 2009 at 10:51pm: So, in any business you would be running, you would force the employees to clock out the minute the customers stopped coming in, and then to hang around (unpaid) until the customers come back (however long that takes), and then clock back in and resume work? Are you actually saying that makes sense?

And you are exhibiting a sorry lack of understanding of the basic concept of supply and demand. When the demand goes down, the supply OF WHAT IS BEING SOLD is what also goes down. The customers aren't buying the employees!

"Real world" means that employee wages shouldn't be dependent on sales volume (or profit), because that factor is beyond their control. And sales volume fluctuates from hour to hour in the restaurant business. It is penny-wise and pound-foolish to dismiss half your staff for a few hours because business is temporarily slow. Aside from the fact that only an incompetent employee with very low self-esteem would tolerate being treated that way, you can be caught flat-footed if there's a sudden rush of business, but you've told half your staff to clock out. For the sake of the ILLUSION of saving a few bucks, you alienate both your employees AND your customers. This is managerial thinking from the 1930's. And many Type-A's who are running businesses still believe in it today.

Permalink Reply by Drew on October 20, 2009 at 9:52pm: Not many employees that rely on customers for a substantial portion of there income want to stick around working for peanuts when there are no customers. The money comes with the customers.

Permalink Reply by Kevin Lewis on October 20, 2009 at 10:09pm: I would prefer working for "peanuts" to sitting around, not working, for nothing. Employers can pay minimum wage to service employees who are on the job in other than a service capacity.

Permalink Reply by Rick Peterson on October 21, 2009 at 9:46am: So go ahead and work for "peanuts", nobody is making you so anything. Your arguments have gotten ridiculous. You obviously know more about hiring and restaurant management than anyone else given your assertions. The responsible business stays in business, and many restaurants would not if they didn't have split shifts. Your solution is to create busy work, which raises costs and bye-bye business. Did you ever think that people are cleaning while the restaurant is open. You must work in a 3 acre sized restaurant if you think you can keep an entire service shift on for 2 to 4 hours just to clean. And they don't tell their employees to sit around until customers show up, they tell them to go home for a determined amount of time and return at a set time to work. What they choose to do with their 4 hours is up to them. You seem to think that 4 hours is not enough time to do a single thing other than eat a long lunch and sit in your room. I, and many others, think 4 hours is enough time to enjoy ourselves and make what we wish of it.

I'm done with this thread, glad you have an opinion, and good luck raising the proletariat to march with you against this "abuse." Or better yet, open your own restaurant and have no split shifts.

Permalink Reply by Kevin Lewis on October 21, 2009 at 10:03am: The silly part of your argument is that split shifts are somehow necessary to a restaurant's survival. Since the vast majority oif restaurants (in the real world) do NOT impose split shifts, that would seem to refute your assertion right there.

If there is a 4-hour busy period when the restaurant is actually open, it will require at least that much time again to prepare, then to clean and restock. This could easily equate to a full, CONTINUOUS workday. That's the way it's dome by responsible management, out in the real world.

In any case, I mentioned that in the parks, split shifts are imposed on all types of workers, not just restaurant servers. There might be a defensible argument for REQUESTING servers to work split shifts, but for a truck driver or gift shop clerk? No way.

For thousands of years, unfair and unjust practices and customs have persisted because "that's the way it's done". There's no other reason than that for split shifts.

Permalink Reply by Drew on October 21, 2009 at 12:12pm: Truck drivers (delivery drivers) are a prime example of having unpaid voids in there day. Alot of delivery drivers 'lay up', during times of peak service at the businesses(especially restaurants) they supply, no business owner wants to check in the frieght and deal with customers at the same time. That's REAL WORLD!!!

Permalink Reply by reggiecohen on October 21, 2009 at 10:07am: not even going to waste my time with this its sound like u have an issue if someone go against u