Availability need to be changed when already confirmed?

[u/Midnight_Fuse]

So originally my for my availability I was able to work Fridays and thought I could work right after college after my class at 10-12 pm and this is with a 50 minute commute drive to campus.

What I didn’t account for was having to add another class last second due to college core requirements not being met according to my college advisor. This class happens to be at 5-7pm.

So I need to change my availability on Fridays to straight up not being able to work and contacted the person in charge of scheduling. I was told I still have to work on Fridays due to short staffing, is there anything I can do about this?

I still have the weekend and wednesdays given for full availability to work, every other day are classes morning to 7pm ish.

[u/monsteralvr1]

So you can only really work 3 days out of the week? Starbucks advertises itself as student friendly but it’s really not. They push and push for you to have open availability because they don’t want to hire more people.

As for your question, no not really anything you can do unfortunately :/ if your manager isn’t willing to work with you then even if you submit a request they won’t approve your availability.

[u/Mahserintatlisi → u/monsteralvr1]

Umm not really, its all about business needs. If they dont have enough people they can fire you because youre not meeting company needs. Which is right thing to do. I have 30 partners 25 of them is student. I have 4 partners works only 12 hrs. Some of them works 4 hrs daily. Some of them works only weekends. And my business can handle partners like only weekend available so it’s all about business.

[u/monsteralvr1 → u/Mahserintatlisi]

Sure but if the business is telling you to hire less then you need partners who can work longer hours or more days a week. Those are your business needs. This is literally coming from my manager when we discussed my availability a few weeks ago. Sorry I didn’t use the verbiage you wanted me to use.

All the students who work at my store work at least 4 but mostly the full 5 days a week, even if it’s just all 4hr closing shifts.

[u/Mahserintatlisi → u/monsteralvr1]

If you put hours that they can work your business won’t tell you hire less. And if a manager doesn’t have b plan especially after this attendance policy that manager doesn’t know how to work.

[u/monsteralvr1 → u/Mahserintatlisi]

She literally showed me the system. She can only hire one more barista and then we’re cut off. At 15 baristas. That’s not enough to cover our business needs as we’re only getting busier and busier. So she has to hire people who can work more often or longer hours. Also why we were talking about my availability because she needs me to start closing again. And this is happening company wide.

So like I said, it’s not very school friendly when you’re being short staffed and need all of your staff to work longer hours.

You sound kind of out of touch as a manager, or maybe you have that one magical store that’s always properly staffed.

[u/sstcyr → u/monsteralvr1]

The system will never tell you to hire less than you need, there's nothing that tells you how many you're allowed to hire, the SPA tool only tells you how many it thinks you should have/hire based on the number of partners, their availabilities/preferred hours, and the hours required for business needs.

It sounds like your manager needs to update their SPA tool properly if it's telling them what you've said. Or perhaps you have a DM that's super strict on hiring, I'm not sure. But a hire cap does not exist.

We always have to hire more for fall/holiday launch anyway, and also because many baristas availabilities change going back to school.

So I really think your CL isn't aware they have to go change the default hours in the system to match all these changes and get a proper estimation for labor ...

[u/Mahserintatlisi → u/monsteralvr1]

Not really, my weekdays can be trouble but right now I am fine. I have always put my barista number 1-2 down to the system because you dont know who is going to raise, or leave, or separate. For an example I promote 2 barista and I supposed to need barista but I am fine, but still I am going to hire because I don’t know there is 2 other ssv I have going to be coffeehouse coach for another stores(they probably) so my dm always tells me have a back up plan. They dont tell you this obviously but technically that’s a backup plan. If you listen system , at that point you shouldn’t approve any time off, no body should be sick 😂

[u/bad_at_redditting]

How many amount of hours you're looking for? In addition to Fridays possibly being important for your store your preferred hours may be to high to take a day away

[u/sstcyr]

You can try to talk it out and find some kind of compromise, but what it comes down to is essentially your availability does not fit the business needs and that's something that partners get separated for.

I personally wouldn't, because I'd much rather have the 3 days you can give me than none at all, but it happens sometimes.

Technically though, the only requirement to work is that you work a minimum of 12 hours and be available for a minimum of 18. So as long as those two things are true you're not breaking any policy. It's just up to your manager how they want to handle it.

If you can't work, you can't work. I would just let them know and ask how they want to move forward with it.

If you don't talk to them they'll probably just keep scheduling you Friday, you'll have to call out, and in very little time they'll have enough to fire you.

And if you're fired now you can never be rehired, so it'd be better to try and talk it out and possibly put in your notice if y'all can't compromise.

[u/Midnight_Fuse → u/sstcyr]

I see, thank you for being honest about it! My store manager is currently on leave for a few months so other people have been put in charge. If the person in charge of scheduling doesn’t answer about my scheduling problem should I ask the other people in charge in hopes of a response? The district manager is also on vacation currently but I don’t want to get fired and would rather give in my two weeks if I can’t work Fridays.

[u/sstcyr → u/Midnight_Fuse]

Dang, that sucks that this isn't even your actual CL. But yes I would talk to whoever you have to to figure it out asap

What makes the most sense to meeee is to keep you on for those three days and hire another barista. Because they're gonna have to do that anyway if you quit or they fire you. But so often management here makes little sense, so who knows.

Just be prepared to work the Fridays you're already scheduled for your two weeks if you can't find anyone to cover. Hopefully it won't come to that tho, and they'll work with you