When I first started working here, scheduling was almost always done the acceptable two weeks in advance. Lately, we're lucky if we know what we're working the next week by the middle of the current week. Quite often the schedule isn't posted until Friday night or Saturday. Additionally, whoever does the scheduling ends up completely ignoring our indicated availability. It certainly makes it difficult to plan for anything outside of work when we don't know when we're actually going to have to work.
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@1ccy Holy this is very interesting about CA. So basically after Saturday they cant change your schedule unless your informed? Because my manager doesnt do my schedule last minute, but what she does is later in the week change your schedule randomly. I would of gotten a lot of more $$$ with all those on call times they wanted me to come because someone called in.
@1zca sounds to me like some managers have conveeeniently forgotten to train their store's employees about that...
If people would learn how the schedule works it would be better for everyone. If you cannot work on a certain day or certain hours then you need to go into the system and blackout your availability. We have many college and high school students who do this and when you do this they system will not allow the manager to schedule you at those times or on those days. The only exception to this is the company black-out days. Which means that if you have not blacked those days or hours out on a consitant bases in the past few months you cannot now change your avaliability to get a holiday off or to not work Chrismas eve. Just follow the process and you can have a consitant day off.
Been there two years and two months, and always been that way for me. My manager typically does it on Thursdays. (Occasionally Friday. Rarely Wednesday.) So as an MCA I only ever get to know what my painful Sunday ad set schedule is on average three days prior. Fun. (Tired of never getting a weekend off...)
That's how they've always done them. They make the schedue on Tuesday, the week prior.
@iczo You are 100% correct. I had a Sears Regional HR instruct me on how to properly do schedules in Sears stores. He said at Sears stores schedules for the next week have to be done by 5:00 pm local time on Wednesday. The SM or ASM has to approve them. Any changes have to be done by Friday. At 12:00 am Saturday morning the schedule for the next week is official. If management wants to make changes they have to come to you and ask you if you will change. They cannot just change the schedule without asking you to change. I know in many Sears stores this policy is ignored and schedules are changed on a whim by management and employees are expected to automatically cave in. In California if they do this you are considered an on-call employee and they have to pay you 3 hours a day on your day off. I know this is true in California because the state labor board came down on one of the stores in our district and told the store if they continued to change employees schedules without the employees permission they would fine Sears and the store. Needless to say, the store starting asking employees to change.
The schedule is very unpredictable from week to week, however, that's not anything exclusive to Sears. I'm a supervisor, but the SGM decides what days I work and the days I am off, and then I go from there and schedule everyone in my department.
Getting certain days off or having any kind of flexibility at all is impossible, and as a result, I have no life outside of Sears. I imagine that it's the same story everywhere else (but maybe the managers working under the store manager pick their own days, I don't know?).
Schedules are done weekly and is supposed to be done by Wednesday, then the store manager has to approve the schedules. If changes need to be completed then it has to be done by Friday. This is the way my store at Sears does it not sure about the Kmart side.
I think that is pretty much how all hourly jobs are as I used to work in a restaurant, and it was the same way.
Ours has always been like this. They expect you to work and be available when they want you to.They want you to live for them and heck with your personal life. They always post schedule like two days before the new week starts. Ignorant. And if you call off one day for being sick they take hours away as punishment...