Hiring surge cuts back my hours (mild)

One of my part-time jobs is as a coach at a tutoring center. The shifts are very short (3-4 hours) but they are flexible in that I can schedule my availability a month in advance, and call in a replacement if I can’t make it. The pay isn’t phenominal either, but I love working there, and have been able to maintain the jobs longer than almost every other job I have had (except the crossing guard job, which I’ve had for over two years).

We have a staff of about a dozen people. In our center, that is perfect. When summer vacation comes along, staffing and scheduling will be stabler because employees (high school/college students) will have greater availability.

Recently the Directors decided to hire on 4 new people. Normally this would not be unusual, because we have a cycle of people leaving (finished school, moved away) and hire replacements. But it has been so stable staff-wise that nobody quit, so the new hires bloat our roster rather than even it out.

Why does this bother me? Because it means less hours to go around. Because I’m only working 3-4 hours a day there, I work pretty much every day I can. The only days I’m not working there are because I’m working at another job (piano teacher) or I am at a once-a-week class. School is out, and the music store I work at has a lengthly break. Combined with having crossing guard off for summer as well, my income will sharply decline. I will be relying entirely on the tutoring job for a large part of the summer break. So to minimize the reduction in cashflow, I planned on working as much as humanely possible there-always offering to cover people who can’t come in if it doesn’t conflict with my own shift, always there on the weekends, pretty much I am there unless I am making money somewhere else. But with four more people, the hours are going to be distributed by quite a lot, and I’m concerned that it will mean an even leaner summer.

Did you talk to your supervisor? If I were a supervisor, I’d be shocked by someone who wanted to work more.

Yeah, I brought it up with him, and he told me to “try to be positive about it” and pointed out the fact that I am putting in more hours than anybody else there, which is true. But with the way things are going, I need to put in as many hours as they can possibly budget, or get a fourth part-time job…