I understand what you’re saying. However, I think it my case, since it was a part-time job, everyone was hired with not totally “open” schedules. High school kids were never scheduled during school hours. Moms were not scheduled during the evening, when they needed to be with the kids. And so on. I didn’t have kids, I didn’t have full-time school (but sometimes had night classes, and never had too much guff about getting time off for that). The boss made it clear that kids were a “good enough” reason to not work. School was a “good enough” reason to not work. But church was not. That’s flat-out what she said.
I found out later that there were many fellow employees who also would not work Sundays. Some of these people (all ladies) were Armenian. One of the Armenian co-workers told me that the boss knew that none of the Armenians would work Sundays. Apparently (I was told) all the Armenians at my workplace were very adamant about that—there was no budging with them. So my boss decided to focus on me, since I was not Armenian and therefore couldn’t possibly be as “serious” about getting Sundays off. She obviously was wrong.
In full-time jobs, I am sure this is more the case. It certainly is at my current job. But I think part-time is a different kettle of fish. They cannot demand all of your time when you are only part time.
Well, they were jerks. And it was not a good feeling, to have people try to tell me what should be important to me. Or “important enough”.
I also pointed out that this same boss deemed that it was not “important enough” for me to stay home with handicapped relatives the day of the Northridge Quake. (Well, to be clear, one was a relative—my sister—the other an elderly friend who had become family.) That was a bad day, the day of the Quake. Freeways collapsed, phones were in and out, it was a mess. I didn’t think I should leave my family alone at home. If they needed help, they might not have been able to call 911 on the phone since the phone lines were iffy. But the boss didn’t care. She said that had I kids at home, she’d have understood, but my handicapped sister and elderly handicapped friend weren’t “good enough”. (I didn’t come into work anyway, needless to say.) To be fair, I don’t think she fully comprehended their handicaps at the time (even though I certainly tried to explain to her). I just don’t think she was listening.
Because of these experiences, I do get mighty irritated at having to explain what parts of my life are “important enough” to warrant a day off. For instance, at my current job, there is a lot of pressure to work overtime. My bosses (before they learned better) used to call me every damned week, just before my weekend, to ask me “what are you doing this weekend?” If I was stupid enough to say I wasn’t sure what my plans were, (or if I had simple, trivial plans) they’d try to wheedle and guilt me into working my weekend. I soon dreaded hearing from them. They were basically judging whether or not my weekend plans were “good enough”, and if not, they wanted me to work through my weekend instead. This (as you might imagine) really pissed me off. (No, I never did work my weekend.) I soon put a stop to it and said that I’d quit before I would do too much overtime. No more calls now!