Even though I’m still attempting to enjoy my youth before I experience an “I’m too old for this” moment, (I’m 26) I don’t mind working weekends, despite some people & my friends telling me that working weekends suck, even though it all depends on the job (I started at a grocery warehouse about a month ago)
Since my job is a union based job, I (along with all new employees) are hired on as “extras” which means that we’re a part of a 90 day probation period (it can also take anywhere between 6 months to 2 years to get hired into the union as a regular employee)
However, our current schedules (as extras) are not too “favorable” at the moment:
(2 pm - 10 pm) Friday thru Tuesday, with occasional mandatory OT during the holidays and busy grocery store volume (maximum shift length is 12 hours & union member employees have voluntary OT)
Furthermore, since I’m a “young adult” who still wants to enjoy his weekends “once in awhile” I understand that working weekdays and weekends is just a part of some people’s lives, even though there’s pros and cons to having days off during the week:
(It’s easier for me to schedule various appointments during my off days (if needed) since certain businesses are closed during the weekends)
We have software maintenance windows that are the weekends or after hours. I’m 62 years old, so it really doesn’t cut into my social life. I’ll be working some this Saturday.
But, I work from home which makes it no big deal. I like that I can pretty much make my own hours.
I’m having trouble sleeping tonight because of a weird software problem. I’m going to fiddle with it in a little bit. If I can find a solution, I should be able to sleep.
On the one hand weekends are usually the most relaxing days to work at my job - flying solo, no special projects going on, no management. On the other it is a little burdensome when you’re young, have a pressing social life/family obligations and limited leave time. Since I’m no longer young, have plenty of leave time and rarely need to have full weekends off anymore for much of anything, I no longer much care .
I’ve basically had a split weekend schedule for over 30 years now and it seems perfectly normal now - as you say having weekdays off are pretty nice for a variety of reasons. But I do know folks for whom that would never work and I did occasionally find it annoying to have to skip some social stuff back in the day.
I’m 65 and recently retired. I spent substantially my entire working life working odd shifts on odd days. So ~45 years. The idea of “weekday” and “weekend” simply were not part of my life.
I greatly preferred it my way. When I did have a 8-5 MF job for a few years mid-career it sucked. (More like 8-8MF, but that was a different kind of sucked).
It can make group socializing more difficult when most of your friends only want to party on Fri or Sat night and only want to play during the day on Sat or Sun. The “fix” is to drag some of the more flexible ones out on your schedule, and to get new friends from among the many people who have odd schedules like you do. One hell of a lot of people have odd schedules; it’s not 5%, it’s probably 25%.
As I got a little older and chasin’ the opposite sex was no longer Jobs 1, 2, and 3 all night every night, I greatly preferred living in a world with uncrowded roads when I was driving to/from work, uncrowded stores when I shopped, uncrowded parks & entertainment, and uncrowded restaurants.
On the rare occasions my off time aligned with the traditional “weekend”, it was a surprising PITA. “Why is this popular place I like so jammed tonight? Crap, it’s Friday! No wonder.”
My bottom line: It will take some adaptation, but you may find you really like it. I sure did.
I’d prefer not to. I remember working at a couple different places in my 20s and 30s where for various reasons we had to work weekends a lot. Other than maybe sending a few emails or fixing up some Powerpoint while sitting on the couch or something, I feel really put out having to work weekends. People need time to do stuff for themselves and shouldn’t have to feel their plans might be cancelled at a moments notice because some manager suddenly came up some idea for a project that just has to get done by Monday morning.
I think that for the most part, it’s because my career has always been an 8 am - 5 pm, Monday through Friday sort of job, and working on the weekends is usually some sort of extra stuff intended to not inconvenience the rest of the company, and most importantly, that I’m not getting paid any more to perform.
I know it’s part of the salaried gig, but at the same time, some managers have this sort of macho attitude about working late, weekends, holidays, etc… and approach this sort of thing with something akin to glee- “look how important I am- my work is so critical, it has to be done on the weekend” seems to be the thought process.
I’ve never subscribed to the idea that anything outside of normal working hours is laudable mentality. At best, it’s a necessary evil, and at worst, it’s dysfunctional and a sign of some kind of poor management- whether it’s project, personnel, or personal time.
When I was in my 20s I had a job where I worked the overnight shift on Saturday night (giving the regular night shift person her day off). I had an odd schedule overall. As I recall I was free from 10:00 am Sunday to around noon on Tuesday. I loved it. Going to bars on off nights with no crowds was perfect. 40 years later, I still hate going out on Friday and Saturday nights.
I used to work the occasional Saturday, just to catch up on a big project. Only guy in the whole building, with the phones turned off, too (very peaceful, in the days before cell phones).
I kept wishing I could work every Saturday in exchange for a weekday off (errands would be a breeze), but boss wasn’t that flexible.
Fast forward to teaching at a college that had MW and TTh classes… woo hoo, three day weekend! (Full of grading and lesson plans, but I could do those in peace and quiet at a coffee shop)
But I can work extra hours during the week. It’s not unusual for me to put in 50-60 hours from Monday through Friday. Being an “exempt” employee, I don’t get paid an overtime bonus, but I do get paid at the straight hourly rate.
I’m passively agitating for it. Though my boss would probably point out how bad I am at it, given my productivity is generally higher on Friday, due to my planning that everything for the week crosses the finish line Friday morning with little actual work but reviews.
Shop employees work four ten-hour shifts, so they have Friday off normally. Part of me wishes I had that too, but then I remember they show up at 5:30 in the morning. That’s a nope from me.
Working on the weekend? Not since I finally found a job where I could afford food without a second gig.
What’s worse is working for such people. If you don’t come in on weekends, they’re bothered by it, and if you don’t come in enough times on weekends, you’ll be pulled over for “The Talk,” where your commitment to the company is questioned.
I’ve worked weekends in the past, but it was always understood that working weekends was part of the job (e.g. when I worked retail), so that was fine. What wasn’t fine was when a M-F, 9-5 office job turned into a 7-day-a-week, 9-7 job, especially with no extra pay. “Oh, you should be proud to work for our company!” Yeah, well, show your gratitude, you cheap bastards.
When I finally stopped working weekends I knew I had “made it” as a business owner. I worked weekends almost exclusively as a teen and during college, and when I was first starting my business. It wasn’t until my 30s that I was comfortably working 9-5, MF.
I hate that my SO works weekends now. But that’s how it goes when you job hop. The newest worker is the one who picks up those weekend shifts.
My brother has a pretty hard job but he prefers it to his last 2 jobs because he finally has weekends off, which is super important when you have kids in school.
I liked working on weekends. The big bosses worked Monday to Friday so I was in charge when I worked on a Saturday or Sunday. And working weekends meant I got some weekdays off and I found I could get more done because so many other people were at work when I was off.
I’ve done both in different stages of my life and it fit well with both of them.
When I was single and my close group of friends were co-workers I worked weekends all the time. We enjoyed not having to fight crowds on our days off, easy access to doctor appointments, and all the perks of having free time during the week.
After getting married to a 9-5er and having kids I went to never working weekends. Spending time with family suddenly became the more important thing.
When it’s on occasion I really liked to work weekends. Even today there are projects at my job that sometimes have me work on a weekend. I do like that it’s often quiet, commuting is easier, and that overtime pay is nice. As long as it’s not something I have to do all the time.
I did have a job once where we had a “hot phone” that got passed around. I was tech support for a major medical software company and we had a premium service that people could use to get help 24 hours a day. So everyone had to take turns with a phone they needed to keep with them all day long every day for a week. I’d get woken up from a dead sleep at 3 AM with somebody panicking that their server was screwed up. That 24/7 thing included weekends of course
I’m a big Seahawks fan and the first time they ever went to a Super Bowl, I had to be in the office working. Same job, though it was unrelated to the “hot phone” thing, this was extra. Yeah, that sucked, though considering how infamously bad the officiating was in the game I’m actually glad I missed it.
So there are definitely times when I had to work weekends that sucked, but these days it’s only for rare projects and it has been years since I’ve had to do it.
Nowadays, I’m a lawyer. I have an office phone in my home. I’ve been awakened at 3 AM by that phone. Usually, it’s somebody at a police station, who has been arrested. “They told me I could call a lawyer, and I had your card in my wallet …”
Never mind. I knew what I was getting into when I got into this job, and fully expected such things to happen. At least, the boss is no longer telling me, at 4:45 PM on a Friday afternoon, “Now, when you come in tomorrow and Sunday …” Especially when my girlfriend and I had weekend plans.
At the Telco Network Operations Center where I worked, we were assigned weekend duty on a rotating basis. We got “compensating days off” that were assigned randomly to a day of the week before and after (sometimes we could change the assigned days, sometimes not) Weekend work was a lot less stressful, but it was kind of a pain losing the two days off in a row.
My “hack” was to volunteer to work every weekend. Now I had two compensating days every week. I chose to take them on Wednesdays and Thursdays which gave me a mid-week weekend.
The other benefit was I had enough seniority to pick the evening shift. Since I normally worked days, the shift change entitled me to time and a half for both Saturday and Sunday, which effectively amounted to a 20% pay raise.(I still worked 40 hours but got paid for 48)
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