My Experience Working Part Time
There’s only one thing that I wish somebody told me before I started working part time and that is that your initial vigour will disappear once you overexert yourself. It’s simple but I have overlooked it because I was excited in my attempt to become semi-independent. I thought that by working hard, I was becoming more of an adult but really, I was and have been teetering between overworking myself and thinking that I’m being independent by working.
I have only recently started working part time. It has only been ten days since the opening of the shop and having been rejected by many other restaurants, I was ecstatic to have been selected. What I didn’t know at the time is that the work is gruelling and not worth fifty baht per hour. But filled with unbridled energy, I overlooked the workload and started calculating how much I would be able to earn if I worked everyday. That’s uncharacteristic of a part timer, I know but at the time, I wanted to save as much money as possible. For some context, I’ve been working the night shift from 6 pm to 3 am at a recently opened shabu buffet place and now that I write this down, I can’t believe I worked for one day and thought, “It’ll be fine. This is definitely sustainable”. I also still have university to think about and waking up at 7 after working till 3 has been killing me physically and emotionally.
After the first three nights, my fire burned out and my will to live did the same. What I didn’t know was that the owner expected me to work full time because they didn’t have enough full timers even though I explicitly mentioned that I wanted to be a part timer. That’s one of the flaws of a privately owned place; the management is often uncertain and undefined. In the beginning, I thought about sucking it up and working for a month as a somewhat full time worker but I soon realised that I couldn’t maintain it. My body had begun to break down because of the lack of sleep. Because of how messed up my circadian rhythm became, no matter how much I slept in the morning, it was never enough and I would go to work groggy, confused and with eyes akin to that of a panda’s.
When I realised it was impossible for me to stay sane working everyday with the same shift and going to university in the morning, I decided to confront the owner and the manager about it. At first, I didn’t want to bother them too much because I will have to take a long vacation to go on a trip with my friends at the end of the month and I thought that my demands would be excessive but a part of me thought that it was within my right to demand for a proper schedule because I straightforwardly asked for a part time position and a lack of full timers wasn’t exactly my problem. For an entire work day, I was considering my options and decided that if they didn’t allow me to work part time, I would quit and apply for a different job. The interesting thing is that there’s a restaurant called Sukiya that is also currently hiring with the same rate but because it’s not a buffet restaurant, the effort put into working should be less so I thought about applying if my confrontation went awry.
Fortunately, I managed to negotiate with the owner and get my schedule passed. The only compromise being that I have to work on weekends because that’s when there are most customers but I’m fine with it for now.
The few things that I have taken away from this experience is that you should stand up for yourself and your compassion for yourself should outweigh your compassion for others. You should try to request for something that is within your right and not think too poorly about yourself for doing so. In reality, that is logically the best decision for you and your employers. If you work knowing full well you are unfit, that will only increase the risk of workplace accidents and if your manager tries to guilt you into working longer hours, that’s a sign that the job probably isn’t for you. Especially if you’re a part timer, you have a life outside of work so you shouldn’t let money blind you to that fact and let’s be honest, with incredibly expensive health care, your effort will be for nothing if you fall ill from overworking. I guess in the end, you should strive for a balance and for people that have yet to get a job, when you do, know that you shouldn’t put in too much effort into it. It’s a marathon, not a race. If you use too much energy on the first sprint, you will undoubtedly collapse.
