Something have been bothering me for the last few days.

Around the end of October, I was told that I had to work the day after Thanksgiving (Black Friday). (Please keep in mind while reading this, I work from home, but its the principle of the matter) I was mad about it, because I wanted to have a four day weekend to relax and enjoy my family and football. But due to business needs, I was told that I needed to work. I didn't really think about it that much, until the day came upon us. I started to get less upset, because I started to think about the DOUBLE time and a half that I would be getting paid for the day:) So Thanksgiving came, and then the next morning, I logged on at 8am to start my 10 hour work day. Now I KNEW that we weren't going to be busy because most people could careless about their vision insurance the day after Thanksgiving-but the powers that be supposedly knows more than I do, so oh well. I work in customer service and I was getting a call (estimated) once every 10 to 15 minutes. If anyone knows anything about customer service, they know that this is a extremely small call to wait ratio. So here comes the emails from the "higher ups" at my job. We received an email saying that if anyone wants to go home, please fill out the business need time off form and you will be allowed to go home early. I purposely didn't fill out that form because I NEEDED THE MONEY!!! So I was prepared to stay for the long haul. Then a second email went out letting people know that we are extremely slow and people should request to go home. But this email had something at the bottom of it, that I haven't seen before. It said, *We have the right to send you home involuntarily due to the call volume being so low.* So I'm like, HOLD UP! You made people work the day after Thanksgiving-which most people didn't want to work in the first place, and now that it is slow as hell at the job, you want to send people home that was counting on the overtime pay for the day. So after about 5 hours of working, Lo & BEHOLD! I got the email that sent me home. I was pissed off!!! I mean, during my tenure at my job, we have had this situation occur more than once, but this involuntarily sending me home crap is NEW! Now being a business major, I know why it was done. It was done to save money for the company but I can't help but think about the treatment of the employees that actually wanted to work the whole day because they needed the money. Its the holiday season and I know, others like myself, needed the money. I just felt like, my job should of let those people stay that wanted to stay. It just so happens that next month brings our busiest time of the year and what usually happens is that they will need employees to volunteer for overtime. Now would you volunteer for overtime after involuntarily being sent home just a couple of months ago? I guess we are suppose to just forget what the "higher ups" did to us, and be there for them since they need us. Some would say, that I could of been made to work with NO overtime, but that still doesn't make me feel good about what happened.

This situation makes me think twice about signing up for overtime. But more importantly, it makes me think about how I am going to treat employees if I am blessed to be put in a leadership position. And this is why I am working to put myself in a position where I will have more control over my work schedule.

Sorry just blowing steam...but I had to get it off my chest.