I often do help out by covering an extra shift during other staff members holiday leave but giving me two extra shifts without consultation takes the biscuit. I feel particularly aggrieved by management of late as they have on two separate occasions altered my shift times by an extra hour without notifying me. These underhanded sneaky amendments to the rota generally stem out of necessity thanks to the nonsensical planning of the rota which often leaves us short staffed. I wouldn't mind doing an extra hour to get them out of bother but the fact they don't have the basic decency or respect me enough to inform me of the change really riles me. Instead they just ambush me when I start and say I have to do an extra hour. I realise none of this is building up to a question but I feel it important to get across the scale of the mickey mouse operation that is going on. My contract is three pages of corporate waffle. I've read it word for word and no mention of overtime negotiation is mentioned other than the small section I quoted to you all. My plan is to tell management I can't do more than my contracted hours and if they attempt to ram the hours down my throat I'll just say it wasn't agreed upon by me with my manager.

The direct quote from my contract is as follows "Your basic working week shall be 22.5 hours. Details of your daily working hours will be available from the store manager and staff rota. You will also be required to work additional hours as agreed with your manager on a week to week basis including overtime for stocktakes and other operational requirements. Break entitlements can be found in the employee resource book. Your manager shall notify you of the arrangements for meal breaks". What I take from that is that It must be agreed between me and my manager from week to week the amount of additional hours I am to pick up. Though I am undoubtedly bias with my interpretation. What do you think having read the exact excerpt from my contract?

I am a part time retail assistant for a company that shall remain nameless as I can't bring myself to utter its name without a few expletives following shortly after. I'm contracted to work 22.5 hours a week but has somehow escalated to 38.5 hours a week this coming week. I am busy this week studying for upcoming aptitude tests in a vain attempt to escape the place so really don't have the time to waste. It says in my contract that I will be required to work additional hours as agreed with my manager on a week to week basis including over time for stocktakes and other operational requirements. Seeing as how my manager did not negotiate these extra hours with me or can justify the extra hours as falling under stocktakes or other operational requirements I think I have solid grounds to politely decline. Would I be right or am I being naive to think it's that simple.