Dear SG people,
As many of of you know, I have two jobs (IP paralegal and neighborhood restaurant supervisor), in addition to having a highly involved home life helping my partner manage the demands of her WFH job. Additionally, I have been taking paralegal classes - down to a final capstone course, "Advanced Legal Research & Writing".
Today, on the eve of Spring Break, I made the difficult decision to drop the class - to date, I have maintained a 4.0 grade average, and this semester was 100% about to break that; I have doubts that I could have even passed the class after the amount of missed deadlines incurred this week (3-4 graded assignments every week). I had been managing the workload and staying on top of these things for the first six weeks, but things began to spin out of control in February at the restaurant.
In short, we had been getting by with 6 very reliable team members including myself and one senior manager through the end of January, when my usual relief came down with COVID. Less than a week after she began quarantine, the other evening trainee, a 19-year old finishing his last year of high school, got forcibly pulled out of the job by his parents, who wouldn't even consider allowing him to put in two week's notice so that he could be rehired after finals.
Down from 6 to 4 people, boss-man made a desperation hire and gave evening dishwashing and breakdown duties to a semi-homeless neighborhood kid who made a bad situation worse, showing up on junk and doing absolutely nothing beyond sweeping floors and pissing off the morning crew that came in after him. After a few days of this, I began working every single night to make sure shit got done while we scrambled to replace him.
When my regular relief came back from quarantine, she was easily performing at her expected capacity. Satisfied, I started getting a few nights off a week again, and this is around when I joined SG. Things took a sudden turn for the worse - neighborhood kid was still on for a few days after her return, and something seems to have snapped on the night she had to work with him without my supervision. He nodded off and fell asleep and she largely refused to pick up the slack, and actually took a nap herself in plain view of the cameras, while staying clocked in. Neighborhood kid was gone the very next week, but she managed to talk her way out of termination by persuading the higher-ups (not restaurant people) that she had long COVID. She has been gaslighting ever since that we twisted her arm and forced her to come back while still ill. Pardon the language... b*tch, I worked with you the week of your return and saw your doctor's note, but whatever. Her attendance went down the next week to whenever-she-feels like it for a few weeks after, and finally, zero as of last week.
Behind the scenes, her hubby, who is an overnight gas station cashier (our restaurant is the in-house taqueria) began snorting meth in the men's room and relapsing on alcohol during this period. Last week, he made a sloppy disclosure to me that "he's not letting Girl come in on evenings anymore", and I've inferred since then that he is creating similar willful chaos on the retail end by picking up shifts and then not showing up to them.
The straw that broke the camel's back came yesterday, when Girl (probably actually her hubby) texted Boss-man asking me to trade my evening shift with her a morning shift *that she has gone out of her way to request the night before*. I agreed in a heartbeat, thinking I could work in the morning, crash in the afternoon, and have a full today to catch up homework.
Whelp, come 4pm, Girl didn't show up, and I got stuck doing a full 16-hour double shift - being promised that I wouldn't be asked to work today. Hubby, scheduled to show up and take over the registers for overnight, also didn't show up, and I had abandon the evening lady to work a double shift - I felt pretty heartless leaving her behind, but she insisted that she could handle it and my body was shutting down by this point.
I got asked to come in despite everything 10 o' clock this morning, and strongly considered just not answering any way, shape, or form. Instead, however, I marched up there in my uniform, and just breathed the words "broken promise" at Boss-man who rescinded the demand on the spot, packed up some food for me and told me to get some much-needed rest my day off... he's a good guy at the end of the day, and I'm still proud to be his right-hand man and first go-to when shit gets tough.
While this entire drama unfolded, I've still been working my regular hours at the office, getting ready for a trademark lawsuit to go to trial in May. I discussed some these struggles with my supervising attorney on Friday, and we are starting to draw up plans for a week-long paid vacation in the summer. I gave him another call this morning to discuss my academic problems (namely, having zero study times), and he thought it was a real no-brainer - drop the class and retake it when on better footing. I am fortunate to already be working in the field - it's not like this is something I have to finish to become a real paralegal, I'm already all that!
tl;dr - covering for an insane absenteeism over the last 6 weeks or so, getting a paid vacation in the near future and adjusting academic calendar to claw back some balance in my life. Thanks to the good people who helped talk me through this decision - I really needed some outside perspective on this!
The insomnia continues - I expect my brain will need weeks to get over this hypervigilant state. Going to try again to get a few hours of sleep here, fingers crossed