10 hours and counting

*Warning, this is a highly charged and one-sided editorial*

I don't think I've mentioned this on the blog, but if you've been around me (or any other State employee) in the last month, I'm sure you've heard about it.

(According to my new voicemail message) "Due to the Governor's Initiative ALL state employee's will now be working from 7am - 6pm, Monday through Thursday...". Yep... In an effort to 1-save the state money, 2- reduce energy costs (to the state, NOT individual employees), and 3- spend more time with family (you mean, losing time in the evenings with family, while being home on Fridays when your kids are at school and your spouse is working), we are going to 4-10's.

Okay, no one is complaining about the 3 day weekend -yay! Also, we'll be driving to work one less day a week (that eliminates 20 miles a week for me -not too bad). And... I'm searching here for more Pro's... seriously, I am.

If you're in Utah, you may have your own opinions about this new direction. Maybe you've even read or heard about the survey state workers took and came up with a 70-80% approval rate for the change (I have no more than 2 or 3 undergraduate research classes under my belt, and even I was quite impressed with the ability of the survey authors to word things in such a way or offer multiple choice questions where you couldn't NOT be for the change). Or... if you ever watch national news shows and have seen our lovely Governor Huntsman and all of his glorious media attention he is receiving, you may think this is great, maybe you're even saying to yourself, I wish I had a 3 day weekend.

Can I just vent for a few minutes? (Of course I can, this is my blog, and that's what it's for, you don't have to read it -or agree with me).

I work for Human Services, more specific, Child and Family Services. I'm not the DMV or working in a lab... we're responsible for thousands (not me personally, although it feels that way some days) of children and their families. We're a little concerned about the lack of contact these cases will have 3 days out of the week -not to mention our community partners (school, the courts, shelters) will still be operating 5 days a week without support or input from us. We're a little nervous about this.

And one more comment and I'll be done, I promise. Most workers had essentially 3 weeks to plan for this. To arrange new or adjusted child care schedules, second jobs, many of my coworkers are in the middle of graduate degree programs. Not to mention, the administration had about a month to plan for increasing on-call workers, working with the Judges to beg them not to schedule hearings on Fridays (it's about 50-50 of judges that won't), and informing other community partners. In short... we had a very limited amount of time to make a lot of big changes, and a week into the new schedule, very little has been worked out.

In a more selfish, self-centered rant...
It's Thursday morning at 8:30am. I've been at work for over an hour. I'm tired, and I'm just hoping I make it to 6 today. I have ZERO energy at the end of the day, and yesterday I almost got teary just thinking about waking up early and coming into work. I'm sure the majority of us will get used to the new work schedule, and maybe it's just cuz' I'm pregnant... but we're struggling around here!