New care work job, bad split shifts *WISH I WAS DEAD*

Nate Silvers

Nate Silvers

Nate Silvers

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How can someone get out of this job?

It's care work doing 48 hours a week 7:00am - 9:30pm 7 days a week. Problem is it's split shift which wasn't advertised/agreed to during the interview and only revealed after the training.

The split shifts are stupid, work for 2 hours then a break of 2 hours or 1 hour etc. It adds up to over 100 hours a week if you include the little breaks which are unpaid.

They want £380 training fees if you quit within the first six months (this wasn't mentioned until after the training).

Any thoughts? Who else works split shifts?
 
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blueboy2001

blueboy2001

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Walk away before doing any work. It's a rip off. They won't come after you for the training money, but they would probably try to deduct it from pay.

What are the exact hours of paid work?

14 hour shifts are not uncommon in the care business, but they're usually straight through. A split shift would be say 7-12 and 4:30-9:30. From what you're saying it sounds like there are multiple splits?
 

Nix

Nix

Nix

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Split shifts and zero hour contracts should be illegal. Alas!

My advice is to avoid if at all possible as it will effect your health in the long run.
 

HangTime

HangTime

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Have you signed anything about refunding the training fees?
07:00 - 21:30 7 days a week sounds like a nightmare to me, once you add in travel time that basically means you will literally be doing nothing but working and sleeping save the odd few hours on breaks.

Get out now, I made the mistake of staying in an awful job for too long because I thought that was what working was supposed to be like.
 
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Russinating

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Leave and don't look back. As said they're highly unlikely to come after you for the training money (especially if it was never explained beforehand) rather than deducting from pay.
 

Nate Silvers

Nate Silvers

Nate Silvers

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So it's definitely safe to walk away? I do feel trapped.

Exact hours of paid work is 48 hours. Yeah multiple splits for example

7am-8:30 work
back on at 10:30
work again till 1pm
then back at 2:30 then half 3

It's all different random breaks where you don't have time to do anything, for example driving lessons, gym, seeing friends, basically having a life. It's depressed me already and I haven't even started yet. :(

Thanks for the replies, good to know others agree. I think I did sign papers for the training, that's the catch they made me sign about 70 pages (I felt like a celebrity).
 
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Aedus

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Did you sign a contract stating that if you left within a certain time period that you would have to pay for training costs? If you didn't then tell them to stick it up their ass.
 

UTmaniac

UTmaniac

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I thought working 7 days a week, week in week out was against employment law?

Diabolical work/break structure, chains you to the job and no practical time for a life outside of it.
 

Nix

Nix

Nix

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'Harry said:
Walk away.

Anyone the willingly works in care need their head examining IMO. Severely underpaid for the work involved.
Click to expand...

This is one thing that actually baffles me about our monetary system.

I know it's because no body wants to do them, that it's the 'bottom end' (and I use that term incredibly loosely and not at all in a detrimental way) of society (e.g. cleaners, bin-men, carers), that is, the people who fell through the cracks that tend to take this jobs as a last resort and hence get paid so poorly, but surely it makes more sense to pay people more for doing the jobs that no-one wants to do? There are thousands of middle-management jobs that does nothing but paper-push yet find themselves paid above average.

You couldn't pay me 40k pa to scrub poo for a living. So why does paying minimum wage (which is realistically worse than that if you're on part-time hours) make any sense?
 
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