Zero Hours by Karen Blayne

Oh by the way red tape first.

Be warned these short stories contain mature content or naughty bits and as such may corrupt you if you’re under 12, 16, 18, 21 or 25 depending where you live thus they are not suitable for you so put them back on the shelf and let them age for a year or two.

They were sort of scribbled for fun. They were first posted on asstr.org. If you’ve paid money for this book just be aware the author has not received any payment. In fact no one has permission to charge money for this book and copyright is retained by the author.  Asstr.org accepts donations if you’re feeling rich or even if you’re not.

Luv Karen

Jenna put the phone down, well she’d better sort something out.  Most staff these days were on zero hours contracts, nothing was guaranteed, it made sense from a business point of view and cut costs but she wasn’t terrible comfortable with how the workers managed and now a new order had come in to the regional office just when the HR manager was on vacation so she’d need to rearrange people’s schedules.  She had a look through the existing schedule, some people had forty hours some twenty, some five hours she wondered why still not knowing people’s preferences made life a bit more complex but hadn’t the summer student found an open source employee scheduling program that linked into people’s calendars?  She looked through her notes and found the link.

Well it looked easy enough and the nice bit was it let people bid on the hours they wanted so the difficult to fill shifts paid more.  She had a look through the budgets, well there were a few dollars left in the training budget she’d head on over and call all the employees in for a training session and see how they liked it.

“So the company sets the pay envelope and the number of hours and you make a bid for when you want to work and the minimum and maximum number of hours on a shift.  So if you don’t want to work a night shift just bid $200 an hour during those hours.  The idea is that it lets you decide your hours so if there is a bus home ten minutes before the hour it can take it into account.”  “But won’t you just use the lowest bid?”  “Well yes but all the bids are added up then subtracted from the pay envelope and then divided across all the hours so even though you bid minimum wage you might still get $14 an hour.”  “Sounds like smoke and mirrors to me.”  “Try it out.”  They all faithfully typed in their bids and the hourly rates emerged.  As expected the night shifts and Friday evenings were better paid but people’s attention had been caught by the start and stop times so children being picked up from school etc became possibilities.

After the training session she was approached by three different girls who wanted to know how it would affect their arrangements with the HR manager.  Apparently in return for sexual favours he would make sure they got a certain number of hours.  “I mean I was getting forty hours steady then two months ago I was cut back to ten hours a week and with the steady work coming in I’d let the credit cards mount.”  Jenna thought back for a moment or two “But there shouldn’t have been any cutbacks in the hours we’ve been increasing the number of hours for the last three months.”  They looked at each other.  “The lousy bastard, he gets you used to the money coming in then threatens to cut it off.”  Jenna had thought “Well if we add his pay to the envelope since the computer now does his work how does that sound?”  “You mean we all get a pay raise and he gets nothing?  I love it.”  Jenna looked up the manager and saw he was on a zero hours contract as well.   Oh well it was quicker to put him down to zero hours for the next two years than to fire him and go through all the HR hassles, she sent him an email letting him know of the accusations and the fact he was on zero hours for the next two years.  Perhaps he’d take the hint.

Three months later she was in the office once more.  Staff turnover and hence training costs were down, this was good, the average pay was up a little which always helped when retaining staff.  She hadn’t realised how many retired people who liked to work a few hours a month part time there were nor how useful they were in filling the more difficult shifts.  There was a knock on the door and the most beautiful young gentleman entered.  “I’m after a student summer job.”  She felt herself grow warm just at the sight of him, it was tempting so tempting.  “Well most of our staff are on zero hours contract but I think there is an excellent chance we can find you some solid work.  There isn’t quite an hourly rate it depends on which hours you work etc but you can expect an average pay of say $20 an hour.  Some shifts pay more than others and I’ll set your shifts a week in advance but I can guarantee you 45 hours a week for the first two months if you don’t mind an evening shift or two.”  Her fingers skated over the keyboard as she fitted him into the scheduling program.  Now what precisely was the old manager’s Modus Operandi?  “Just drop by my office at the end of the week and I’ll set you up for the next week.  Now do you have any preferences when you work, or just the shifts that pay the most?”