I totally agree. I’m not sure what career you’re looking to launch into, but it definitely makes more sense to just meet expectations at your current job and save your energy for whatever studying or networking or whatever you need to do to get to where you want to be. Your time here is short; your spare time is shorter; your fully able-bodied spare time is already running short. Take a Saturday off and do that hike you’ve been putting off or visit that city and walk around or whatever. Fun activities will be a lot more draining and require more time to recover from when you’re older and your knees and back have more wear and tear from the labor you’re doing now.

I think it’s getting more and more common to see stores running a skeleton crew. Your store will probably downsize through attrition. They’ll just expect the same amount of same quality work to be done with a reduction. Don’t speed up. Tell others not to speed up either. This is not a temporary hurdle to get past, it’s a test run to see if it can be the new normal. And when it fails, they’ll still try to avoid hiring and just throw a few extra hours at the part time people. I hope that they can understand that their availability needs to be pretty firm and they don’t give an inch on that. I had a conversation with somebody like a month ago about encroachment on their work schedule and it was really helpful for them to hear me tell them that their availability is their availability and that “the hours outside of that are not for sale.” Your time is your time, and what you do with it is your business and nobody else’s.