This company attracts you with what appears on the surface to be eight days off per month in the service industry, a seemingly decent salary of 25,000, and shifts from 6:30–15:30 and 15:00–00:00.

If you don’t pass the assessment, too bad—your salary goes back to 22K.

Overtime? During the interview, they say you’ll only need to work overtime at first, while you’re still unfamiliar with the job. In reality, even the store manager and assistant manager almost never leave work on time.

Overtime hours? Not necessarily for the morning shift. I worked there for five months and probably left before 4:00 p.m. fewer than ten times. What do you think? For the evening shift, it’s inevitable, because the store operates until midnight, so you have to stay to count the money. Part-timers finish at 11:00 p.m., so any sales afterward have to be settled before you can leave. The latest is no later than 1:00 a.m., because the company says the security system must be set by then.

Overtime pay?? Forget it!!

The supervisors simply won’t help you apply for it. Even if you raise it with them, they’ll just say, “Come on, since you’re full-time, you’re supposed to finish everything before leaving. There’s no overtime pay.”

The scheduled workday is about nine hours. After deducting the 1.5-hour break they mention, that’s at least 7.5 hours a day. But usually, if you take even an hour-long break, someone will complain. You also can’t take your break when the refrigerated delivery arrives (which is understandable), because you’re expected to have the part-timer unload the stock and handle checkout. The problem is… it’s not that you deliberately take your break when they’re due to arrive; the delivery time is different every day. You go on break, and then they arrive earlier than expected—congratulations, you’ll still get yelled at. Apparently, you should have eaten faster and come back, or waited for them to arrive (anywhere from shortly before 1:00 p.m. to after 3:00 p.m.).

If you wait for them, you’ll starve to death.

Also, although shifts are scheduled in advance, the supervisors really like assigning an evening shift before your day off and a morning shift after it. Since you have to start work very early, you can’t go to bed too late the night before, which takes away a lot of your personal time. Even worse, if something comes up or they’re short-staffed, they’ll just tell you, “Hey, you’re switching to this shift the day after tomorrow.” It isn’t a discussion or a question about whether you can switch shifts—they change it first and then tell you, leaving no room for negotiation. Is the schedule just for show? They might as well change every shift for you!

By the way, if you want to leave work on time, their evaluation of you will be that you’re lazy, because you lack the trait of working tirelessly and doing unpaid overtime.

Oh, and there’s more: part-timers also have to work unpaid overtime~ I advise anyone looking for full-time or part-time work to stay away from Simple Mart, because you’ll discover that it’s just a pit full of traps.