Week 3: Digital World

The first thing you have to know is that I work part-time at an independently-owned balloon and party store in Etobicoke. I am lucky as all heck that I a) have a job and b) have a job I like with pretty awesome people to work with.

Anyway. The store changed owners in May 2015, just about when I was hired, and we have very quickly moved from old-style punch-in cash registers to bar code-scanning Apple desktop computers. This has gone down better with some staff than others. And in the last month, we switched from paper to an online scheduling system at wheniwork.com.

Prior to the scheduling app, making any changes to the existing schedule required a conversation:

"Hey, do you think you could take my shift on Tuesday? I can switch with you for Wednesday if you want."

"Sure. I'd rather have the Wednesday off, anyway."

or

"I can't, but talk to Jonah because I think he wanted some extra shifts this week."

It was peachy. Of course there were always last-minute scrambles and the occasional confusion, but for the most part the paper schedule went very smoothly. Now, though, if I want to switch a shift I click a button on the computer. wheniwork is good because it keeps track of everything. But I'm going to miss having those conversations.

The online schedule has fundamentally changed what a schedule is. It's gone from being a public event to a private one simply because there is no longer a stapled Excel printout on the counter behind our new, shiny cash registers. Additionally, some staff are highly computer literate, others less so. I have yet to hear what the less tech-addicted staff have to say about the scheduler, but if it's any indication, only one out of ten employees have uploaded a profile picture to wheniwork.com. I am not that person.