Getting up for work on a Monday morning is bad enough, but hauling your carcass out of bed on a Sunday, the actual day of rest, is in an altogether higher tier of shittiness. It's something that no one in their right mind would ever want to do. Period.
But that's just how it is if you have a job in retail, right? You have to just resign yourself to endless miserable Sundays, stood behind a cash register, gazing longingly out of the window as children play in the park, friends laugh and clink pint glasses and lovers walk hand in hand. It's par for the course; there's nothing you can do about it.
Well, actually, maybe there is something you can do about it.
A little-known law could be your ticket to sweet, sweet freedom. However, it's not quite as simple as just deciding not to turn up.
The law applies to all shop and betting shop workers, who may legally opt out of Sunday working, as long as Sunday isn't the only day of the week they have been put on the rota. What's more, they can opt out of Sunday working at any time, even if it was agreed in their contract.
On gov.uk, the specifics are explained further:
"Shop and betting shop workers must:
give their employer 3 months' notice that they want to opt out
continue to work on Sundays during the 3-month notice period if their employer wants them to.
An employer who needs staff to work on Sundays must tell them in writing that they can opt out. They must do this within 2 months of the person starting work - if they don't, only 1 month's notice is needed to opt out."
"Yeah, but my boss would just sack me," you might say to yourself, but you'd be wrong. The gov.uk website also states that "An employee can't be dismissed or treated unfairly for choosing not to work on Sundays."
All staff should be made aware of these rules when they begin employment, which begs the question: why are we only just hearing about them now?
So if you need a Sunday off for a family occasion or some other important event, before you go off dreaming excuses for calling in sick, it might well be worth your while to look into this particular loophole and you might just manage to get the time off you've been after.