when i was interviewing for the fast food job i currently have,

i made it very clear that i could only work very specific hours on specific days, and that had to be the same every week. it could not change. the manager, knowing this and (seemingly) ok with it, hired me.

for the first week i worked these hours, but when i received the schedule for my second week of work, i had been put down for times that i couldn't work. i guess the managers here, like managers at every other place i've ever worked, just assumed that they could just schedule me whenever they wanted regardless of my stated availability. and i guess they weren't expecting me to push back on it, to remind them that i'm only working the hours i said i was going to work, because they've been very unhappy with me ever since.

every week, sometimes multiple times a week, they beg me to work more. it's always phrased politely, like "if you ever need more hours just let us know :)". in a way, i guess i should be flattered because i've never overheard them begging the other part-timers to work more. but it's very irritating, especially when they also ask prying personal questions about why i can't spend more time at work.

i've given them some reasons even though it's none of their business, but they're never happy with my answers because they still ask and ask. i don't think any answer i give them will satisfy them though. i think the main reason why they're asking is because they're confused by someone turning down more hours instead of asking for them. they can't understand why someone would be saying no thanks to more money.

this was made especially clear this last week, when one of the managers went really hardcore on trying to convince me that i needed various expensive things in my life, and that i should take on more hours so that i could afford them. it was really bizarre!

"you'll need your own car eventually".

no i won't. the money i get now is enough to cover my share of car-related expenses for the shared vehicle i drive. and when it's no longer available to me, i'm commuting by bike. the manager was bewildered; she refused to believe that someone would prefer a bike to a car.

"you'll need money for when you get a girlfriend".

hilarious. a lot of cis people think that a trans man is exactly the same as a lesbian, so she was also confused by me not wanting a girlfriend. my manager doesn't know that i already have a partner, and i bet her mind would break even more at the realization that neither of us are very spendy.

"you're going to need money to pay for your surgeries".

true. however, i'm not getting the tens of thousands of dollars from a minimum wage job. even if i were in a position to do so, i refuse to throw away my life to a minimum wage (or slightly more) job. minimum wage is not enough to convince me to work 40 or 50+ hours a week when i currently don't have to; minimum wage, minimum effort. i didn't say any of this to her of course. i mostly just gave non-committal answers, but after thinking about it it really pisses me off that she'd try to use my trans status as a means to get me devote more time to Fast Food.

there were other things, like buying a house (>implying that people with no real savings stuck working minimum wage will ever afford a house), but none of them worked. you can only squeeze so much labor/juice out of a worker/fruit, and they have no one to blame but themselves for knowingly hiring a bone-dry orange.

i imagine that next week and the weeks after i'll continue to be begged to work more or be asked more nosy questions about my personal life. i was thinking about putting my foot down, warning them that if it continued i would quit on the spot, but i feel like that's unnecessarily aggressive and would throw of the vibes. i think the ideal thing to do would be to get a job offer from somewhere that's offering a higher wage (same rigid schedule of course), then telling the managers at my current job that if they can exceed it i'll stay and work another shift on saturday. either way, the timer on this job is rapidly counting down to 0.