In Decision

I'm scheduled to work at the theatre Thursday and Friday at 5:30 PM and Sunday at 12:30 PM. I make $8 an hour plus mediocre tips. Before I got my November schedule, I said I was available for a promo this upcoming weekend. Saying you're available does not mean you have to confirm if they choose you, so I said I was available. Today while I was at my theatre/bartending job, the promo people called me to say they needed me as an alternate tomorrow through Sunday and could I still do it? I most likely wouldn't have to even go and could get paid for sitting at home. $17 an hour. I checked with BL, since if I ended up needed I'd be late for my shifts at the theatre, but she said it was fine (she's very accommodating) so I called back to say I could be the promo alternate. Tonight I got a voice mail from the promo people saying they needed me. I also got the information for the promotion, which says tomorrow we'd need to be there possibly as late as 10 PM. This would completely screw over my theatre job people, since we're short-staffed as it is. But now that I said I'd do the promo, they're counting on me, too, and screwing them over will seriously hurt my chances of getting work in the future. But screwing over BL etc. is bad because they provide me with the more steady work and income and it's a smaller endeavor and I'm more emotionally attached to them. But $17 an hour. That's awfully hard to turn down for $8 an hour of significantly harder work. So I spent a considerable amount of time and energy trying to figure out a way to do both. This would be possible if I made more work for my theatre job people and just prayed that I'd get everywhere I needed to be in the least amount of time. I'd be completely burned out and/or dead by the end of the weekend and my dog might explode and I'd have to postpone any acknowledgment of NBF's birthday for another week, but I'd stand to make well over $600.

I hate this sort of decision--when my psychological and monetary best interests are at odds with eachother and with more utilitarian inclinations. Greatest good for the greatest number of people. How many utils do the theatre people get versus the promo people? How many utils from earning lots of money versus sleeping and having time to socialize? I want to quantify, but it's just not that simple.

So I called BL. After a brief discussion and her trying to figure out how to make it work for me with panic* in her voice, I declared "fuck it" to the promo. It's early in the morning and I'm burning out as it is and the people that would have to take my slack work too hard as it is and I may not always be a good person but this is the "right" thing to do. Even if I am tempted to screw over BL etc. and just skip out on any interfering hours and roll around in my $17 an hour.

That's enough of that rambling. I got 3 1/2 hours of sleep last night because I got home after 1 and went to bed after 2 and then randomly woke up at 6 and couldn't fall back asleep. I was a zombie all day and now I can't sleep again. So I'm drinking a beer. Maybe not the best solution, but I'm sick of coming up with solutions to problems that don't really matter but stress me out anyway. I need better stress-management skills. I've gotten good at stress-avoidance in recent years, but I need to know what to do with issues I can't avoid or defuse. Hmm.

*panic's too strong a word...more like an undercurrent of "oh fuck, well, I'll try my hardest to help Annabell but this will make life significantly more difficult"