bexy_22

At the minute I am still working in the hotel where I have been waitressing FOREVER (3 years in June) They've known about my pregnancy since I was about 2 months and although I'm only part time I carried on waitressing because I felt I could. Then when I got to 6 months I said to my boss that I couldn't waitress anymore as it involved to much standing, lifting and bending and it was just high stress in general. So fair enough my boss said I could do the cloakroom for when we had big charity functions. It worked out for a bit and although it was boring as hell, I was sitting down and not getting particulaly stressed out. However it fizzled out in a few weeks and cloakroom became rare and I have been getting shifts that start early-ish (for me lol) like 9 and work about 6 hours laying up the room for weddings etc (putting cutlery and stuff out) but with a laying up shift you're constantly on your feet. Lately I have been doing shifts 6-8 hours long and throughout the whole day have sat down for about 20 minutes collectively. They won't let me carry anything heavy or anything but I don't think they realise that standing up for so long is just as bad.

So I've been given an 8 hour shift on saturday and as of friday I will be, by my dates, 8 months pregnant. In 8 hours I will possibly get a total of 20-30 minutes sitting. I don't think that it's fair on me or bubs constantly being on my feet so I'm going to go in and say I need a job where I can rest or I'll have to leave. I don't think this is an unreasonable request. I only carried on working because I was told if I did a certain amount of hours a week I would be entitled to statutory maternity pay which I recently found out I'm not anyway because I don't work enough hours! Hmmm.

taperjeangirl

HIya Bexy, I don't think you are being unreasonable at all,
I'm kind of going through the same thing with my work, I work in a kitchen but do waitressing also, so I can be on my feet for a 11 hour shift sometimes. I was actually scared to aproach my boss about the amount of standing that I do, but they did a risk assessment on me a few weeks ago and found that by law they have to supply you with somewhere to sit down whenever you need to during pregnancy.
I'm finding that I do need to sit sometimes through the day because I have really bad back pain but the minute I do, my boss is there, nagging me for sitting!
Has your work done your risk assessment yet?

polo_princess

doesnt sound like your being unreasonable, and admittedly its sounds like at first your boss was trying to help and do the right thing, i just think the good intention has got lost somewhere, try talking to them and see what they say hun