The situation is that for the past three weeks I've gotten less than 25 hours a week at this job. At first a lot of things justified the lack of hours, the loss of one of our best worker/close friends being on the same week as the opening of our main competitor, who now has half our customers and even some of our former employees. That main competitor is also on the side of town where most peope commute anyway. It's not that they don't like me, even long terms employee and managers get sent home early too. Those employees also make more than 8.5/hr too (minimum wage in my state is 8.1/hr).
It's to a point though where now my hours look like 25, 25, 20, and 17 for the past month, I've had the last days off, and my scheduled days off are coming day after tomorrow and the high schoolers dominate the weekends. I'm not tapering for a marathon; the high schoolers/part-timers are getting more hours than the full-timers. I can't speak to management about this because they're the kind that've been taught how to speak over (read intimidate, occasionally speak things through in a nice but assertive manner) and side-step and finish the conversation making you feel retarded for even speaking to them. I don't know what to do
I genuinely enjoy the work here. I don't know if I want to work for the competitor because I'm not sure if customers will keep coming past these intial two months and uncertain if the owners of my store own shares with the comp., thus looking like a back stabber. Although I'm not going to college I do have a sick mother and my dad really should've stopped working about five years ago (he's almost 60) Thanks for reading.