So, I was blindsided by daylight savings this year, and my Sunday morning meeting fell victim to the time shift. This is likely karma for four straight years of using both the spring and fall time changes as an excuse to be an hour late for work. (Don’t ask how the fall back excuse worked. It was a different elaborate lie every year.)

This got me thinking about a small favor I would like from my employer: Write on the schedule that Sunday is daylight savings. I forget things. Sometimes a reminder is helpful. However, I also know people who don’t forget little details like “the entire world (except for Arizona) is shifting by an hour tonight.” I think that rather than grabbing all of your employees and verbally reminding them, leaving a reminder on the schedule strikes a reasonable middle ground between reminding your TJ-like employees without offending those who are well aware that such an event is upcoming.

With that in mind, here are three other things I’d like my employers to do when they schedule me:

1. E-mail out the schedule.

I’m not captain organization, so even when I do write down my schedule, I frequently lose whatever I wrote it on. I have a much harder time losing e-mails. If you create a contact list titled “Staff,” and give each employee the option to get in on it, it shouldn’t take you more than thirty seconds to e-mail out the schedule after you’ve completed it. You could even make adding new staff members’ e-mail addresses to the list a part of your new-hire process.

2. Don’t go overboard on my hours.

Times are tough, and labor hours are not easy to come by. Naturally, you want your best people in their places. However, this doesn’t mean that I want my 20 hour-per-week job to become a full 40 hour-per-week job. Hard work should be rewarded, so make sure you aren’t rewarding your performers with a punishment.

3. Avoid scheduling me for the dreaded clopen.

I worked at a quick/casual concept where we left for the night between 10:30 and 11:00 p.m., and the place opened at 5:00 am the next day. We loathingly refered to this rough turn-around as a “clopen.” It’s particularly distasteful if you happen to be a procrastinator and have to write a philosophy paper inbetween getting home and leaving for work. (Not that I speak from experience there.) In any case, I suggest avoiding clopens whenever possible.