Part-time work and club commitments
You are a Year 12 student in Sydney studying Japanese Beginners. You have been offered a part-time job at a Japanese bakery: three shifts a week, 4 pm to 8 pm on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, at 22 dollars an hour. Your Japanese class runs Tuesday and Thursday afternoons until 4:30 pm, and the walk from school to the bakery takes 20 minutes. You also play in the school basketball team, which trains Thursday 4 pm to 6 pm and plays Saturday mornings. Your trial HSC exams are in six weeks. Your parents say schoolwork comes first but they would like you to save for the Japan trip next year.
1. Identify the conflicts and propose a workable weekly schedule.
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Conflicts: Tuesday and Thursday shifts start at 4 pm, but Japanese class ends at 4:30 and the walk takes 20 minutes, so you cannot arrive before about 4:50. Thursday also clashes with basketball training (4–6 pm). Saturday morning basketball clashes with nothing directly, but a Saturday 4–8 pm shift after a morning game is tiring during trial preparation. Proposal: Ask the bakery for a 5 pm start on Tuesday and Thursday, or swap Tuesday to a day with no class. Drop the Thursday shift entirely because basketball training cannot be moved and the class clash is unavoidable. Keep Saturday 4–8 pm, which leaves the morning free for basketball and the early afternoon for study. Weekly total: two shifts × 4 hours × 22 dollars = 176 dollars, or three shifts = 264 dollars if a Tuesday 5 pm start is agreed. Trial exams: cap work at two shifts until the trials finish, then return to three.
2. Write a short, polite Japanese message to the bakery manager requesting a change, and explain the register you chose.
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マネージャー様 お世話になっております。[Name]です。アルバイトの時間についてご相談があります。火曜日と木曜日は日本語の授業が4時30分に終わるため、5時から働かせていただけませんか。木曜日は部活動があるので、難しい場合は休ませていただきたいです。トライアル試験が近いので、しばらく週に二回にしていただけますか。ご迷惑をおかけして申し訳ありません。よろしくお願いいたします。 Register: 様 and お世話になっております set a formal, workplace-appropriate tone. 〜ていただけませんか and 〜ていただきたいです are polite requests rather than demands. 申し訳ありません acknowledges the inconvenience, which matters when asking an employer to change a roster. The message is short, states the reason, offers a solution, and ends with よろしくお願いいたします.