Partner's weekend lab runs and my on-call weeks landed on the same days twice this month

velvet_chai_518617 Jun 2026

My partner's experiments don't care about calendars. Some need someone in the lab at 6 am on a Saturday, some at midnight. My on-call rota is fixed a month ahead, but I can get paged at any hour. Twice this month both happened at once, and the baby (8 months) spent the whole day with his grandmother. She lives with us and has been wonderful, but a full weekend day alone with a crawler is a lot to ask. How do other couples with two unpredictable jobs plan this? Shared calendar, a rule about who swaps, paid backup on those days?

2 comments

lilac_moon_345017 Jun 2026
shared calendar plus one rule. whoever's thing got booked second finds the cover. stops the arguing at least
teal_pool_200917 Jun 2026
Our clinic schedule is fixed but my partner's travel isn't, so a slightly different problem. We keep two backup sitters and book one for any weekend where both of us are tentatively busy, even if it gets cancelled later. We pay for the cancellations. Can your on-call swaps be arranged with a colleague in advance, once you know the experiment dates?
- quiet_bottle_671818 Jun 2026
  +1 to booking backup even if it gets cancelled. theatre lists here change at the last minute, and before my partner took this year off we lived exactly like this. paying for the spare evening was cheaper than the argument about whose job mattered more
- velvet_chai_518618 Jun 2026
  Replying to @quiet_bottle_6718
  'Whose job matters more' is exactly the argument we had on Saturday 😅 Will look at paying for backup. On the earlier question, I can swap on-call but only with a week's notice, and the lab dates come with about three days' notice.
- velvet_chai_518619 Jun 2026
  Replying to @quiet_bottle_6718
  Update for anyone who finds this later: a colleague has agreed to be my standing swap for the next two months, and my partner's lab is trying to post weekend slots a week ahead. Not solved, but fewer surprises.