Make a backup plan for the commute

A commute backup is one written line: the departure time of the next service that still gets you there, and the name of the person who has agreed to drive if it does not run. Open your operator's timetable and read the actual figure. On TriMet's 20-Burnside/Stark, the last weekday bus toward Gresham leaves W Burnside & SW 5th at 11:46 pm and reaches Gresham Central Transit Center at 12:48 am, on TriMet's weekday timetable for that direction. A shift that releases at 11:50 pm has no bus, and no amount of planning changes that.

Read three times off the timetable, not one

Write down the departure that fits your normal start, the one after it, and the last one of the day. Those three numbers are your whole plan. TriMet's route page says the 20 runs every 15 minutes or less most of the day, every day, on the line's own page — where that holds, missing one trip costs 15 minutes, and the backup is simply the next bus.

The early end matters as much as the late end. The first weekday 20 leaves Gresham Central Transit Center at 4:17 am and reaches W Burnside & NW 5th at 5:16 am, per TriMet's westbound weekday timetable. That is 59 minutes of travel for a 5:30 am start, and it is the only trip that makes that start. A 4 am opening shift is not reachable on that line at all, which is a scheduling conversation rather than a commute problem.

Check the return separately from the outbound trip. The two directions have different last departures, and the one that strands you is the one home.

Build the card with three options and their real costs

Fill this in for one named journey. Times and money are the only two columns that decide anything.

Scroll sideways to see the full table →

Three rows only. A fourth option you have not confirmed is not an option, and writing "taxi" without a quoted fare puts a number-shaped blank on the card.

The commute itself is your time, not the employer's. The Department of Labor's fact sheet on hours worked says normal travel from home to work is not work time. The exception it names is a special one-day assignment in another city, where the travel counts as work time minus the normal home-to-work commute. When a manager asks you to open at a second location for one day, that fact sheet is the page to read before the day, not after.

Example: a 5:30 am start on a 59-minute ride

Example figures, built on the real timetable above. Your shift starts at 5:30 am at a stop two minutes' walk from W Burnside & NW 5th. The 4:17 am trip arrives at 5:16 am, which leaves 12 minutes. There is no earlier trip, so the entire margin is those 12 minutes, and the backup is not a later bus — it is a ride.

So the card for that shift reads: "Normal — 4:17 am from Gresham Central TC, arrive 5:16 am, 12 minutes' margin. Later service — none before the shift. Agreed ride — Dana, leaves at 4:30 am, can wait until 4:40, texted yes on the 12th." Now the unresolved part is visible: one missed bus means one phone call at 4:20 in the morning, to a person who has already said yes.

Tell the scheduler the number, not the trouble

When the timetable and the roster do not meet, the sentence that moves is the one with times in it. Send: "The last bus from downtown leaves at 11:46 pm and I finish at 11:50 pm on Fridays, so I cannot get home on that shift. Can the Friday finish move to 11:30 pm, or can I swap it?" That is checkable in 30 seconds by anyone who opens the timetable.

If the shift is canceled after you have already traveled, the rule in your state is worth knowing before it happens. Oregon's predictive scheduling law makes a covered employer pay one-half times the regular rate of pay for each scheduled hour not worked when it cancels the shift, the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries says. Look up the equivalent page for your own city or state and write its number on the card too.

Keep the card in the same note you use to sort out a last-minute change and to work out whether to go home in a split-shift gap. One line finishes it, and it is the line you write tonight:

Friday: last bus home 11:46 pm from W Burnside & SW 5th, arrives 12:48 am. Shift ends 11:50 pm. No later service. Dana can collect until 12:15 am — asked on the 12th, said yes.