Say yes to every extra shift and your schedule stops being yours. It becomes the backup plan.

A person who always says yes becomes the slack in somebody else’s system. A manager with a gap fills it the easiest way available, and you are the easiest way, so the rota gets built around your flexibility instead of your life. Nobody is being cruel about it. That is simply what happens when one person’s time has no edges and everybody else’s does.

Pick one thing that is genuinely fixed in your week, practice, a class, Sunday at home, and decline whatever collides with it. One protected block changes how you get asked. Take the rest when you want the money.