Sample Work Schedules: Real Examples by Business Type

The fastest way to build a schedule is to copy one that already works. Below are sample work schedules for retail, restaurants, 24/7 operations, and compressed workweeks like the 9/80, each with the actual shift times and the overtime math that comes with it, plus a short framework for picking the pattern that fits your coverage needs.

The work schedule examples below are free sample work schedules you can copy straight into a grid, with no download and no email address.

One rule sits under every sample on this page. Federal overtime applies to hours over 40 in a workweek at time and a half under 29 USC 207, and 29 CFR 778.104 says each workweek stands alone, no averaging across weeks. Some of the patterns below are designed around that rule, and one of them exists almost entirely because of it.

One term to clear up first. If you searched for a sample work breakdown schedule, that is a project management artifact, a tree of deliverables and tasks with owners attached, not a staffing roster. Our work breakdown schedule guide covers that one. Everything below is about who works which hours.

Retail: the open-mid-close pattern

Most shops run three overlapping shifts. The opener arrives an hour before doors open to count the drawer, receive deliveries, and set the floor. The closer handles the evening rush and lock-up. A mid shift bridges the lunch peak so neither is ever alone when it's busy. For a store open 9 AM to 9 PM, a sample work schedule looks like this:

Shift	Hours	Covers
Open	8:00 AM - 4:00 PM	Setup, deliveries, morning traffic
Mid	11:00 AM - 7:00 PM	Lunch peak, opener/closer bridge
Close	1:00 PM - 9:00 PM	Evening rush, register count, lock-up

The design decision that matters is where shifts overlap. You want maximum headcount sitting on top of maximum customer traffic, not spread evenly across the day. A five-person shop might run two openers Monday through Wednesday, add the mid Thursday through Saturday for the rush, and double up closers on weekends when evening traffic peaks.

Build each week from a repeating shift schedule template so the schedule is an edit, not a blank page. Whether that template lives in a spreadsheet or in a work schedule maker inside your scheduling app matters far less than the fact that it exists. Most managers keep the same skeleton all year and only touch time-off requests and seasonal hours. Our weekly work schedule template guide has the exact grid to copy.

Restaurants: splits, doubles, and service windows

Restaurant schedules are built around service windows, not a continuous day. A typical full-service spot runs a lunch shift from 10 AM to 3 PM, prep through the last lunch table, and a dinner shift from 4 PM to close. Staff who work both are on a double, and a server pulling a Friday double can log 12 or more hours in one day, which is why weekly totals need watching in this industry more than most.

A sample server week: lunch Tuesday and Wednesday, dinner Thursday and Friday, a Saturday double, Sunday and Monday off. That's roughly 33 hours with room for a pickup shift before overtime territory. Kitchens run on their own clock; a line cook's "dinner shift" starts at 2 PM for prep and ends after breakdown, so build back-of-house separately instead of copying front-of-house times. Two schedules for one building feels like extra work until the first Friday you don't have a cook standing around at 11 AM or a server prepping onions. It is also why restaurant employee scheduling software usually splits front and back of house by default: a tool that can't hold two different shift patterns for one address wasn't built for restaurants.

Split shifts, where one person works lunch, leaves for the dead afternoon, and returns for dinner, save labor cost during slow hours but are hard on people. A few states and cities add extra pay rules for split shifts or last-minute changes, and California layers daily overtime on top: time and a half after 8 hours in a workday and double time after 12, per the California Labor Commissioner. A double that runs long in California gets expensive twice.

Offices, salons, and clinics: staggered fixed weeks

Not every business needs shift drama. For offices, medical and dental practices, and salons, the winning sample is a fixed week with staggered starts. Reception opens at 7:45 AM ahead of the first 8:00 appointment; a second front-desk person runs 9:30 AM to 6:00 PM to cover the evening block and phones through lunch. Everyone keeps the same days forever, and the schedule's only moving parts are vacations.

The stagger solves the two problems fixed office schedules actually have. Lunch coverage: two people on identical 9-to-5s eat at the same time or resent alternating; offset shifts make 12:00 to 1:30 self-covering. And the bookend problem: the first appointment of the day and the last one of the evening are the hardest to staff, so anchor one early person and one late person as permanent roles and hire specifically for them. Plenty of people genuinely prefer a 7-to-3 or an 11-to-7; the mistake is pretending everyone wants 9-to-5.

Salons add one wrinkle worth copying from restaurants: schedule to the appointment book, not the clock. If Saturdays run at double a Tuesday's bookings, Saturday gets double the chairs staffed, and Tuesday becomes the day for the part-timer. The bottom-row labor-hours check from our weekly template guide applies here exactly.

24/7 coverage: rotations that actually add up

Covering 168 hours a week with people who each work about 40 takes a minimum of four bodies per post, and a rotation that shares nights and weekends fairly. The rotating schedule examples below are the classic four-crew ones:

Pattern	Shift length	Cycle	Weekly hours	Signature perk
Three fixed shifts	8 hours	Weekly	40 / 40	Simple, no built-in OT
2-2-3 (Panama)	12 hours	14 days	36 / 48	Three-day weekend every other week
Pitman (2-3-2)	12 hours	14 days	36 / 48	Same cycle, different start point
DuPont	12 hours	28 days	varies, avg 42	A full 7 days off each cycle

The 8-hour version runs first shift 7 AM to 3 PM, second 3 PM to 11 PM, third 11 PM to 7 AM, with four crews rotating through. The 12-hour patterns use four teams, two on days and two on nights, and repeat every two or four weeks. The 2-2-3 work schedule is popular enough that we've broken it down day by day in its own guide, including the full 14-day calendar.

What is a 2-2-3 schedule?

A 2-2-3, also called the Panama, is a two-week rotation of 12-hour shifts: two days on, two off, three on, then the mirror image the following week so the crew that worked the three-day stretch gets it off. Every employee lands a three-day weekend every other week, which is why it survives in plants, hospitals, and dispatch centers where somebody has to be there at 3 a.m. The hours come out to 36 one week and 48 the next.

Run the overtime math before committing to any 12-hour pattern. The 36/48 alternation means every 48-hour week contains 8 overtime hours by design, every cycle, per employee. That's fine, plenty of plants and dispatch centers budget for it deliberately, but it needs to be in the labor budget on purpose rather than discovered on payday. Price a real week with our free overtime calculator first.

Compressed weeks: the 9/80 and 4/10 schedules

A 9/80 work schedule fits 80 hours into nine working days instead of ten: eight 9-hour days, one 8-hour day, and every other Friday off. Employees get 26 three-day weekends a year without working a single extra hour. Offices, engineering firms, and government agencies love it.

The catch is the workweek definition. If your workweek runs Sunday to Saturday, the calendar weeks land at 44 and 36 hours, and that 44-hour week owes 4 hours of overtime. The standard fix: define the workweek to start and end at the midpoint of the 8-hour day (Friday noon, for most). Each workweek then contains exactly 40 hours and no overtime is triggered. This has to be set up formally in your timekeeping before the schedule starts, not retrofitted after a wage claim, and hourly employees' punches need to actually match the split.

The 4/10 is simpler: four 10-hour days, one weekday off, 40 hours flat every week. No workweek gymnastics required under federal law. The state wrinkle is daily overtime; in California a 10-hour day normally earns 2 overtime hours unless the schedule is adopted as a formal alternative workweek through an employee election. Trades and field crews like the 4/10 because a 10-hour day amortizes drive time and setup across fewer mobilizations. Staggering the off day across the crew (some off Monday, some Friday) keeps the shop covered five days while everyone still gets their long weekend.

Should you start from a fixed or rotating sample?

A fixed schedule gives each person the same shifts every week. Maria always opens, Devon always closes. It's the easiest to run: build once, edit exceptions, and everyone can plan their lives around it. The cost is fairness drift. The person who owns every closing weekend eventually resents it, and your openers and closers become two teams that never meet.

A rotating schedule cycles everyone through the shift types, which spreads the unpopular slots and cross-trains the crew, at the price of more planning and employees who can't say what they're doing two Saturdays out without checking. The 24/7 patterns above are all rotations by necessity; nobody staffs permanent nights happily for long.

The practical middle path for most small businesses: fixed by default, rotating only the genuinely unpopular slots like Sunday closes and holiday weeks. And whichever you pick, put it in writing as a pattern, not a pile of one-off weeks, because patterns are what let you project labor cost forward and spot the week that breaks 40 hours before anyone works it.

Five questions that pick the right sample for you

Sample work schedules for small business owners usually fail for one reason: the pattern got picked because it looked fair, not because it matched demand. Work through these in order and the pattern picks itself:

1. How many work hours must be covered per week? Under 60 open hours, a fixed week with staggered starts handles it. 60 to 100, you're in open-mid-close territory. All 168, you need one of the four-team rotations.
2. Where are your demand peaks? Schedule headcount onto the peak, then fill the shoulders. If you can't name your two busiest dayparts, pull a month of sales by hour before designing anything.
3. What does your state add on top of federal law? Weekly-only overtime states leave you free to run 10 and 12-hour days at straight time inside a 40-hour week. Daily-overtime states like California change the economics of every long-shift pattern on this page.
4. How predictable do your people need life to be? Students and second-jobbers need fixed days. A crew that values long weekends will trade evenness for a 2-2-3 or a 9/80. Ask them; the answer is free and the turnover it prevents isn't.
5. Can you actually verify hours worked? Every pattern above assumes the recorded hours are real. If punches are guesses, the overtime math is a guess too, and the fancier the rotation, the more expensive the guessing gets.

Then pilot for four weeks before announcing anything permanent. Every schedule looks clean in a spreadsheet; the third consecutive 12-hour night is where you learn what your team actually thinks of it.

How do I make a work schedule for employees?

Pick the sample that matches your coverage, then fill it in the same order every week:

1. Lay the pattern down first. Shift times and headcount per shift, no names attached. That is the sample from the sections above.
2. Block what's unavailable. Approved time off, standing class schedules, the second job that owns Thursday nights.
3. Fill the unpopular slots first. Sunday close, holiday coverage, the 11 PM start. Assign the easy shifts last, while you still have options.
4. Total each person's hours before you publish. Anyone sitting at 38 or 39 is one favor away from time and a half.
5. Save it as next week's starting point. A week you build from scratch is a week you will keep building from scratch.

Steps one through three take judgment and nothing replaces them. Four and five are arithmetic and memory, which is where an employee scheduling app earns its keep: it totals hours as you drag shifts and keeps last week's grid a click away. Sample work schedules for employees on rotating nights need the same discipline, only more of it, because a mistake inside a rotation repeats for the whole cycle instead of one week.

What is the best free employee scheduling software?

For copying the patterns on this page, the best free employee scheduling software is whichever one holds a template, publishes to phones, and totals hours while you build. Homebase and Connecteam both run free tiers capped around 10 users. Kloqk keeps the time clock free at any headcount and charges a flat $29 per location for scheduling on Pro. Most employee scheduling software prices per seat, so run the number at your peak roster rather than today's, because the pattern you are copying probably assumes you staff up in season.

Weekly vs monthly format, and the posting rules

Publish weekly. The weekly grid matches the workweek overtime is calculated on, fits a breakroom wall or a phone screen, and takes minutes to revise. A sample monthly work schedule earns its keep for long rotations and on-call cycles where people need to plan childcare and second jobs a month out, but the further ahead you publish, the more corrections you'll make. Treat the monthly work schedule format as a planning tool and the weekly grid as the commitment. Many operations plan a monthly skeleton and commit to a firm weekly schedule from it.

How far in advance should I post schedules?

Two weeks where you can, one week at minimum, and on the same day every week so people know when to look. Lead time is regulated in a growing list of places. Oregon's predictive scheduling law requires covered retail, hospitality, and food service employers with 500 or more employees worldwide to provide written schedules at least 14 calendar days in advance, per the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, and Seattle, Chicago, New York, and San Francisco run similar regimes. Small businesses are mostly exempt for now, but two weeks' notice is cheap goodwill and cuts swap chaos regardless of what the law requires.

Last, keep one copy of the schedule as the single source of truth, and close the loop between scheduled and actual hours. The sample says 1 PM to 9 PM; only real punch data knows the close actually ran to 9:40 all week, and that gap is where surprise overtime lives. Kloqk's employee scheduling publishes to every phone and sits next to a free time clock, so the plan and the payroll finally come from the same numbers. The best sample work schedules are the ones you can run for a month while editing only the names, not the pattern. Copy the sample that fits, run one real week's math, and adjust from evidence instead of hope.