All aspects of police work are challenging both professionally and personally. Police officers are accustomed to shift work, mandatory overtime, schedule adjustments for training, holidays and disasters, recalls and required off-duty court appearances. Police officers traditionally work eight hours per day, five day weeks (otherwise known as a 5/8 schedule). However, many larger departments offer modified schedules; such modified schedules create a recruitment advantage as well as additional staffing during peak call for service timeframes (usually in the late afternoon and evening hours). Who doesn't enjoy an extra day off? A key aspect of this, though, is that working a common modified schedule of four days each week, ten hours each day (otherwise known as a 4/10 schedule) increases the relief factor ratio when staffing vacant positions due to officer time usage for such things as vacation, training, illness and injury. Faced with large relief factors, smaller agencies tend to maintain traditional 5/8 working schedules. These schedules allow for a smaller relief factor of 1.4 or fifty-six officer hours, enough to provide forty hours of coverage. The common modified 4/10 schedule increases the relief factors to unmanageable levels for smaller agencies. The challenge for smaller agencies is therefore to retain their personnel from the lure of the larger agencies' scheduling advantage by providing three days off for uniform patrol operations while also maintaining a small investigative component.