Just curious if this is normal.

LO is signed up for full time day care, Mon-Fri 8-5pm. This covers all the time that I will be at work. We pay for all five days whether she attends or not. My husband however, works 4 on, 4 off, so some weeks she may attend as little as one day a week. We have his basic schedule in advance, since it consistently follows that pattern. However, he's often called into work for overtime with very little notice, and because the days of the week that she will require rotates, we can't sign up for part time day care.

When we signed up for this day care, they said this would be no problem. However, as the time for me to actually return to work draws nearer, we went to visit and gave her a copy of his basic schedule and she told me that they now require TWO WEEKS notice of whether LO will or will not be attending on any given day, so she can advertise the spot to drop in clients, and potentially fill it with another child.

Is it just me, or does this seem really weird? We're specifically paying for all five days when we know we won't need them, because even one day of overtime work pays almost our entire month of day care, and we realized that it was unfair of us to expect someone to work with our rotating schedule. And she's definitely not intending to refund us any money if she is able to fill our already paid for spot with a drop in, so to me, it kind of seems like it should be "ours" to do with as we please??