Post about your worst workplace experiences.

That really is brutal.
When I'm on call it's a week at a time. I'm putting in about 60 hours of office/hospital time that week, plus occasional overnight awakenings for phone calls.
When that call week ends I'm wrecked. I can't do much of anything that Saturday.
The difference is that I'm only on call like 8 weeks a year.
Having to do it week after week after week? I just don't see how.

Hang in there MMG. I hope it gets better after the holidays.

 

Jury's still out on that. Our warehouse has been lucky, but other warehouses nearby (same company) have had accidents involving forklifts stemming from employees suffering extreme fatigue. To the higher-ups, we are all expendable.

A few more people have quit, leaving more work for the remainder of us. One was a temp worker who just got hired; as a temp he was only required to work 10 hours a day, 6 days a week. Once he was informed of his new 12-hour, 7-day schedule, he left & never returned.

I had a taste of "on call" back in 2014 doing residential maintenance. And when I say, "had a taste", I really mean, "had it forcibly shoved down my throat." I started work with four other guys as a maintenance team, and the schedule was to be "on call" for a month at a time.

My boss took the first month to get the lay of the land, and since he lived in the city, it was only about 10 minutes' drive to most of the properties. I volunteered to take the second month, and on my first night I was bombarded with five emergency calls. I was running back & forth out of the city the entire night (a 40 minute drive) and got about 30 minutes of sleep at most. Sometimes I got home, got into bed and my phone would start ringing with another emergency.

The morning after we had a meeting and I told the boss & crew about my experiences. Two guys immediately put in their two weeks' notice and the third guy stated that he wasn't doing emergency calls no matter what. By the end of the month my boss quit which left me to be on call for about eight months' straight until the company finally decided to hire another manager and one more schmuck to carry the load.

I can't believe how hard I'm working in my 50's. Everywhere I go, I seem to end up in the "worst case scenario."

 

I wish we had a sympathy emoticon.

And many people who benefit from what is now considered normal working conditions are staunchly anti-union.

 

There are ugly rumors circulating that the higher-ups want this to be the new normal- 12 hours a day, at least 6 days a week. I do know that the oligarchs and other sociopathic billionaires like Elon Musk would absolutely love for anyone who isn't ultra-wealthy to be slaving away in a death factory.

It wouldn't be a stretch for these types to believe that since they're providing a uniform, they're technically putting clothes on our backs, and since we spend so much time at work, we really don't need a place to live, and if we need food, there's vending machines in the break room. Therefore, we peons need to be grateful for all these amenities our reptilian overlords are bestowing upon us!

My theme music, currently:

 

Ah yes, the old double tap, or in your case, quintuple tap.
You just start falling asleep again and BOOM it's ringing again.
For me, that was game over. Zero percent chance I got to sleep again after that.

Good news: When I finish call this Friday night, that's it for me.
No more.
After decades of doing it, and hating it more every time I do it, I'm done.

 

Do y'all remember Speed Gibson? He was fairly active here, posted quite a bit about his main hobby photography. He worked crazy hours doing shift work. A few people here warned him to be careful driving while sleep deprived; he died in a car crash when he fell asleep at the wheel on his way home from work.

 

Terrible.

 

To make it worse he was very happy about the extra money he was bringing in for his family.

I've known many people over the years who did the same thing. Many of the guys who worked third shift, a/k/a graveyard shift , worked second jobs or ran their own side business.