In terms of being short staffed what is the worst work environment you have been in?

[AreaCode707]

Were you compensated for the hours? I've heard of similar horror stories in which people didn't even get any more pay.

Nope, I was salaried so it did nothing for my pay. I did get some of the highest performance ratings in the company (fun thing to know when you are responsible for all the data) and got paid a 150% bonus for it... but the other fun thing about being responsible for all the data is that you actually spend time doing the calculations on how much that is. It sounds like a lot less when you break it out by week than see it in a lump sum... Getting a 4.8 on my performance review basically meant I got enough to buy myself a nice lunch once a week.

My boss was crazy too, by the way. I was forbidden for talking to my counterparts on another team because my boss thought their boss was out to sabotage her. (Not even remotely true.)

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Were you compensated for the hours? I've heard of similar horror stories in which people didn't even get any more pay.

You can't allow employers to take advantage of you like that. I used to work long hours (with no additional comp) and then one day, I decided enough was enough and my personal time was too valuable to be wasting away at work at 9:00 on a Friday night. I decided to work smarter, not harder, and made sure that any extra time at work was the extremely rare exception and not the rule. I still got the highest performance ratings in the department, so none of it mattered.

I'm busy as hell now, but I'm not working 12+ hrs per day to make up for my employer's decision to not resource the position properly. What happens if I work all those hours to get all my work done on time? Simple -- I'll never get help and be stuck doing it forever. Do you think they're going to pay me the salary of two people (or even 1.5) for all my hard work? No, of course not.

 

[AreaCode707]

You can't allow employers to take advantage of you like that. I used to work long hours (with no additional comp) and then one day, I decided enough was enough and my personal time was too valuable to be wasting away at work at 9:00 on a Friday night. I decided to work smarter, not harder, and made sure that any extra time at work was the extremely rare exception and not the rule. I still got the highest performance ratings in the department, so none of it mattered.

I'm busy as hell now, but I'm not working 12+ hrs per day to make up for my employer's decision to not resource the position properly. What happens if I work all those hours to get all my work done on time? Simple -- I'll never get help and be stuck doing it forever. Do you think they're going to pay me the salary of two people (or even 1.5) for all my hard work? No.

Yep, I quit out of that job at TMO when it became apparent that the "temporary situation" was not going to be alleviated. I got a little better at controlling my working hours in the next job, and now I'm doing fabulous at holding my current job to 45 hours a week.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Yep, I quit out of that job at TMO when it became apparent that the "temporary situation" was not going to be alleviated. I got a little better at controlling my working hours in the next job, and now I'm doing fabulous at holding my current job to 45 hours a week.

:thumbsup::thumbsup:

I think the saddest moment for me was when I cut back on the hours and worked normal hours and STILL got the same high performance ratings and raises. I felt like the biggest sucker in the world.

 

[notposting]

I was the only equipment operator on a job where I had to run loaders, a dozer, compactors, and the crane...Sometimes, in spite of union requirements of 2 equipment changes per day, I'd make a lift, grab the loader and backfill a column or footing, then grab the compactor and compact the fill...then jump back in the crane and make another lift...rinse and repeat numerous times.

I COULD have refused...but I enjoyed staying busy rather than sitting around waiting to make the next lift with the crane.

I'd rather work my ass off than so sit around bored.

Was on a hospital build and both elevators had to be manned nearly until opening. One guy was older and spacy and waiting to retire, not really sure what his background was...but the other guy was one of two (and then the only) operator on the job. He always looked so happy when he got to ditch the elevator and go outside and play. And then so beat down riding the damn thing up and down...

 

[AreaCode707]

:thumbsup::thumbsup:

I think the saddest moment for me was when I cut back on the hours and worked normal hours and STILL got the same high performance ratings and raises. I felt like the biggest sucker in the world.

Seriously. I opted to not apply for a promotion recently because I don't want to increase my stress and hours; I make my target income right now, working from home with regular hours and fresh starts with new clients every few months. It would take a lot to make me trade my work situation.

 

[xavier es]

I worked on a large printing press that printed supplements to the local newspapers. this press was a city block long. 1600 lb rolls of paper went in one end and newpaper inserts came out the other. this press ran 24/7,the management said it cost them $3000 an hour when the press was down. fully staffed it took 9 people to run the press. the pay was low, and people would not show all the time. the second week i was there only 3 others showed for work one day, we somehow managed to keep the press running.

 

[Locut0s]

Nope, I was salaried so it did nothing for my pay. I did get some of the highest performance ratings in the company (fun thing to know when you are responsible for all the data) and got paid a 150% bonus for it... but the other fun thing about being responsible for all the data is that you actually spend time doing the calculations on how much that is. It sounds like a lot less when you break it out by week than see it in a lump sum... Getting a 4.8 on my performance review basically meant I got enough to buy myself a nice lunch once a week.

My boss was crazy too, by the way. I was forbidden for talking to my counterparts on another team because my boss thought their boss was out to sabotage her. (Not even remotely true.)

Yeah you see this is the kind of shit I'm talking about. Sometimes this even gets into semi legal/illegal business practices.

 

[Locut0s]

You can't allow employers to take advantage of you like that. I used to work long hours (with no additional comp) and then one day, I decided enough was enough and my personal time was too valuable to be wasting away at work at 9:00 on a Friday night. I decided to work smarter, not harder, and made sure that any extra time at work was the extremely rare exception and not the rule. I still got the highest performance ratings in the department, so none of it mattered.

I'm busy as hell now, but I'm not working 12+ hrs per day to make up for my employer's decision to not resource the position properly. What happens if I work all those hours to get all my work done on time? Simple -- I'll never get help and be stuck doing it forever. Do you think they're going to pay me the salary of two people (or even 1.5) for all my hard work? No, of course not.

They'll look at you as a sucker and be very happy to have you. They'll praise your work and you personally but never pay you a penny more. I've seen it.

 

[shortylickens]

Happened plenty of times in the Navy. I just got used to it.

At Hynix they slashed employment dramatically over the years. Made work harder. I hated life.
Tektronix was even worse. I joined at the tail end of it, felt like a scab almost.
They had gone from 200 people down to 30 in one year. Scary.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

They'll look at you as a sucker and be very happy to have you. They'll praise your work and you personally but never pay you a penny more. I've seen it.

They blow lots of sunshine up your ass. Admittedly, I did get great raises and a few perks on the side, but I still got all of that when I cut back the hours and started pushing back.

 

[Locut0s]

Happened plenty of times in the Navy. I just got used to it.

At Hynix they slashed employment dramatically over the years. Made work harder. I hated life.
Tektronix was even worse. I joined at the tail end of it, felt like a scab almost.
They had gone from 200 people down to 30 in one year. Scary.

Hynix the memory manufacturer? Do they have plants in the US?

 

[ultimatebob]

You should try working for a small software start-up company... I've seen situations where the entire support department AND the entire QA department consisted of ONE person.

 

[TraumaRN]

Someone already mentioned the ER as a doctor, but as an ER nurse it's just as dangerous to be short staffed in the ER with a huge amount of patients. I literally worked situations where I'd basically only take care of the people that were critically ill and needed my immediate attention and if you weren't sick, then honestly I'll give you a once over, make sure you aren't dying, then I'll get to you when I can, sorry.

It's an awful position to put patients in, and I hated when I had to do it. Essentially a no win situation. Not to mention there is no way you can provide any sort of safe patient care when you have 12 patients to one nurse. NOT SAFE. And you have peoples lives in your hands. Glad I don't have to deal with that anymore.

 

[uli2000]

I am a respiratory therapist in a small hospital who works 12 hr shifts with 12 hrs of call at night. I do this 3-4 days a week, sometimes more (when it's really busy). 24-36 hours straight happens quite a bit. Staffing levels are better so it doesn't happen nearly as much. Even with that, the worst was when I worked at a major metro medical center had to float to a sister hospital to help cover ICU. I was given 8 super critical ventilator patients while the hospital's regular RTs to 2 or 3 vent patients each that were much easier than mine so they could hang out on the smoking patio as much as possible. As bad as that was, I had a friend who took travel assignments and got sent to Maine in the winter and had to do 22 vents and CPAPs in a level 3 NICU by himself for a shift (The other NICU therapists had called off and no one else could do NICU).

 

[zerocool84]

I worked at a certain orange colored big box home improvement warehouse for three years. If you've ever been to one you know how understaffed those places are.

 

[Wanescotting]

I worked at a certain orange colored big box home improvement warehouse for three years. If you've ever been to one you know how understaffed those places are.

Understaffed? Home Depot is a warehouse, folks should know what to look for when they enter the building

 

[Squisher]

There were many days I never took a lunch or a break because not enough people who knew how to do my job came to work or everything decided to break at the same time. Because I carried a radio often I'd get calls from other departments that were having problems directly and kind of develop a que as to what I'd get to first. But, when things got really bad I'd see if I couldn't meet up with my supervisor so that I could give him a rundown on what's broke and what it's going to take to fix it. That way I could see the blood drain from his face as he got paler and paler. Most of the machines made between $40-$60 of revenue a minute and having multiple machines down for a length of time seemed to get a lot of people's attention.

 

[weadjust]

When I was sitting in a hotel room near MS Gulf coast after Hurricane Katrina with about 20 other adjusters. We got 10,000 plus claims to work and everybody wants you at their house or business tomorrow. Many with no place to live. I've been doing it for 20 years so you do what you can do and that's all you can do.

What's amazing is you finally get a hold of someone and tell them you will be at their house Tues. afternoon. They say I got a work Tues. afternoon can you come on Sat. I say sure I have one Sat. open 4 weeks from this Sat. They say I can be there on Tues.

 

[lxskllr]

I was taking care of 3 construction projects that were 20 miles apart at the closest. I had to be in 3 different places at the same time. There was an issue at one of the jobs, and it was gonna take some time to figure out, but I had 2 other jobs I needed to be at. My data collector then decided it was a good time to lose all the data I had. I drove back to the office, broke my laptop over my Jeep, turned in my keys and cellphone, and went home. About 3 days later my boss came to my house, and gave me more money, and less work. A year and a half later I got laid off when the economy went tits up.

I couldn't do that shit again. I was burned out as it was, and all the other nonsense on top of it set me off. Life's too short for that crap.

 

[TXHokie]

Dot com meltdown back in 2000. 200+ person company with 2 desktop support, 2 network/sysadmins, an IT director to start with about 30 servers, email, web and bunch of CRM and financial SQL apps, firewall, Pbx, u name it. I was the last IT person left standing around after dot com crashed and company shriveled down to 30 people. All other IT people got laid off or quit - it was a rough time to be in IT then - but i was kept around because I got my hands in everything. When I left, it all got turned over to a consultant and the company folded 5 weeks later.

 

[davmat787]

When I was working on Windows 2000, the years leading up to RTM were absolute madness. Even though we basically had unlimited headcount to fill, we were working 70-80 hours a week. We could not find and hire qualified and quality people quick enough.

Adding a plug and play setup and infrastructure to the NT4.0 codebase was beyond crazy. I remember we were lucky if 3 or 4 out of 100 install attempts were successful. Each one that was not successful had to be triaged, bug filed, debugged, maybe reproed, etc.

Fortunately they did everything possible to make it as enjoyable as possible. Dinners everynight, beer bashes every Friday, double time, etc.

I was single and a lot younger then, so it was quite the time and Windows 2000 is probably the single project I am most proud of.

 

[Locut0s]

I am a respiratory therapist in a small hospital who works 12 hr shifts with 12 hrs of call at night. I do this 3-4 days a week, sometimes more (when it's really busy). 24-36 hours straight happens quite a bit. Staffing levels are better so it doesn't happen nearly as much. Even with that, the worst was when I worked at a major metro medical center had to float to a sister hospital to help cover ICU. I was given 8 super critical ventilator patients while the hospital's regular RTs to 2 or 3 vent patients each that were much easier than mine so they could hang out on the smoking patio as much as possible. As bad as that was, I had a friend who took travel assignments and got sent to Maine in the winter and had to do 22 vents and CPAPs in a level 3 NICU by himself for a shift (The other NICU therapists had called off and no one else could do NICU).

Wow it's amazing that's even legal! Horrible. But then it might not have been legal. You see tons of illegal work practices it seems, basically most management knows it's not likely you will complain to the point it becomes a legal issue. And of course some situations like that really are unavoidable.

 

[n7]

The current one.

It's fucking grand getting fucked over all the time.

 

[Locut0s]

The current one.

It's fucking grand getting fucked over all the time.

What do you do?