What was your worst work week?

[Jeeebus]

When I was in my early twenties in July heat, working as a welder/fabricator for 60+ hours in one week...

lol... at my former NY firm the most fun I can remember was prepping for a trial out of town for around 2 months from just before Thanksgiving to just after New Year (flew home for 1 day for each holiday). Each week was around 105 - 110 hourd billed.

I billed in 2 months what many don't even bill in a year. Pretty much crashed and burned when that was done, caught all sorts of colds, and was inactive for a few weeks to recover.

That was the longest I've sustained those hours but not the longest hours I've put in (I'll credit Lehman Brothers for that).

 

[Ns1]

^^

Once you break 3 digits/week that's nuts. And for 8 weeks? Daaaaamn.

 

[highland145]

Some of us were happy to help your wife meet her "needs". You are welcome bud.

Yeah, eff mayonnaise anyway.

 

[BudAshes]

I just went ahead and copy/pasted this post from 2007. This was my worst hour, day, week, and month all rolled into one.

3rd degree burns over 1/3rd of my body caused by 700 degree roofing asphalt when I was 16 years old and working a summer job. Basically, I was hauling some material backward and the crane driver, who was acting foreman while our normal foreman was on vacation, pushed a mop cart directly behind me without warning me. I hit the back of my knees on the cart and fell backward into the hot asphalt. My right hand instinctively went back to brace my fall and actually sat in the asphalt for a good 60 seconds. I was leaning back to far to stand straight up so I rolled over to get out of it and the whole thing basically dumped on my back and arms.

Asphalt isn?t like cooking grease. Grease gets on your skin at 500 degrees and a minute later it's at room temp. Asphalt on the other hand just keeps on cooking so the crew threw two water coolers full of ice water on me to shock the asphalt. That saved my hand but presented a new problem. When I got into the burn clinic the asphalt was basically fused to my skin and they only had one way to get it off, by peeling it off (along with the skin it was fused too). Think being flayed alive. They couldn't put me to sleep because I was in shock and they couldn't give me massive doses of morphine for the same reason. So, for 4 hours they peeled my skin off while I screamed like a bitch in more pain then I thought the human body could endure before shutting down. It was so bad that even though I didn't want to die I wouldn't have thought twice about shooting myself at the time simply to make the pain stop.

Unfortunately the story doesn't stop there. The treatment for burns like that is almost as bad as the injury itself. Every morning they woke me up and brought me to a room with a stainless steel chair that sat on a pedestal with all kinds of hoses coming out of it. There I went through my daily debreedment (sp?). That is where they basically take a steel brillo pad and scrub the hell out of your fresh burn wounds. The point is to remove all the dead skin to avoid infection and to allow new skin to grow. The mental and physical pain is unexplainable. I tried to stay awake at night as late as possible because I knew as soon as I went to sleep I would awake to that god forsaken room. I begged and pleaded with the nurses to not bring me to that room every day but every god damned day they would wake me up and take me in there.

The two skin graft surgeries that I got while in the hospital where a cakewalk compared to the rest.

Hopefully this is /thread because I hate to think that someone had a worse time than this.

^^

Once you break 3 digits/week that's nuts. And for 8 weeks? Daaaaamn.

It's ok, he's a lawyer, most of those hours billed were 5 minutes long.

 

[Sho'Nuff]

Drafting a Fed Circuit brief for a pro bono case. I originally volunteered to do legal research for the case, but ended up being second chair on it because the partner who was going to handle the case got called awaty. As a result, I had to research and write a full blown appellate brief in 5 days with one other senior associate to "help" me. Ended up working 108 out of a possible 120 hours in a five day period. I have since refused to do any litigation based on that experience.

 

[Zeze]

When I was in IT production support... as you know PS is an area that's hell in any company (i.e. ticket resolution). Well, what if I was working for a pharma giant and the client impact was patients walking away without their meds? Some are even cancer drugs.

SUPER pressure cooker status calls with exec leadership 3x a day - 7AM, Noon, and 4:30PM. You better have ALL your ducks in a row or you're grilled on these 60-80 man conference calls. This meant I'd get up at 4AM, arrive work at 5:30AM, run a hand-off meeting with offshore team at 6AM, and by the time we're done, we get on that 7AM gauntlet call.

We had people bona-fide breakdown on these calls. One of them cried and quit.

I do NOT want to do that again. We worked through New Year's and 4th of July weekend. But I kept my voice strong and spirits high - I got to network well.

Also I got to charge them crazy OT. I liked that money.

 

[brianmanahan]

Some of us were happy to help your wife meet her "needs".

and the 3 dogs?

 

[Dr. Detroit]

My old consulting days where 80hrs chargeable was not an uncommon week. No OT pay for me. Just a resume builder.
M 9am - 11pm
T 9am - 11pm
W 9am - 11pm
Th 9am - 11pm
F- 9am - 9pm
Sat 10am - 7pm
Sun 10am - 3am

Pretty standard work week above but usually gave the team Sunday off. Teams that worked well together, time flew by, when your working with assholes or lazy fucks it drags and makes the weeks more miserable than usual.

 

[Darwin333]

It's ok, he's a lawyer, most of those hours billed were 5 minutes long.

Not sure why you quoted me too, I didn't get to bill for shit. Hell I was "lucky" that I wasn't stuck with the hospital bill.

 

[Darwin333]

and the 3 dogs?

They are on their own. I have more important "things" to take care of.

 

[Darwin333]

Yeah, eff mayonnaise anyway.

Hey, just like your obviously enlightened wife thinks, who I have never had contact with, mayo is awesome!

 

[Ns1]

They are on their own. I have more important "things" to take care of.

I guess that explains what happened to my cat you sick fuck.

 

[highland145]

I guess that explains what happened to my cat you sick fuck.

Dude, the corgis ate it.

 

[cavemanmoron]

Worst day?? I can not recall a specific worst day, maybe the day I broke a bone in my foot when stepping down out of a truck, or the day I ripped the biceps muscle upper tendon off while trying to just do my job. Too many times I got physically hurt while at work. Ugh.

I retired 4 years and about 3 months ago.

 

[Muse]

Teams that worked well together, time flew by, when your working with assholes or lazy fucks it drags and makes the weeks more miserable than usual.

'Tis true.

 

[snoopy7548]

Probably the first week of my first job at age 15. Pushed carts in the middle of summer all day every day and got sun poisoning. When I brought it up to my manager, his reply was something like, "well, I'll see what I can do but I need you outside today and for the rest of the week." And I went right back outside and pushed carts. I guess that sort of set the tone for the rest of my working life.

A close second could be when I burned myself out last year. I wasn't working insane hours (just 7a.m. until 9p.m. or midnight, with a quick run home to take care of some stuff in the evening), but add on a dumbass lower level co-worker who thought I was their personal guru so I was being interrupted every 20 minutes with idiotic questions about how to do their job. Getting constantly pestered really takes a toll on me, more than anything else; if I can't be in my own uninterrupted little world while working my blood pressure goes full blast. I guess the good thing to come out of that was I acted like a dipshit for the next few months because I just didn't care about my job anymore, and my boss gave me a raise.