15 thoughts on “Not To Mention Overtime, Mandatory Meetings And Human Resource Twats”
My son-in-law, a police officer, works 3-12 shifts – with four days off each week. I don’t think that he appreciates the schedule.
With that schedule you need a day off just to catch up on the normal stuff you didn’t do on the work days… a 12 hour plus commute time work day doesn’t leave a lot of free time past eating & sleeping.
Most of us don’t or didn’t have to use 12 hours for work/commute. When you speak of a personal anecdote, please don’t include us all. Even in the Army, work days were not 12 hours long. Except when we went to the field, then all bets are off, obviously. But, I did have a one job where the shifts could be anywhere between 10-14 hours. But that was just one job out of the 13 that I had. Turns out, it was the one civilian job that I enjoyed the most.
I worked three 12 hour shifts in the hospital Friday, Saturday and Sunday night every weekend. I liked it because upper management wasn’t there, doctors weren’t necessarily crawling around the wards and I got to go fishing during the week when all the other bastidiges were working during the week.
Genie ass
It used to be 6 days of 12-15 hours of work and then one day off. So be grateful, you disgusting animals…
Seriously, 5 day work week was a vast improvement, then the 40 hour work week came along.
Much better than the old days.
That’s what I was thinking, it was the unions that forced the 5 day/40 hour work week. I could be worse!
Well prior to that it was work every day or die so…
I did a 4-10 schedule for a short time when I used to work regular fixed hours, that was easily my favorite.
Rotating shifts suck. The cons far outweigh the pros.
One place I worked had a rotating 10-4 schedule, 10 days on and 4 days off, alternating days and evenings. It also had a “temporary” 12-2 schedule for when production was behind, which apparently was 9+ months out of the year…
I loved the 4 ten hour days, but then I’d do side jobs on the 3 days off.
When I worked oilfield in the boom of the early 80’s, it was 24 hours on, maybe 36, sometimes 48 hours straight even, depending on what was going on. If a rig suffered a blow-out, there were no limits. 100 hours a week was about the norm.
There was, however, a days-off calendar. If you had a really good reason for needing a day off, you might maybe could get off for an afternoon. The truck pusher would pencil your name in on the calendar, and you might get it, maybe, as long as there wasn’t anything going on they needed you for. Take the kid fishing? Forget it. Not a good enough reason, not time off for you. Getting married? You could maybe take the afternoon and night off, be back at zero-dark-thirty tomorrow morning.
Then the boom quit, and we dropped down to about 70 hours a week on average, after culling down to about 20% of the people. The days-off calendar became more dependable then, mostly.
I remember those bust days, downtown Okc was dead, hardly any foot traffic and Penn Square bank not far from where I grew up
Since we were short of qualified personnel, the teams I was on in the military had 4 days of on-duty time which could mean 16 hours on the timeline with 8 hours off before being back on “call’. Yes, that 16-hour timeline could easily extend into your time off.Crazy hours. And if we went to DEFCON 2 or above, all “scheduling” went out the window. Sure glad it never got that bad.
Oh, and then there was training…
Well most of my life, starting from about age 14, I worked more hours than I care to remember. The shortest hours I’ve ever worked was when I enlisted. After I medically discharged and had recovered from bone cancer I pretty much worked can see to can’t see, seven days a week and sometimes more than that. I continued those kind of hours even when I became my own boss in the early 90’s.
I’m afraid I was a bad example for my kids because a couple of them are kind of following in my tracks, only different career fields.
My oldest son would love to be able to limit his days to only twelve hour shifts. He is suppose to work 4 10’s yet he routinely starts between 0430 and 0500 and gets off at 1800~1900 and then gets a support call from the swing shift guys in the middle of his ‘night’. Most of his “weekends” involve getting called in because that shift can’t figure out what is wrong. Right after new years this year he worked something like 2 1/2 months with only one or two days off and a twelve hour day would have been something to wish for. He just about doesn’t have any life outside of work. I keep telling him he needs to find a gal and do something besides work or coming to my place on one of his few days off to help me out but finding a young woman with his values and likes seems like an impossibility.
His sister, my youngest daughter works in the same career field and her shift is three days 0700 to 1900. Then off for 2.5 days and then three nights 1900 to 0700, then off for 3 days. I might have the days off interval off a little because I can’t keep track of how her schedule runs. Until just recently she also had an hour and a half commute each way on top of the twelve hour work shift. I only just recently was able to find her a place only four miles from where she works to avoid the long commute. Now she only does the commute to our home on her off days or nights. She has the same problem as her brother when it comes to finding someone besides her family to spend time with. Most the guys around here her age are, … well don’t get me started.
Man I sure got off in the weeds with this comment. I guess I could have just expressed there is, or was, a large cohort in fly over country where long days was just the norm.
My son-in-law, a police officer, works 3-12 shifts – with four days off each week. I don’t think that he appreciates the schedule.
With that schedule you need a day off just to catch up on the normal stuff you didn’t do on the work days… a 12 hour plus commute time work day doesn’t leave a lot of free time past eating & sleeping.
Most of us don’t or didn’t have to use 12 hours for work/commute. When you speak of a personal anecdote, please don’t include us all. Even in the Army, work days were not 12 hours long. Except when we went to the field, then all bets are off, obviously. But, I did have a one job where the shifts could be anywhere between 10-14 hours. But that was just one job out of the 13 that I had. Turns out, it was the one civilian job that I enjoyed the most.
I worked three 12 hour shifts in the hospital Friday, Saturday and Sunday night every weekend. I liked it because upper management wasn’t there, doctors weren’t necessarily crawling around the wards and I got to go fishing during the week when all the other bastidiges were working during the week.
Genie ass
It used to be 6 days of 12-15 hours of work and then one day off. So be grateful, you disgusting animals…
Seriously, 5 day work week was a vast improvement, then the 40 hour work week came along.
Much better than the old days.
That’s what I was thinking, it was the unions that forced the 5 day/40 hour work week. I could be worse!
Well prior to that it was work every day or die so…
I did a 4-10 schedule for a short time when I used to work regular fixed hours, that was easily my favorite.
Rotating shifts suck. The cons far outweigh the pros.
One place I worked had a rotating 10-4 schedule, 10 days on and 4 days off, alternating days and evenings. It also had a “temporary” 12-2 schedule for when production was behind, which apparently was 9+ months out of the year…
I loved the 4 ten hour days, but then I’d do side jobs on the 3 days off.
When I worked oilfield in the boom of the early 80’s, it was 24 hours on, maybe 36, sometimes 48 hours straight even, depending on what was going on. If a rig suffered a blow-out, there were no limits. 100 hours a week was about the norm.
There was, however, a days-off calendar. If you had a really good reason for needing a day off, you might maybe could get off for an afternoon. The truck pusher would pencil your name in on the calendar, and you might get it, maybe, as long as there wasn’t anything going on they needed you for. Take the kid fishing? Forget it. Not a good enough reason, not time off for you. Getting married? You could maybe take the afternoon and night off, be back at zero-dark-thirty tomorrow morning.
Then the boom quit, and we dropped down to about 70 hours a week on average, after culling down to about 20% of the people. The days-off calendar became more dependable then, mostly.
I remember those bust days, downtown Okc was dead, hardly any foot traffic and Penn Square bank not far from where I grew up
Since we were short of qualified personnel, the teams I was on in the military had 4 days of on-duty time which could mean 16 hours on the timeline with 8 hours off before being back on “call’. Yes, that 16-hour timeline could easily extend into your time off.Crazy hours. And if we went to DEFCON 2 or above, all “scheduling” went out the window. Sure glad it never got that bad.
Oh, and then there was training…
Well most of my life, starting from about age 14, I worked more hours than I care to remember. The shortest hours I’ve ever worked was when I enlisted. After I medically discharged and had recovered from bone cancer I pretty much worked can see to can’t see, seven days a week and sometimes more than that. I continued those kind of hours even when I became my own boss in the early 90’s.
I’m afraid I was a bad example for my kids because a couple of them are kind of following in my tracks, only different career fields.
My oldest son would love to be able to limit his days to only twelve hour shifts. He is suppose to work 4 10’s yet he routinely starts between 0430 and 0500 and gets off at 1800~1900 and then gets a support call from the swing shift guys in the middle of his ‘night’. Most of his “weekends” involve getting called in because that shift can’t figure out what is wrong. Right after new years this year he worked something like 2 1/2 months with only one or two days off and a twelve hour day would have been something to wish for. He just about doesn’t have any life outside of work. I keep telling him he needs to find a gal and do something besides work or coming to my place on one of his few days off to help me out but finding a young woman with his values and likes seems like an impossibility.
His sister, my youngest daughter works in the same career field and her shift is three days 0700 to 1900. Then off for 2.5 days and then three nights 1900 to 0700, then off for 3 days. I might have the days off interval off a little because I can’t keep track of how her schedule runs. Until just recently she also had an hour and a half commute each way on top of the twelve hour work shift. I only just recently was able to find her a place only four miles from where she works to avoid the long commute. Now she only does the commute to our home on her off days or nights. She has the same problem as her brother when it comes to finding someone besides her family to spend time with. Most the guys around here her age are, … well don’t get me started.
Man I sure got off in the weeds with this comment. I guess I could have just expressed there is, or was, a large cohort in fly over country where long days was just the norm.
wes
wtdb
no question.