Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

I Can't Get A Damn Break....

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • I Can't Get A Damn Break....

    Not a break at work, a break from overtime in general.

    I wanted to post this in Morons In Management as CS, but I get the general feeling that most people are sick of my whining about overtime and are just holding back from giving me the "You should be happy you have a job and are getting extra money!" spiel.

    Well, this is a more appropriate place to let those feelings out, then. And I will just rant here, then.

    We have been on required overtime since early last summer. It NEVER seems to end. I had a short break while I was training, my first couple of weeks after I transferred I didn't have to do any, and we got really lucky the last week in January and the week after Valentine's Day it was dropped to a voluntary basis for one week.

    People at work have been working 46-60 hour work weeks since last summer (although the higher number generally relates to those who opt to do as much as possible, the most that is usually required is 6-12 hours). As you can imagine, we are worn out, we are tired, we are sick and tired of losing sleep from having to cram errands and other things we need to do and still put in our extra hours at the same time, or we've been sacrificing days off because we have been FORCED to work weekends. I've gotten lucky and only missed a few days off, but not so lucky people have had to work every other weekend since it became mandatory.

    Mandatory, as in, you will be in TROUBLE if you don't do it. All of it. If you don't show up, it's the same as not showing up to work or being late. If you do it enough, you can be fired. It's totally legal and they only have to give you 24 hours notice if they want to change it. One week, we WERE on voluntary until the manager decided on THURSDAY to make it a mandatory weekend.

    We have been begging our manager, while our department is rather slow right now, if we could have a random voluntary week, just a small break here or there.

    No, absolutely not. We have to stay focused on our work and we need to be prepared for when the bottlenecks in the other departments start sliding our way. We need to keep doing mass overtime, even though we are too slow to have enough work for everyone at a given time, because we have to be READY for when the work does come rushing in.

    Because, you know, we've NEVER been busy before at work :eyeroll:. We have NEVER been behind, never been late in shipping product out....uh huh. Yup. No one knows what it's like, and if we go one week without having to put in extra hours, we will come back the next week slacking and not focused or ready.

    God fucking forbid we be treated like human beings with needs and families and friends. I am SO TIRED of having to PLAN my errands so that I can still get 6-8 hours of sleep BEFORE working 10-12 hour shifts ALL week. Most weeks, I only get ONE DAY where I don't have to put in any extra.....it's SO HARD to do errands or make appointments (without having to explain how hard it is already working night shift) and THEN get to bed early or be able to stay up if you stay late. I have only worked a few weekends and it still pisses me off that I lost time with my boyfriend and my friends because I had to work.

    Ok, there's my rant. Fire away. Besides, you get taxed to shame after so many hours of OT anyway. When they up it to max amount, we don't even get to see all of it.

  • #2
    Sounds a lot like the warehouse that was part of the company where I used to work. I could never understand why they don't just hire more people. If it's so busy that everyone is required to put in at least one extra full shift a week, you would think it would be cheaper in the long run to hire a few people to help cover the workload. I know they'd have to offer them benefits and all, but time and a half for...how many people work in your warehouse? In ours, it was around 60+, so if everyone had to do 8 hours of OT, that's 480 hours at time and a half per week.

    Comment


    • #3
      I've been working 50-60 hours a week for awhile now and I don't find it hard to get time to do errands, although I guess because two years ago I had a second job that kept me pretty busy as well. The time between losing that job and getting my current second job I was pretty bored with all my extra time.

      Comment


      • #4
        Back when I was working for a factory, I had the same problem. We had worked 6 months of working 12 hr days for 6 days a week. Yeah we were all sore and tired, but those checks were great.

        Comment


        • #5
          Rant away and screw those people who feel the need to lecture you about how you should be happy you have a job. I hate people who presume to know how you should feel in a situation. Hell, some people enjoy reading rants, I know I do, even if it is at the expense of others.

          Comment


          • #6
            Well I agree with you Blas it IS hard to find time to get errands done, stuff done around the house, recreation time, sleep etc when every waking moment is spent working. I don't blame you for wanting a break. I was in that boat for a while with this job....when it was just me doing it. Now we have a group of 5 and I don't have to do 12 hour days anymore. And I'm still thankful every single day for that fact.
            https://www.youtube.com/user/HedgeTV
            Great YouTube channel check it out!

            Comment


            • #7
              I feel your pain. I've only been at this factory job for a few weeks but it already sucks. I don't mind the long hours so much as I mind never knowing when I'm gonna leave. If everyone is actually doing their job and everything goes smoothly we might be out by 5 or 6. Latest so far for me has been 8, so its only an 11 hour day, but people have said sometimes they work until midnight if there's enough fish.

              The worst is when it all just stops. I look out on the line and see no one doing anything. Because they've finished up one big giant bin of fish but no one has loaded up a second one on the machine. Because they're having forklift races or a snowball fight.

              And they've got us pretty well fucked on breaks too. There is SUPPOSED to be a buzzer. Buzzer 1 goes on when its breaktime. Buzzer 2 goes off as a warning to come back in. Buzzer 3 means breaktime is over.

              But the buzzers don't always go off. Sometimes they do, but sometimes they don't, and just because the buzzer doesn't go off that's no excuse, right!? So that 15 minute break they give us is like 8 minutes if you're not sure.

              Unless you don't care about your job, and then by all means take 20-30 minute breaks. But if you do and don't want to get written up, you're only choice is to take what little time you have to do immediate things like take a leak and have a smoke, and then you gotta run back inside, because you have no idea how long its been and then you see you've still got like 6 minutes left, and had you not wasted that time coming from the smoke area to the front you'd have had time for another cigarette, but now you don't because you had to come look because they can't manage their fucking buzzer!!!!

              Comment


              • #8
                I've never had a problem with your complaints about overtime. I've always known your overtime is mandatory, which to me is an obscenity. If it's not contracted over here, it's not mandatory, or at least it shouldn't be.

                Rapscallion
                Proud to be a W.A.N.K.E.R. - Womanless And No Kids - Exciting Rubbing!
                Reclaiming words is fun!

                Comment


                • #9
                  I've never understood mandatory overtime....ugh.

                  blas, you have my sympathies....totally understand the need to rant

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    That really sucks Blas.
                    Your job should never become your life. Yet what choice do you have, apart from building/stealing a Tardis and slowing down time?
                    Customer: I need an Apache.
                    Gravekeeper: The Tribe or the Gunship?

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      I don't have much of a choice. There aren't many job openings these days, that is, jobs with halfway decent pay and benefits.

                      To anyone who can work obscene amounts of hours and still have extra time to do stuff, I applaud you. I have to plan, almost to a level of OCD, plan out every single weekday and which errands I CAN do, which I can't, how long can I go to the gym, how long can I be out before I must sleep.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        I plan like that as well, blas, and it's rather stressful. Esp when little unplanned things get thrown in and can really mess this up.

                        Comment

                        Working...
                        X