I work overnights, and on Sunday we normally have 5 people scheduled to work in my department of the call center. I come in tonight and find out that every single one of them called in sick. This leaves me as the only person doing tech support from 11PM to 6AM for every dedicated customer in a multinational ISP.
We are required to call in 2 hours before our shift begins, so that this kind of thing doesn’t happen. I have called in before only to be told that too many people had called in sick and I needed to come in. I have been called back at home after calling in to be told that I needed to come in anyway if at all possible because too many other people called in. This didn’t happen apparently. Because of this I cannot take lunch or any breaks. Not much of a problem normally, but we are also unusually busy tonight because of some maintenance that is effecting multiple customers. Things finally slowed down after a couple of hours, but something else is sure to show up.
We have a dedicated scheduling department and strict rules regarding calling in ahead of time to prevent these kinds of problems, but apparently nobody in scheduling showed up either because the same department also normally calls every hour on the hour to make sure the phones are up, but nobody has called in the 3 and a half hours I have been working the phones. If a major problem comes up, the entire company is going to be screwed.
I’ve been there Badtz! Fucking 24/7, overnight, chained to the desk, why are you calling me at 4 in the morning, no respect, low paying, bitch slap you if you ask me another question, godamn jobs!
You still can take breaks though… 
I’m sure they’ll hold.
I’ve got a better one…
Three person programming dept., and it’s a retail store with a thriving catalog dept., and it’s the first day after Xmas, when all the returns flood in.
Obviously, you can expect problems. Obviously, you would want to have everyone there.
Well, one guy, the one who’d been there the longest, took that week as a vacation. Fine. He had seniority, he’d earned it. Other guy, he wasn’t there. Spent the first three hours non-stop on the phone. Finally got off and got a chance to breathe. Saw I had e-mail. Went to open it, and it was mail from this mouth-breathing parasitic worm, stating that he too decided to go on vacation that week.
I don’t remember if it was that day or not, but I believe it was…that I called my previous employer and told them I wanted to come back.
The best (if not always viable) revenge on assholes like that?
Let 'em drown in their own goddamned incompetence.
In my last job, I had slackerfuck coworkers like you guys did. I got tired of doing my share of the work plus theirs. One guy was such a dolt that some departments wouldn’t let him touch their PCs unless I was there to watch his every move; made my job even tougher when I had to babysit one guy while the other fellow spent his day watching his stock portfolio on the web (it took that lame-ass motherfucker three days to drill four holes in a piece of sheet metal–that’s ALL he did in those three days).
Despite two months of warning and negotiation, management did nothing. They thought I was bluffing right up until the moment I handed them my letter of resignation (which included an offer of four weeks notice). Then they got petulant and accepted my resignation that day. No transition, no finishing up my projects or documenting ongoing or newly discovered problems. They tried to wound me by actually saying they didn’t need my position. (All they did was force me to start my sabbatical a month early.)
Within three to four weeks of essentially giving me the bum’s rush out the door, the group had to shut down for two weeks. This Help Desk group in Seattle supported eighteen offices across the western division. They had to quit taking calls. They wouldn’t even let people walk into the Help Desk area to report problems. I had friends from around the company emailing me at home for resolution of their problems.
The guy I used to babysit left the company because he had no one left to mask his incompetence.
The department manager had a heart attack.
Oh, man, it was GREAT!
Sometimes–sometimes–justice does prevail.
I work for MS Developer Support, and your ass damn well better call if you’re not coming in, because that means the other 15 of us have to snap up your phone shifts. Fortunately it’s not so strict and regimented that we actually get our sick days negated.
The only analogous situation I’ve been in: Joined a start-up back in upstate NY before moving to Seattle and worked there two years. About 11 months into my stint, ALL of the other programmers left except me. I was handling requirements gathering and analysis, design, coding, QA, QC and client relationship management for four major customers, two for whom we were building personalized shopping systems.
One year and two nervous breakdowns later, I quit. I’m still waiting for the company to go tits-up. Bastards.
-J-