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Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsWhat is the longest day that you have worked for a company?
On my first Friday of being full salaried (no overtime), I worked 15 hours.
Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)on edit:
Unless it was a holiday and then the whole Sixteen would be time and a half.
Management tries to avoid that, though
Nikia
(11,411 posts)We stayed at a hotel where the desk clerks did this. Evidently, the area was expensive enough that most low wage workers had long commutes so they scheduled them for 16 hour shifts.
Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)different mindset by management, I think.
Javaman
(62,530 posts)If so, 70 hours. On a really miserable non-union music video when I was trying to earn credits and hours to get into the Cameraman's Union.
That's impressive.
Did you get into the union.
Javaman
(62,530 posts)worse shoot ever. That one was my high water mark.
Working union is so much more civilized.
Iggo
(47,558 posts)You shoulda seen how fast they shut the place down when I reminded them that under California law twelve hours is the start of double-time.
Nikia
(11,411 posts)I worked at a grocery store that didn't like to give people breaks so we were scheduled for 15 minutes less than the limit.
catnhatnh
(8,976 posts)service desk at Ryder truck rental covering I-95 from the Bronx to the RI line. Over 100 stalled Tractor trailers and two 4wd to deliver food and diesel fuel till they could roll again. Slept at the desk between calls.
Populist_Prole
(5,364 posts)I was in my mid 20's though. They were in a tight spot and bent the rules, plus I was with people I liked and we were just motivated on adrenaline I guess. On top of my regular 8 hours pay, I got 4 hours of time-and-a-half, and 12 hours of double time, and then my ( next ) regular shift off with pay. I was a zombie though.
I'm sure that today the republicans and teabaggers would just screech at such coddling largesse given a scuzzy mechanic, but as it was still the early 80's, the full effect of the Reagan worldview had yet to infect all the business climate.
talkingmime
(2,173 posts)I was guzzling vending machine coffee that the customer was feeding me and was stuck in the server room trying to figure out why the systems were suffering an internal core meltdown (software, not hardware). It was a really elusive and nasty problem, but I finally figured it out and it took another eight or ten hours to correct once I knew the problem, which involved fixing the backup server first and then going to failover to fix the primary server and then switching back to the primary. Lots of reboots.
When I finally got done I had like three hours to pack, nap, and head for the airport to catch my flight. I slept on the plane. It wasn't the best time I ever had being onsite, but at least I got it fixed. I didn't even get a beer! Since I was on salary, there was no overtime, just complaints about why it took me so long. It took me so long because it was a bitch of a problem - how hard is that to grasp? I only got overtime (well, call duty time) when I took pager calls in the middle of the night. THEN there was beer!
malthaussen
(17,204 posts)Security guard. Was scheduled for 16 on, 8 off, 16 on. Relief never showed up. Worked straight through.
-- Mal
So...just how 'secure' was everything by hour 39?
malthaussen
(17,204 posts)They just wanted a warm body in there to fulfill the contract. It was a Teamster's strike site -- if any of them had wanted in, I would've held the gate open. I wasn't about to get my head kicked in by a bunch of Teamsters.
-- Mal
trof
(54,256 posts)Don't ask.
ohiosmith
(24,262 posts)rurallib
(62,423 posts)actually 3 times.
Funny how management never remembered those days .......
Enrique
(27,461 posts)i consistently left 5 min. early every single day, I didn't realize it but it became a joke in the office. One day for some reason I stayed until 5:15pm and my boss said loudly and to everyone's laughter, "hey here's Enrique burning the 5:15 oil!"
ConcernedCanuk
(13,509 posts).
.
.
I was a foreman, working foreman mind you, with only 3 people under me.
I was running two shifts, and constantly adjusted the others schedules from day to night shift to their personal lives.
A conflict arose when 2 had proms to go to at the same time - young mechanic apprentices they were . .
So I covered both their shifts myself without hesitation . . .
but WOW
after that, those 2 worked their buns off for me!
kwassa
(23,340 posts)at the studio that once belonged to Charlie Chaplin but was then owned by A&M Records, on LaBrea in Hollywood.
I was on the lighting crew, and we spent many hours before and after the actual shoot setting up and breaking down lights and loading trucks. Total physical exhaustion by the end.
I wasn't working for a company; it was a free-lance job, like most of film industry employment.
Lydia Leftcoast
(48,217 posts)only meal breaks.
As a translator, I worked 14 hours straight a few times, but at the price of eye strain and sore hands and sore everything else, so I told the client that I couldn't keep up that pace.
hunter
(38,317 posts)... but my longest was a snow / ice storm disaster where nobody could get to work, and nobody could get home. 27 hours. I remember the sound of the big diesel standby generator outside and the phones ringing. This was emergency services stuff. I hope I was sounding rational at the end of it. So far as I know, nobody died because I was too busy drooling on the desk with my head resting on my arm to answer the phone. But I had this wonderful hallucination at one point where I was watching a full color three dimensional weather channel type of program on my green text-only computer monitor.
discntnt_irny_srcsm
(18,479 posts)I showed up at 8 and waited 10 - 15 minutes with the other new hires. We signed papers for HR, insurance, security... We listened to presentations, lectures, information and introductions by 7 departments. We were given handbooks, forms and applications. It went on for about 5 hours.
They sent us to lunch and said after lunch to report to our managers. My manager said hello, showed me my desk and introduced me to the others in the group. After the nickel tour my immediate supervisor introduced me to the system I would be working on and gave me four 4 inch binders that held the user manuals for the system and said, "Read these."
It was only 9 hours but it felt longer than any other day ever. Even the 18 hour day I worked once.
Response to Nikia (Original post)
Rhythm This message was self-deleted by its author.
Rhythm
(5,435 posts)I was working with a friend who was co-owner of a small painting company.
We had bitten off more than we could chew on a project, and were a bit behind schedule.
So i did what i do... work more. Harder. Longer.
20+ hours a day for several days, finishing drywall, getting all of the woodwork stained/polyurethaned, hand-rolling ceilings (up 15-foot-high scaffolding), and degreasing / repainting the ceilings of a commercial kitchen...
After the final punch-list was completed, i slept for 2 days straight.
TexasTowelie
(112,251 posts)Went to work one morning and didn't leave until the end of the afternoon the following day. I was writing a computer program and having to analyze and reconcile the data along the way.
It was very mentally involved and a lot of eyestrain. It also didn't help that I had been working 12-14 hour days most of the previous month. I was also on salary and received no overtime.
Turbineguy
(37,343 posts)I had done 72 once. That wasn't to bad. Since then there have been time limits.
Rhiannon12866
(205,505 posts)And I had to show up again in the afternoon.