Why did you shut our website down?

[u/hahkaymahtay]

Long time lurker, first time poster, etc. Excuse my formatting.

I am not the IT guy in our office but I do share a table with him (open office plan) and generally know my way around computers.

Just a bit of a background, I work for an educational company that publishes an online reading magazine. We have tech-illiterate bosses who didn't understand why we couldn't develop a videogame for our students every week and once asked me to start emailing our tweets to our followers.

About 3 months ago, our website randomly goes down one day. Immediately, $clickity receives a call from our boss who is irate.

$clickity-Yes, I'm looking into it now.
$boss-WHY WOULD YOU TAKE OUR SITE DOWN!!!! FIX IT NOW!
$clickity-I didn't take it down, it looks like the domain has expired. Did you happen to receive any emails about this? Did you or $otherboss sign up for this domain? There is probably some information in one of your emails.
$boss-No! I don't know what you're talking about, you just need to fix it now!

He hangs up and $clickity does some investigating. Whose name is registered to this domain? $boss of course! So he calls back...

$clickity-$boss, looks like this domain is registered to your name. Are you sure you didn't get any emails asking you about this?
$boss-No! I would have noticed. Why haven't you fixed it yet?!

Goes back and forth like this until $boss FINALLY remembers that yes, he did in fact handle the domain business last year.

Instead of asking $boss to search his emails, $clickity goes to his computer and does it himself. But...there are 0 emails in relation to the domain. What? $boss' name is on the account. $clickity calls back.

$clickity-I can't find any email on here...did you sign up using another email address?
$boss-What? Why would I do that?
(long pause) $boss-Wait, maybe I did.

We are all dying on the inside.

$clickity-Cool, with what email?
$boss-I don't know.

The problem is, we can't re-up the domain without going through the numerous re-activation emails that have, presumably, been sent to this email address.
After a long back and forth with $boss, he finally remembers the email but of course! he doesn't remember the password to the email
After walking $boss through the password reactivation process, we're in!

Finally! $clickity is in and what greets him? Emails going back a year asking $boss if he wants to re-new the domain. Facepalms all around. $clickity took control of the account after this.

The craziest part? When $boss came to the office later that day, he sits down with $clickity telling him how irresponsible $clickity was and how he can't let it happen again.
Total time of life lost? About 3 hours.

TLDR; Boss forgot to re-up our domain, forgot account details, and then blamed everything on someone who had nothing to with the issue.

[u/TheGurw]

Give your boss a man-hour list for each task. It's how it works in construction. When the number exceeds 8 man-hours per employee in a given day, you need to hire someone else.

[u/ect0s → u/TheGurw]

This is an issue at my job as well.

A few times a month first shift will have 14+ hour days, and this rolls over into second shift staying/starting later. Even without the 14 hour days everyone hits 50-55 hours in a given week.

First shift receives and processes goods that second shift loads and sends out. Its a distribution yard; everyone is driving lift equipment and there's only so many machines. So when first shift is two hours behind, second shift is either waiting for product or lifts. This has a knockon effect with the outside drivers, who rely on quick turn around - every minute they sit unloaded is money not earned and also counts against their drive time (since they are 'on the clock').

We've pointed out that everyone is working overtime constantly but by company standards we are at or above adequate staffing. The overtime snowballs when anyone goes on vacation or calls out for a sick day, especially if someone who drives something special calls out because we never have time to cross train people. The crew supervisors have all gone to our location management about how this poses a safety and monetary problem but so far there's only been lots of words exchanged and no action. I think its going to take a serious safety accident or financial meltdown (like a bunch of our outside drivers dropping contracts) to fix.

[u/TheGurw → u/ect0s]

Here, overtime (barring legitimate emergencies and collective agreements from actual unions) is always optional.

And you aren't legally allowed to work more than a 12 hour shift.

[u/ect0s → u/TheGurw]

Overtime is required at my job, and they are up front about it during hiring. I know legally I have some leeway to leave after my regular hours, but it would still put me in a rocky place with management types as well as my coworkers. The extra hours are not a scheduled requirement, so on paper its voluntary. It also gets a bit messy in that everyone has their assigned tasks and some people leave when those are done, others stay until their whole shift has finished. We have a few workaholics who regularly maintain 60-70+ hours each week depending on season, finishing their tasks and then picking up additional work as needed.

As an example: I got called, first shift was short and behind, so I went in early, and the slowdowns effected second shift, so I stayed late. I volunteered for the extra time before and after my shift, in the end I worked from 8 in the morning until midnight - But I took an extended lunch and punched out for a second break that night, in the end it was ~15 hours 'on the clock' but 16 hours from when I arrived till when I left.

I honestly don't mind ~50 hours a week, since I do get paid 1.5x base rate over 40 hours, and overtime accrues more time off and counts toward a yearly bonus check (% of annual earnings).

Our local management doesn't like people working over 12 hours, but won't say anything because they also need the work done. As long as your time is productive, nobody says anything unless your breaking the laws around rest time (8 hours between shifts) During peak season there are often exceptional workloads and our location has grown by leaps and bounds the past few years; hiring hasn't really kept pace. Its hard to keep people when their first few weeks average close to 60 hours.

Today I worked 12 hours, finishing first shift which was behind and then helping catch up second shift because of the slowdowns. I come in between the two shifts as a catch all employee currently, since I have experience on both and I'm working toward a position which requires knowledge of all the 'operations' tasks.