Was I Wrong?

Well, 20 minutes ago I made a pretty big decision and I have no idea if it's the start of a relapse or if I made the right decision.

As most of you will know, I've been working as an agency temp since the start of the year and putting in a hefty 12 hours a day, Monday to Friday. The work was monotonous. 11 hours a day, stood on your feet, in one spot, checking the strength of the base on bleach bottles. It was very much physically draining.



Had we been performing normal warehouse duties and moving around, the shifts wouldn't have been so physically draining (some of you may be confused there, but just trust me on this one). But we were stood on the spot, for 11 hours a day.

One thing we didn't have was high pressure. It was quality over quantity. But that all changed yesterday.

Very poor planning from the company we were working for meant that the work needed to be done at a high pace, while still being accurate. They set the following stipulations for us:

• 12 hour days, SEVEN days a week would be required to finish the job. That's a total of 84 hours a week
• Only the people with experience on the product would be allowed to do the work. That meant only four of us
• Yesterday, we were told we were required to do a days work in the space of 3 hours and if we failed, there was a real chance that not only would we lose our jobs, but the company would lose the contract (this would be through no fault of the 4 regular workers in our team, we did nothing wrong)

So far, I've defended all 4 members of staff, but things weren't always plain sailing with that. Let me paint the picture for you:

Main supervisor: A great bloke. He wanted to let you know what you were doing wrong so you could improve the standard of your work. This is how every supervisor should be. He quickly treated me as his right and man. I will explain why over the next few paragraphs.

Temporary supervisor: He only did the job for 2 days, to cover for the main supervisor when he took 2 days holiday. In those 2 days, he nearly cost us our jobs and cost the company it's contract. On day one, I pointed out to another member of the team that she was letting a fair few bad bottles through, just so she knew. She didn't take criticism at all well and went crying to the temporary supervisor that I was chucking away perfectly good bottles (it was later proven that I was spot on).

He started checking all of our 'waste'. I mean all of it, every single bottle we felt was sub-standard, he checked. It turns out, we were chucking away the right kind of stuff. Two weeks later, at a critical time for the contract, it was found that he'd been putting our sub-standard waste back into the works and it was all rejected. We had to recheck every pallet that had been completed on the two days he was in and we had just 3 hours to do it in.

Agency temp (me): I'd been working for the company for the shortest time. After 2 weeks, the main supervisor had more confidence in the quality of my work than anyone else and he started treating me as his right hand man. I'd be doing the final checks, which had to be spot on. I'd be doing the logistical side of things aswell. I had to do the worst jobs, but I also got the best jobs. I made mistakes, of course I did, I certainly wasn't perfect and sometimes I crossed the fine line of quality. there were many varying factors and I couldn't always zero in on the border line between good and reject.

Full time checker 1: I've previously mentioned her. She didn't want to be in the job, she didn't want to do the hours and her work was affected by that. She was a very selfish worker. She'd spot a break in the monotony and jump on it, most of the time making the work for me and the main supervisor more difficult. Her heart wasn't in it. She worked on one pole or the other. Either chucking lots of good, or keeping lots of rejects. It was her that the temp supervisor went to when he 'lost confidence' on the fine line line between quality and reject. bad move that one.

Full time checker 2: Decent bloke, just came in, got on with it and didn't complain too much. His issue was rejecting massive amounts of acceptable bottles and more than a few times, we had to go through his waste when we found ourselves running short, as we knew we were guaranteed a few acceptable replacements.

But that's the picture painted. I can't blame the mental anguish of it all, as I don't feel those emotions while I'm medicated. An hour ago now, I made the decision to quit the job. I shall be straight onto the agency at 8am to get me something else, so I don't think it was the wrong decision.  I think the working conditions and the added stipulations meant it was very unwise to continue.

I hope I've made a decision that has prevented a long term relapse. Had I suffered from burnout after a couple of weeks worth of 84 hour shifts, I think there'd be no denying that it would be a relapse.

But what do you think? Did I make the right decision for my long term health? Or did I cut and run too early? Please feel free to give me some honest feedback via the comments section below