We had our first significant wildfire of the season over the weekend. Between Saturday night at 9:00 and Sunday night at 10:00, I worked 21.5 hours. The rest of the time I was trying to sleep in my truck. (With a little morning snow, we caught it at 33 acres... otherwise we would have been off to the races.) On a large fire (thousands of acres), I typically average 15 hours a day for 14 days. We have rules that you can't work more than 16 hours at a time unless you're on intial attack (the first ones to a fire). We also have a rule that you can only work 14 straight days without having to take a day off. During a tough season, you can have folks going 14 up, one down, 14 up for months at a time. We've found out that after 90 days in the field, about 50% of our best firefighters start to decline and after 130 days, even the toughest guys are hurting. Of course, these men and women are hiking miles with packs that weigh 50 lbs or more and doing hard physical labor (without regular showers) for 12 hours or more per day while sucking smoke all day and sleeping on the ground. It's actually a lot of fun, though I've never done it for more than a few days at a time.
bunch of amateurs ......................... 8 am December 31, 1999 - 2 am January 4th, 2000 By my count, that is 54 hours. Oh and in between I took an 10 hour break to drive to a funeral 4 hours away.
I did it because I had to, at first, but after a month they gave me the biggest raise I have ever received (close to 40%). So the second month I was super motivated and happy to work the almost 100-hr work week. Then they hired me an assistant, thank god.
I worked 29 hours one day at the hospital.(I guess thats a little more than one day) 7am to noon the next day. Funny, when I got home I still watched the Spurs/Lakers playoff game, although I don't remember anything past the 3rd quarter. ZZZZzzzzZZZZZzzzz. Oh when I was 19 I worked 94 hours in one week at the movie theater inside willowbrook mall, when it was open. I remember the HUGH $289 bucks I got that week. Woohoo!
37 hours at the IT... Worked 52 hours straight at the computer science lab once on a project if you count that work.
about fifty something hours. Been on crunch mode for two plus years for one project, and six months on another.
Ditto! I worked 13 hour days when I worked at Enterprise after college. I had NO life. I'll never do that again.
About 50 hours once, but in a different week, I pulled 3 all-nighters at work -- got to work Sunday night, worked through Monday Night and went home. Then got to work Tuesday Morning and stayed until Wednesday Night. Went home and slept. Worked Thursday morning to Friday afternoon.
My longest that i can recall was actually as a lifeguard. I was in charge of the whole beach club, and there was an anual "sleep" over. I was the only certified guard, so i worked 7 days that summer and my shift was 7am-6 pm regularly with no breaks. I had to eat while I watched the water. Man that was tiring. the sleepover night was really a continuation from the normal work day, so I started at 7am and was stuck there till 6 pm the next day. no sleep, because of course the kids didnt sleep, and I was literally watching the water the whole time. the next day was just awfull. lifeguarding is a totally mental job, and very tiring, so by 5pm on the sunday i wanted to kill those kids. ahh the good ol days EDIT: I guess the difference was that I was forced to be there, but at least I was busy. no boredom, and plenty of interaction, so i still had a life, but those kids were my life... and their nannys appreciated me for it
I did 49 hours, at work, without sleep, on a project once, ON MY BIRTHDAY! I got sick right after that I'm sure from exhaustion.
Sometimes, but only very rarely do I work 8 hours plus about 10 minutes in a single day. This is very rare though. I could never work yous guys marathon shifts, no way!
mateo just curious what kind of work do you do? and by the way, you were right about rites being a blast.. now that I have regained all hearing =)
Hey Dakota do I remeber right that you said you live in Austin. You wouldnt happen to be working on the Star Wars Galaxies would you?
Hmm... about 18-21 hours unloading 18 wheelers for Wal-Mart. I'm usually the one working odd-ball hours in IT. I'll work the normal 8-12 hour shift, then show up at 2 am and work till 7 am sometimes. I loved working the graveyard shift when I worked for Wal-Mart and RPS. Nothing like getting to work at 3am. I still can't believe IT people get paid what they do for what they do when people unloading trucks for Wal-Mart and loading trucks for RPS like I did get paid what they do. Given the choice and equal pay, there's no way in hell I'd want to be doing that stuff again.
