Another 4 nights with just me running the whole cleaning & baggage operation. No major calamities this time, just the daily fire-fighting of too few staff, internal squabbling and additional tasks piled on daily.
We're gonna be right royally fucked when the the summer schedule (190+ flights daily) kicks in on 27th March.
As predicted, it's a clusterfuck. The press office blames Covid for staff shortages, but that is being VERY economical with the truth. Probably 5% Covid, 95% we simply can't get staff despite the pay rise. Lockdown made people lazy, they don't want to work - especially a physical, work-in-all-weather, unsociable hours environment. I've just finished a night where I had to send all the bags out from 19:00 in the North terminal (baggage controller shortage) spend 3 hours printing stuff on a slow printer in a different location as our soopah-doopah printer has snuffed it, 3 hours doing systems/paperwok for an colleague who injured themself cleaning an aircraft, then go to the South terminal to send out the first lot of bags from there until I was relieved, then BACK to the North terminal to help shift bags there, due to staff shortages. Was meant to finish at 05:45, left at 06:30.
Back in on Saturday - and back to the old 2 days/2 nights pattern. Thank fuck. Constant night shifts are a curse.