Crazy thing is I actually liked the job. I worked in a power plant as the Engineer/Supervisor, was at the facility for about 7 years total. 24/7 operation working 12 hr shifts 4 on 4 off, days to nights and back each rotation. The swing shift wasn't fun but I dealt with it pretty well.
Union plant but I eventually went salary which I didn't regret even though I'm strongly pro union. I served as the Treasurer for the union for 3 years and it was a challenge but rewarding, we were able to make a lot of positive changes during that time.
The job it's self was very laid back, we generally just needed to keep the place running and wait for something to mess up. So normally 10 of the 12 hrs I was either reading, playing on my phone, gaming and at the end I was doing online college for my accounting degree.
The problem was that you don't leave until your relief comes in. So if someone is sick or late you're staying. Or if someone takes vacation or has a holiday you're working your day off. That part doesn't matter union or salary, it's the same deal for everyone. Some years I was pulling 600+ hrs of OT.
Well in the last year we had 4 salary engineers before me quit the job. Somehow we kept lucking into replacing whoever and remained fully staffed on the salary side. But this time one guy let us know 6 months ahead of time that he was retiring, and another guy let us know 6 weeks ahead of time that he was leaving. The company did nothing, just dragged their feet.
I was 100% up front with them that I was not ok with the situation. At this point we knew we'd have me and one other engineer left plus one hourly guy in a relief engineer spot that didn't want to be in the office. The manager told me “well we'll probably only be short staffed through the summer”… what the fuck?? By this time I had already jumped several tiers of management going straight to corporate raising alarms about the situation. Without Engineers the place will shut down, it's not even a threat, it's absolute un-debatable reality.
All in all they had 8 weeks to let us know what the plan was. Whether compensation for working our days off or permanent salary increases. If you've made it to this point I'm sure you can guess nothing happened until I put in my notice. Then they finally took it seriously. But by now I had already found a m – f day job with holidays off. They tried throwing a bunch of money at me but I refused to even acknowledge their monetary offers. They even asked me what it would take and put a blank check on the desk. I still wanted to stay and all I wanted was a permanent 5th engineer to cover days off and to be a safety net incase we lost someone.
They balked, so I walked.
Now I'm here camping with the family and I have independence day (4th of July) off tomorrow and I'm going to see the fireworks. My 2 yr old caught his first fish today and we took a picture together. I'm going to be able to do things with him every weekend. I'll be able to go to any of his games or recitals or just whatever he may do in his life. Apparently, sometimes dumb ass management actually improves our lives but never intentionally.
Anyway, sorry for the huge wall of text. Just wanted to share my experience in the great resignation with all the context. Hope you're all doing well.
Tldr: Things work out hang in there.