I work at a little farm stand just outside my city. We sell produce, jarred goods, spices, honey, but our best seller is the ice cream. We're a very popular place for tourists and locals. It's located close to a military base, so it's a great spot to come out and watch the jets fly over, which attracts a lot of people. Today is Friday, the weather is amazing, and I was the only one supposed to work this morning (and only one person for the afternoon shift was supposed to come in, which is absolutely crazy to me). I called out sick because there's a really good chance I could have covid and I don't want to be passing that on to customers. It's also a holiday weekend (Memorial Day) and theyre actually expecting it to be busier than a normal weekend. I haven't seen the real crazy busy weekends yet but I have worked Fridays and even mornings while school is still in session can be packed. And we're only open thurs-sun, so it gives locals only a few days for some things they get regularly, which often means they're here when the tourists are.
One of the things I do when I am working is making waffle cones for the ice cream. On thursdays we have absolutely no waffle cones which means we have to come in early, or focus solely on waffle cones instead of opening just to have enough for the morning at least. Not to mention we're required to have roughly 4 full plastic totes of waffle cones made up for the weekend. We only have thursday and Friday to do it, and often half the cones that get made are used the same day. You can get about 80 cones per tote, and it takes 2-3 hours to get one tote full of cones when you're using 4 waffle irons, and the person is doing nothing besides making cones. We use 20-40 cones a day. Even if I had gone in today I would've had to serve customers, and make at least two boxes of cones in 4 hours because the one person coming in after me can't make them. She was upset when I called in sick (which is understandable because it was on a slightly short notice) but scheduling one person for a shift at least three people should be working was not the mistake I made.