Back in August 2020 I took a call from my union to go do scaffolding at a gas plant in Lloydminster, Saskatchewan. It was a 5 hour drive away from home, which meant I was living out of a motel room while working 10 hour shifts overnight from 7pm – 5am. It wasn't ideal, but it was height of the pandemic and I was desperate for work.
I was sent out there to work a shutdown. For people that don't know, a shutdown is what it sounds like – the plant goes offline to allow skilled trades to go into equipment and perform necessary maintenance. They normally last for a few weeks up to a couple months. Usually different areas of the plant will be shut down in phases so that some parts remain live and still keep some level of production going through the shutdown.
The employer that hired me had brought in about 50 temporary workers, and had created a master spreadsheet of what shifts we were working and when our days off were. I was scheduled to work 19 night shifts in a row, then 2 days off, followed by another couple weeks of shifts until the end of our project.
At the end of my shift on the 19th night I was beat, ready to drive home to spend 2 days with my girlfriend at the time. At 6:30am, I'm in my motel room, getting my stuff packed up to go. My supervisor calls me and asks me if I can work tonight, even though HE scheduled me to be off. I say sorry, no, I need these two days off, I'll see you when I get back. He says don't worry about it, I'll just lay you off then, come back to site and pick up your tools. Then he hung up.
The fucker wasn't even there to hand me my tools when I came back. He just left them at the security desk.