In 2020 I was let go from my job due to COVID and was forced to find another one in early September of that year. It was okay, paid a little bit better than my previous job, but the commute was terrible. I stuck through it though. I have a family to support after all.
A little bit of background here: this job was in procurement, which meant that the supply chain crisis had a huge effect on my workload and stress levels(in a bad way). The facility is supposed to have two people in my position, a material handler, and the site supervisor(my boss). Upper management had long wanted to reduce staffing down to just the site supervisor, but that was an idiotic, unworkable idea, as all four of us had our hands full and there was no way one person could do all of that by themselves, so it never happened(proven as such when my coworker took a month long medical leave and we got clobbered). Salary for this job was also about 20-30% lower than the local average.
Anyway, the other guy in my position gave his two weeks in late April, and his last day was in early May. Upper management didn't give authorization to even post a job listing until about two days before my coworker's last day. They spent all of three weeks trying to fill the position before opting to wait until a management trainee could be brought into the position… in mid-August. Since they were going to be paying this guy's salary one way or the other, it was like they were getting a free worker (though it was a temporary solution as it was only a 6 month rotation).
My boss would tell me not to worry so much about performance numbers as that would be unreasonable, considering our manpower situation, but would occasionally she would come out of conference calls and give me a bunch of flak over my KPI's(key performance indicators). I could tell that it was because she was getting similar treatment from upper management. I didn't necessarily agree with her approach, but I wasn't unsympathetic to her situation. Much like when my coworker went on medical leave, things got messy. Management wouldn't offer decent pay, they would put in no effort to hire enough people, they wouldn't authorize overtime, they wouldn't bring in someone from a different part of the company to help out, and they wouldn't let up on KPI's. It was at this time that I had decided to get my year in and then start looking for another job.
One Friday in late July, my boss was out of the office and things went particularly pear-shaped. From about 10am to noon I wound up having to deal with about a dozen little crises. When I got to my lunch break, I literally ran out of the building because I just had to get out of there.
The Monday after, my boss called me into her office and red he the riot act over an email she had sent me in Friday that I didn't respond to. Turns out she had sent to me at 11:00 the previous Friday, right in the middle of that mess. On the train ride home, I started work on updating my resume and cover letter and started browsing Indeed.
I wound up getting a job with a 50% pay bump, more sane management, and a way better commute.
Never forget, they need us more than we need them.