My boss just got told by his unofficial (this is important) second in command that by the end of the year he's leaving. I work for a mid sized municipality in the water department. We were the one department that was one employee away from being fully staffed. We have the plant superintendent, the lab director, the (unofficial) chief operator, four operators, me(a trainee), our maintenance supervisor, and a semi skilled laborer. At the time, if i got my certificate and another operator got hired we would be the only department in the city that was fully staffed. Everyone else was short staffed and backlogged. The reason why everyone is so short staffed is because the pay is garbage. No one wants to work in triple digit weather in the middle of Alabama for 10$/hour. No matter how good the retirement is.
Onto the story the operators rotate shifts every two weeks. They've requested several times to move to a one month rotation so that they don't get so exhausted with the turn arounds, but the plant superintendent said no for no particular reason. Basically “because i said so”. So we started losing operators left and right. Now two operators are rotating and getting a shit ton of overtime working doubles and our chief is in there too to help pick up the slack. This has been going on for three weeks now. The straw that broke the camel's back was chief is on vacation this week to get a small break in, and we got a call from our regulation agency yesterday saying we have inspection tomorrow that we are by no means ready for. Guess who they called and asked if he could come and sweet talk the inspector to lighten up on us.
He was livid naturally. He told them point blank, “if I'm as important as you say i am to the plant the fucking treat me like it.” He's been begging them to officially give him the title for months now since he's gotten it at the end of the year last year. Even the utility director has told him that he's second in command, but they won't give it to him in writing. So he gave the ultimatum finally. “Title or leave me the fuck alone or I'm leaving”. I'm proud of him, and to be honest if he leaves, i won't be too far behind him. He's a boss i don't mind having.