I'm often in the mega venting about work. I get where you're coming from. My situation in similar. Most everyone I work with likes working with me because I do my best to solve problems (and there's a lot thanks to the way things are structured) and I do what I can to help people. Maybe its the people-pleaser in me, but I also go out of my way to accomodate for my co-workers scheduling needs, whether or not it'd be for things the company would deem "worthy" of giving time off or switching shift and what not.
The biggest problem we have is lack of staffing. Aside the fact that for the 5 years that we've been at this we've had work volume that should warranty at least one extra employee, the margin between being "sufficiently" staffed and severely understaffed is razor thin. Turn over is high because pay is shit (more on that later) and any time someone leaves I end up working 6 days for 50+ hours. And its tiring. At one point we did have that extra employee, but when they left they were never replaced. When there was a discussion about adding an extra employee about 6 months after, and yet more turnover, I made my case for adding another one, not just to handle the volume of work we had, but also so that we'd have sufficient staff if turnover remained high and so that we could comfortably take time off without having to have everyone else work 6 days. It fell on deaf ears. For a couple months my manager, who works from home btw, kept saying that it was being discussed internally between our company and the client company we were working with and nothing ever came out of that. We're currently in a bit of a crisis because another location lost most of its staff (turnover or on leave) and we still haven't heard anything about adding more staff, even though it was discussed once again due to a huge spike in work volume earlier in the year.
Speaking of my manager, they have a propensity to try and wave off my employees needs. One of my best employees had been with the company previously before transferring to work with me and his pay was reduced to match the starting pay for my location. When he sent an email to my manager asking for his pay to be raised to was it was in his previous location so that he can keep up with the increase in the cost of living my manager says "that's the case for everyone". It wasn't until I went and got his pay history that he changed his tune and even then it took way too much convincing to get it done.
Also recently I had one of my employees go take some time off to travel. When they got back they contacted me (with sufficient time) to ask if they could take an extra day off to recover from their travels. When it came up in a conversation with my manager they said "oh, I've traveled and gone back to work the next day." I didn't fucking ask and I'm that person's direct manager. If I was ok with it I don't need to fucking know that you would have just come back to work.
And its this flippant attitude towards others' needs that really has me thinking if I should stay. The job itself isn't too bad. Admittedly my current staff isn't great at the job and I've been patiently coaching them, hoping for an improvement in their work with little results to show for it. Having to make up for their short comings and the increased demand from the company is wearing me out. I really don't think my manager cares enough to rectify the situation. I'm starting to look for a new job and I know its going to suck for all of my coworkers because if I do leave whoever comes in probably isn't going to be as patient and flexible as I am. And I legit care about a lot of the people that I work with and it hurts just thinking about moving on, but I have to.
Mfw I go on an unannounced visit to Pope Leo so I can let him know where I rank him on my love list