Copying the comment so people don’t have to click through:

In the subreddit r/ATC, as response to the question “What does a short staffed day look like?”, TheWingalingDragon posted 17d ago:

It means instead of working 1 or 2 positions, you’re working 2 or 3 at a time, minimum.

You’re working them for 1.5-2 hours at a time, instead of working them for about 1 hour at a time.

When you do get a break, you’re going to get 10-15 minutes, instead of 30-45. That is assuming there is anyone that can even give you a break. If not, then you can expect to “take a break” by working the supervisor desk… because there is no management in the building at all. This is totally normal.

So very few breaks to go around and every minute you go over time on yours is significantly fucking your friends on position.

That means when it is time to eat, you’re probably going to spend your 10 minutes warming up/retrieving lunch and the other 5 minutes trying to get it all back to the console without making a huge mess so that you can try to eat it between transmissions for the next 1.5-2 hours.

The amount of planes you work won’t be lower, so you’ll just start denying things that you have no bandwidth for. Instead of having time to creatively vector, you’re just scanning furiously for points of friction and trying to stay afloat. It’s not efficient, but you don’t have time to make everything nice. You just need to get rid of planes as fast as you can without them hitting anything, and keep doing it for two hours without fucking up. You leave messes for your coworkers and you feel like shit when it takes you 7 minutes to brief it… but you take the tag out and hustle out to salvage more food.

Instead of anyone having an extra set of eyes to call upon and say “help me keep an eye on this” or “help me coordinate this dudes thing by calling those three people”… you have nobody… the other one or two people in there are just as balls deep in traffic and noodles as you are trying to stay afloat. When people ask for simple shit… it’s no longer simple cuz there is no time for more phone calls… and three lines are already ringing.

You pick them up, you say unable, you hang up. If they call back again, it is probably really important.

Everytime you come back from a break, you come back to a mess of airplanes and noodles everywhere. Somebody fucked with the thermostat again.

Literally everyone around you is talking about calling out sick instead of returning from their next break. Sometimes that happens, too… and you just say “feel better, man.”

Then your Manager calls from home and says that none of this qualifies as “ATC Alert” because low staffing isn’t a valid reason, but make sure that you get your computer based training done before you leave today.

You do the computer training, which was supposed to be given to you in person by management like four months ago, but now YOURE somehow the problem child that it didn’t get done. You click through the bullshit slides while you slurp your cold noodles during your supervisor desk “break”… Lo and behold, it is a CBT about staffing triggers and ATC Alerts. The slides say low staffing = atc alert… you shrug and go back to your noodles.

Then the midshift calls into the desk and says they are coming in two hours late so they can stay later in the morning to cover a sick hit on the day shift. So now you work until midnight, no option. You scribble most of all that onto a schedule sheet for tomorrow that already has like 7 pen and scratch edits to it. Your noodle bowl leaves a thin ring of yellow on it… nobody will know it was you. I’m not reprinting that stupid thing.

Then some dumbass points a laser at three planes in the practice area and you’re NEVER going to finish those noodles, you dumb bitch. You got like three binders to find and complete… and like four stupid ass phone calls to make.

A pilot calls and asks which of the three time slots would be best for tomorrow to avoid delays. You have no idea what he is talking about… he says he emailed all this to the management… you look around, nothing… panic. you lie and say that he can call back tomorrow beforehand, and they’ll give him an answer then… always a safe bet. He tells you they said that yesterday, and now he needs it NOW. You guess a random time, fuck it.

Then the other mid shifter calls you and says they are not feeling well. Now the other swing shifter is staying two hours late, with you, and a supervisor is coming in at midnight to work the mid… which means the real controller is doing everything and has a supervisor there ruining his good time all night. Run of the mill stuff so far… not your first rodeo. You scribble all the new stuff into the schedules 9th edit… “fuckin’ gross, somebody got soup on this.”

You find a sticky note that literally just says “59B - 1930, 1800, 1830???” One of the three times on it is circled… a dick has been lovingly drawn on it by what appears to be multiple contributors or one person with multiple pens… it was underneath your uneaten noodles… You guessed the right time earlier, good shit! Things are looking up! You make a contribution to the dick drawing.

End of the night, one more go on desk/final… One of the pilots says “nice job” before they switch to tower. You can tell they meant it because he was the tail end of a FUCKIN SHOW and you haven’t had 30 seconds to bite and chew for the last 45 minutes straight while working the final position AND the supervisor desk.

You act like you don’t care, but it truly means the world that the pilot saw all that shit, probably expected the worst, and was pleasantly surprised to see all the little lights line up neatly and quickly… and a single, sincere, “nice job” is actually legit.

Supervisor walks in at 2359 and asks if you got the CBT done. He pats your head thrice, because you were a good boi today.

Then you go home at 0015 in the morning and microwave your leftover noodles for the third time that day. On the drive home, you pass by 15 weed dispensaries and wonder how nice it would be to just get home and kick your feet up to relax with a quick puff… but you stop and get some whiskey instead because that’s definitely better and won’t get me fired.

The next day you show up for work bright-eyed and bushy-tailed… stroll in…notice a lack of cars… cross your fucking fingers that somebody carpooled or some shit… you sit in your car for a minute or two and wonder if anyone saw you pull up… could still call out today… but you step into your dark tomb for the next 10 hours (probably) and ask one very simple question to a facless silhouette before you… their answer determines how the rest of your day is gonna go…

“How many did we lose?”

Now… I’m not a scientist or nothin’… but it seems reasonable to consider that people probably can’t keep that tempo for very long. It’s also just plain rude to subject people to that with such a high stakes job… What the general public might be genuinely concerned to learn about is that most ATC have operated under that sort of “flow” for the last 7+ years… just nonstop 6 day work weeks and “surprise” 10 hour days… and a lot of those places are within 1 or 2 bodies worth of the above story if they lost anyone suddenly.

Tweak the times, tweak the chow run of that day, and tweak the coping mechanism… but that basic formula is what a fuckload of controllers contend with randomly as little “fuck you” sprinkles throughout their regular working weeks. As the herd grows thinner, the occasions and severity only increase in intensity.