Blue loo, If you went north that was me and a couple of the other blokes who read here. Cr@p indeed. Got to the point where aircraft were cancelling their requests as it got better in the time it took us to organise it. Pretty poor form but what can you do.
The bit I work on has gone with no staff 3 times in the last 2 years on night shifts. We don't go TIBA (correct me here) in Oz but declare a temporary restricted area (well my bit does). There was an instance where a certain group nearly went into this situation last week because a manager did not want to set a 'precedent' by paying a person the extra dollars to come in and work a night shift instead of the morning they were rostered for.
It is all about the dollar and the sub 100 IQ retards that are our management are to blame. We staff for best case only and if Thunder Storms roll in we call people on their days off to come and open the closed sectors and hope they will. Don't get me wrong, this only happens pretty much over summer but I was to believe our motto was 'Safety First'. If safety=safety of managers bonuses then we are doing a bang up job.