Yah, in my experience it was always sales overpromising that led to those long 12x7 shifts. "Oh yeah we can get that out easily in 2 days" that sort of shit. When you're making 10x what the average employee in the shop makes (that shop was still doing 10-15% commissions on $100k-500k or so jobs), you tend to be able to drag everyone else around by the dick. Stupid but that's how it was there.

I worked an office job (IT admin) where my main home base was a commercial print location. You’re spot on. The only job in the shop that seemed interesting was die cutting, but otherwise there’d be people called in for 12-hour shifts on a rush job so they could ship a few pallets of saddle-stitched brochures out. Then you wouldn’t see the saddle-stitch guy for 3 days, then he’d get called in. Pressmen and 2nd pressmen would complain a lot because the traditional setup is 3 operators but they managed to cut that to 2 jobs with the 2nd pressman playing a sort of jack of all trades mode. Long shifts of hearing the machines click away, hot or cold depending on season, lower pay than you’d expect for a trade with no raises in sight, etc. Manufacturing anything can take a lot of labor and I’m not shocked by what’s in the article, I think most people just haven’t been exposed to the pace and conditions of factory/logistics life.

Gotta suck to live in a state where it’s illegal. It’s so normalized in CA now, I don’t smoke but I don’t think about it when I smell it or see people smoking or whatever. Lots of my elderly moms friends trying it out for pain relief, relaxation etc. Almost overnight it just became totally normal.