The warmest of welcomes to you at what sounds like an incredibly stressful and exhausting time in your life.
Hmmm...management🤔. Usually you can feel the kind of job management are doing. If it's a brilliant job, where objectives are being met while the staff are happy, it can feel satisfying and even invigorating. If it's a questionable job where high productivity and cost cutting are the main objectives, it can feel stressful, exhausting and even enraging at times. I'm not poo pooing direct management necessarily, it's typically senior management that can be making the really questionable decisions. Direct management can simply be following orders.
I suppose there are 2 questions with the first being 'What will wake management up to the need for change?' and the second being 'Will they ever wake up to the need for change?'. My advice would be, if they're never going to wake up to the under-staffing issue, you need to leave. From my own experience, such a job can be managed until there become outside stressors or demands. You can be putting your all into the job when factors outside the job start demanding more of your time, attention and energy. This is where we can really meet with our tipping point. A mental/emotional/physical tipping point is not a fun thing to meet with, that's for sure. Something like General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) can help explain how we can reach our tipping point. The 3rd stage of GAS can include anxiety, fatigue, depression and decreased stress tolerance. With decreased stress tolerance, the tiniest of things can become a trigger (the phone ringing, having to go to the shop for a loaf of bread etc etc).
What woke management up, regarding the job I'm in, were 2 things. The first involved no new staff members staying on, based on the job and demands being too stressful. The second involved long serving staff venting their stress, anger and their demands for extra staff at management. Long serving staff were threatening to resign, as they'd had enough. Management knew they were facing losing most of their loyal staff members and not being able to keep new ones employed. This equals next to no staff at all. They had no choice but to increase staff numbers.
I'm wondering whether you're a member of a union who might be able to offer advice on the situation, if you wish to stay in the job. Even if we're not a union member, some unions may still offer advice. While they're not all about striking, they can offer advice when it comes to the best way to strike out (speak out) regarding intolerable conditions. Personally, I've never been a member of a union but I do know people who've benefited from being a member. Also wondering whether you've got any leave saved up that you can take, so as to have a break from the job while perhaps looking at a job exit plan (into a new form of employment). Sounds like you seriously need a much deserved break.
