In a way, workers are just like military aircraft where the engine power throttles will have settings between flight idle and full power. Fighter aircraft will often have an additional setting beyond normal full power. That’s the Wartime Emergency Power in case the pilot is a real spot of a bother. But this setting can only be safely used for a very short period of time and will burn up several engine hours (between overhauls) in a minute or less.

Likewise, most people are capable of extraordinary effort in an emergency. Trouble is, one day’s extraordinary effort combined with fortunate circumstances often becomes the permanent daily goal. and yes, working in that mode every goddamn day with no light at the end of the tunnel will burn people out to the point where most of the workforce in a company is either new people or people who are too burned to care anymore.

Have you heard of the strikes and walkouts by healthcare workers here in the US. The wages aren’t the issue, but it’s the staffing levels and the workloads where there’s barely enough time to do the job while cutting every single corner possible, nevermind doing things by the book or dealing with complications.

Here’s an outstanding example where a pregnant patient was given abortion pills by mistake.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.foxbusiness.com/healthcare/woman-mistakenly-given-abortion-medication-by-cvs-instead-of-ivf-hormones-they-just-killed-my-baby.amp

Of course there was a whole raft of documented administrative procedures and cross checks that would have prevented this. But, as usual, there’s no legally enforceable framework to require employers to ensure there’s enough time and staffing to follow the letter of the procedure, so corner cutting becomes a necessity. it doesn’t help that companies like Amazon or Starbucks deliberately write safety procedures that are physically impossible to keep up with. Workers who cut corners get a pass on not following the rules, while union agitators and such are routinely fired for either inability to follow safety rules or for low productivity (in case try to follow the rules and can’t keep up with the workers who don’t).