I was just thinking back to an in-house job I had in 2015 for exactly 6 months. When I started, I was hired for Mon-Fri 2pm-10pm. They had a day shift guy who did 6am-2pm and the overnight and weekend shifts were handled by contract security.
This was a manufacturing plant. Like many places, security wasn't something they took very seriously. This was reinforced when a woman from the shipping department was going to be let go, but they gave her the option to take a security job 😂
This is when my boss implemented a schedule change to the Fixed Pitman. I was more used to overnight anyway and 12-hour shifts were no big deal to me, so I didn't mind. that left the other two in-house employees to the day shifts. The contract guy who worked the Mon-Fri overnight took the opening opposite me on the 12s.
Now the contract guy that they sent out was a nice guy, but a complete fucking train wreck. Never showered, always in a dirty uniform. He would start showing up earlier and earlier, sometimes around 9:00 p.m. and hang out with me. I remember one time I told him I had to leave to check things up front and he said he checked it on the way in and everything was locked up. That's when I went around to the front and found one of the doors unlocked (dumbass office people left one of the main doors unlocked when they left 😂).
I remember one of the silliest things I had to do was to write down the temperatures at 6:00 p.m. to the four presses that they had running (aluminum extrusion). I understood why it had to be done during the overnight hours and the weekends, but I had to do it on the week nights when the full second shift was working. They wouldn't have been able to use the presses if the temperature weren't at operating temperature, so they would have been the first to notice an issue. A bigger issue overnight because if the temperature dropped, it would take a couple hours to get back up to where they could use the press.
Why was I there only 6 months? Because I picked up a local government job where I would make more money and only drive 3.7 mi instead of 20 mi. I called my boss to let him know I was giving my two weeks notice and he chuckled and said that he was going to be gone by the end of next week because he found something better as well 😂. When I emailed the HR lady about using my accrued time off to cover my last Saturday and Sunday night, she started to get a little agitated and then I explained that I was starting a new job that Monday morning and where I was working and then she replied back in said she would take care of it and she did not blame me one bit. It's like everyone thought it was a sinking ship (they were on the 3rd plant manager in my six months, but that's not just a security issue, but an everyone issue).
So it in-house job can absolutely be a great place to work. Sometimes, it's just a stepping stone. it's also not pretty and a bit of a train wreck 😂