Back a few years ago, I had a temporary job for an IT installation company. We had a gig out in Cork in Ireland that was supposed to last a month. It was simple enough: a 5 floor business that was to have 3 floors converted into call centre areas, one into a server floor, another into a gym.
Our jobs involved the following:
Now the Leader of the job had us all read the contracts and pointed out a clause that was put in there for shits and giggles. The owners of the building we were installing the equipment in had a sense of humour.
The clause was this: If this job can be completed by XXth of XXXX, we will pay bonuses of 7,000 to each member of staff involved in the installation
The date listed was 10 days away. Myself and our senior technician (lets call the crazy bastard Andy) just looked at each other and nodded. We knew what we had to do.....
We rounded up 6 other guys and for the next 9 days, we WORKED. The average shift for any of the staff was about 6 hours, the 8 of us did 20 hour shifts on the trot for the 9 days.
It got to the point where we had found a closed off room, shoved some sleeping bags in there and just went from work, to sleep, to the bathroom, to work. Rinse and repeat and throw in some late night behind locked door antics between Andy and his now fiancee.
Well we worked our asses off and by day 9, we were almost done, but we knew if we were to make the deadline, we'd need more guys. We tried to round up more people to pull the late shifts but management got wind of our plan.
They fired all 8 of us, and refused to pay us any of the overtime due from our extra hours work (we were paid fortnightly). We all went home exhausted and never tried to pull 140 hour weeks again.
TL:DR 8 crazy people try to make a few thousand in bonuses in less than 10 days, dont get paid, get fired, one guy meets the love of his life.