History Main / CriticalStaffingShortage

* A [[CrypticBackgroundReference vaguely-described]] [[ThePurge purge]] in ''Manga/SPYxFAMILY'' leaves [[GovernmentAgencyOfFiction WISE]] short on field agents. This is used to justify Twilight finding a civilian (as far as he knows) [[MarriageOfConvenience fake wife]] for Operation Strix, as well as [[TheMainCharactersDoEverything constantly doing other missions]] on top of it.

* ''Series/StarTrekVoyager''
** The series begins with both the ''Voyager'' and the Maquis ship sustaining heavy casualties while far away from Federation space. The only way ''Voyager'' can be operated is by merging the two crews and having skilled Maquis take over key positions on the ship. Notably, neither crew has a doctor or even a medic left alive, so the Emergency Medical Hologram has to be used all the time, which it was not really designed for. Over the course of the series, the EMH develops a distinct personality and starts fighting for his rights as a person.
** Occurs in the episode "Displaced" where crewmen keep disappearing while aliens appear in their place. Before too much longer, they're down to a skeleton crew, and then it turns out it's a ploy to take over the ship, beaming crew members off one at a time and replacing them with their own people.
** In the episode "Equinox", ''Voyager'' encounters the titular starship and find that they've got this problem bad, especially since they went through over half of their {{Redshirt}}s during their first month in the Delta Quadrant.
** The twoparter "Workforce" has an industrialized world so desperate for workers that they resort to kidnapping and brainwashing any aliens they can find. Most of ''Voyager'''s crew gets this treatment after being forced to abandon ship by a radioactive mine, leaving the ship with a crew of four.
* [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] several times in the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS4E5RememberMe "Remember Me"]], after all the crew has disappeared except Captain Picard and Dr. Crusher.

-->'''Dr. Crusher:''' What is the primary mission of the starship Enterprise?
-->'''Computer:''' To explore the galaxy.
-->'''Dr. Crusher:''' Do I have the necessary skills to complete that mission alone?
-->'''Computer:''' Negative.
-->'''Dr. Crusher:''' Then why am I the only crew-member? (the computer makes a strange noise) Aha, got you there.

* ''Franchise / Star Wars Legends''

* In one point in ''[[Literature/XWingSeries Wraith Squadron]]'', the eponymous squadron [[HighSpeedHijack comes into possession of]] a Corellian Corvette, a light capital ship with a standard crew of between 50 and 100, plus ground forces. They are forced to operate the ship, and keep the old crew prisoner, and make modifications on it (to fit all their starfighters--it's a carrier, sure, but it's only supposed to hold 4 [=TIEs=]), ''and'' fly a combat mission, with a total crew of 13, plus a protocol droid and a squadron's worth of astromechs. Kell Tainer describes their sleep levels as "barely adequate". Fortunately, they're able to meet up with friendly forces and have a real crew transferred in (and the prisoners transferred out) before long.

*** The inverse can also happen: Housing that evolves into manors contain more people, but these are UpperClassTwits who take pride in ''not'' working. Sure they produce ridiculous amounts of money in taxes, but more often than not it's not worth the loss in productivity (which will doubtless lead to the manor devolving anyway).

* ''{{Series/Andromeda}}''. The ''Andromeda Ascendant'' originally had a crew of thousands, but in the first episode everyone but Captain Dylan Hunt either abandons ship or is killed as it gets stuck in orbit around a black hole. For most of the series the crew consists of the captain and the five (later four) former crew of a salvage ship who pulled the ship away from the black hole 300 years later (due to TimeDilation). Other characters join as well, and the crew varies between 6 and 7 for most of the rest of the series. Andromeda's {{AI}} can fill most crew roles herself so they get by, but it's pointed out several times that the ship is way less effective in combat--or anything else--than it would be fully crewed.

** ''VideoGame/{{Pharaoh}}'': You can order entire workforce sectors (i.e. food production, industry, military, health...) to be fully staffed at the cost of others (although this happens in sequence, which brings its own problems).and you only need a single house near the industry to get workers to it instead of a fully-supported neighborhood.

* A [[CrypticBackgroundReference vaguely-described]] [[ThePurge purge]] in ''Manga/SpyXFamily'' leaves [[GovernmentAgencyOfFiction WISE]] short on field agents. This is used to justify Twilight finding a civilian (as far as he knows) [[MarriageOfConvenience fake wife]] for Operation Strix, as well as [[TheMainCharactersDoEverything constantly doing other missions]] on top of it.

* In the original ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam'', the surprise attack by the Zeon Zakus lead to much of the intended crew of the ''White Base'' to be killed, thus forcing them to use civilians to save the day. The same thing also happens in the original ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamSEED''.

* In ''Literature/JurassicPark'' John Hammond promised the guests brought to tour the park before its official opening bragging that he spared no expense. As the story progresses, it becomes clear that Hammond [[CuttingCorners cut corners everywhere]]. The reason why Dennis Nedry stole some dinosaur embryos with the intent to sell them to a competitor is because Hammond forced him to program the the park's computers to take care of everything, from running the tour vehicles to operating the feeding mechanisms.

* Referenced in Creator/SternPinball's ''Pinball/PiratesOfTheCaribbean'' table. The "All Pirates" mode requires the player to gather six named pirates--the minimum number needed to sail the ''Black Pearl'' in [[Franchise/PiratesOfTheCaribbean the movies]].

** In ''Discworld/TheColourOfMagic'', the Wyrmberg's halls are mostly deserted, their contents rusting and covered with dust. This is because the level of ambient magic is weaker than it used to be, limiting the ruling family's dragon-summoning powers, which have also weakened over the generations.
** In ''Discworld/GoingPostal'', it is revealed that the Royal Post Office in Ankh-Morpork, formerly a city institution employing thousands, has atrophied with the years to a point where only two men remain--an elderly eccentric and a young boy who could be described as a little bit strange. The job of the new manager is to get it up and running again--with a staff of only two men and a cat. This doesn't last long, though; a load of retired postmen come in to lend a hand, and the new Postmaster retains the services of some {{golem}}s, meeting his LoveInterest in the process.
** In the "Witches" subseries, after most of the castle staff quits or gets fired over the course of ''Discworld/WyrdSisters'', Castle Lancre (which started with dozens of servants) is reduced in later books to a skeleton crew of Spriggins the Butler, Mrs. Scorbic the cook, Mr. Brooks the beekeeper, Hodgesaargh the falconer, and Shawn Ogg the captain-of-the-guard/everything else.
** In the "City Watch" subseries, the Night Watch, made virtually redundant by the legalizing of crime, is reduced to four men (Two incompetents and an idealist, commanded by an alcoholic) to police a city of a million by the time ''Discworld/GuardsGuards'' is set. This gets better over the course of the series, with the City Watch eventually numbering in the dozens and later the low hundreds (Which is still a rather small organization to police a city with a population of one million).

* A game mechanic in ''VideoGame/CityBuildingSeries'', and quite possibly the single biggest headache in the games. Services that have less-than-full staff work slower, and since housing and industry depend on these services walking past, this creates a Catch22Dilemma: housing is devolving because the lack of services, so people are kicked out. This lowers your population, and in turn the amount of available workers, which means services suffer, which means devolving housing, which... Compounded by the fact that some buildings don't work ''at all'' with even a single worker missing, to the point where the game considers that up 5% unemployment (out of thousands) to be fine, a mere ''10 workers'' is a major cause for alarm (when it's quite common to see shortages in the hundreds). Thankfully, there are several AcceptableBreaksFromReality to deal with this: workers are taken from the workforce as a whole, so closing the mining industry frees up workers for farming or training musicians, the games feature a way to prioritize the allocation of workers and shut down unneeded industries without destroying the buildings.

** ''EmperorRiseOfTheMiddleKingdom'': The game now allows you to shut down industries on an individual basis instead of the entire thing, allowing production to continue at a reduced rate.

* Wrestling/PaulHeyman was infamous for using wrestlers working Wrestling/{{ECW}} shows in roles that should have been filled by office staff. Heyman himself was in charge of negotiating with the network, other promotions, promoting his own product, booking...then he started losing wrestlers, mainly to Wrestling/{{WCW}} but also to the Wrestling/{{W|orldWrestlingFederation}}WF. While you can blame him for not investing his money better, definitely for not paying people while hiring an agent, one can at least understand the financial problems of ECW weren't easily dealt with precisely because of this.[[/folder]]

* A game mechanic in ''VideoGame/{{Pharaoh}}'', and quite possibly the single biggest headache in the game. Services that have less than full staff work slower, and since housing and industry depend on these services walking past, this creates a Catch22Dilemma: housing is devolving because the lack of services, so people are kicked out. This lowers your population, and in turn the amount of available workers, which means services suffer, which means devolving housing, which... Compounded by the fact that some buildings don't work ''at all'' with even a single worker missing, to the point where the game considers that up 5% unemployment (out of thousands) to be fine, a mere ''10 workers'' is a major cause for alarm (when it's quite common to see shortages in the hundreds).
** Thankfully, there are several AcceptableBreaksFromReality to deal with this: workers are taken from the workforce as a whole, so closing a mine frees up workers for farming or training musicians, you can order entire sectors to be fully staffed at the cost of others, and you only need a single house near the industry to get workers to it instead of a fully-supported neighborhood.

* ''Series/RedDwarf'' starts with over 1,000 crew. After almost all of them are killed by a nuclear accident, the ship is manned by two former vending machine technicians (one of whom is dead), a highly evolved cat, and a sanitation droid.

* ''Series/TheOrville'': the only reason Ed Mercer is even given command of the titular ship is because the Union has 3000 ships to crew, and he's the only captain available. It's later subverted when Kelly reveals she used her friendship with the admiral to get him posted and the crew shortage was just an excuse to hide her involvement.

** The twoparter "Workforce" has an industrialized world so desperate for workers that they resort to kidnapping and brainwashing any aliens they can find. Most of ''Voyager's'' crew gets this treatment after being forced to abandon ship by a radioactive mine.

* In one ''Series/DoctorWho'' episode, it is established that the TARDIS is designed to be flown by six Time Lords at once (hence the traditional hexagonal control console), not by a single Time Lord. This is supposed to be the reason why the TARDIS doesn't always go where (or when) the Doctor wants it to go, and why he can't reach all the controls from one spot, necessitating constant motion from panel to panel.

* In one point in ''[[Literature/XWingSeries Wraith Squadron]]'', the eponymous squadron [[HighSpeedHijack comes into possession of]] a Corellian Corvette, a light capital ship with a standard crew of between 50 and 100, plus ground forces. They are forced to operate the ship, and keep the old crew prisoner, and make modifications on it (to fit all their starfighters--it's a carrier, sure, but it's only supposed to hold 4 [=TIEs=]), ''and'' fly a combat mission, with a total crew of 13, plus a protocol droid and a squadron's worth of astromechs. Kell Tainer describes their sleep levels as "barely adequate". Fortunately, they're able to meet up with friendly forces and have a real crew transferred before long.

* In one point in ''[[Literature/XWingSeries Wraith Squadron]]'', the eponymous squadron [[HighSpeedHijack comes into possession of]] a Corellian Corvette, a light capital ship with a standard crew of between 50 and 100, plus ground forces. They are forced to operate the ship, and keep the old crew prisoner, and make modifications on it (to fit all their starfighters--it's a carrier, sure, but it's only supposed to hold 4 [=TIEs=]), ''and'' fly a combat mission, with a total crew of 13, plus a protocol droid. Kell Tainer describes their sleep levels as "barely adequate". Fortunately, they're able to meet up with friendly forces and have a real crew transferred before long.