Playing With / Critical Staffing Shortage

• Basic Trope: A workplace has too much to do, and not enough people to do it.
• Straight: Trope Co. Inc. has hundreds of customers, but only has 50 people currently employed with the company.
• Exaggerated: Everything to be done at Trope Co. Inc. is done by its CEO and sole employee, Bob.
• Downplayed: Trope Co. Inc. has far more temp and contract jobs than permanent employees.
• Justified:
  • Trope Co. Inc. is a small business or N.G.O..
  • Trope Co. is a new startup company and hasn't had a chance yet to hire enough people.
  • Trope Co. Inc. just went through a round of layoffs and a hiring freeze.
  • The workers at Trope Co. Inc. are on strike, and are being replaced by temps.
  • Trope Co. Inc. is such a terrible place to work, or the work it does is so terrible, that almost all of its jobs have an incredibly High Turnover Rate.
  • Trope Co. was hit by an epidemic, and most of its workers are out sick.
• Inverted: Trope Co. Inc. has way more people employed with the company than needed to do the work. Most of its employees while away their days in their cubicles or offices, surfing the Internet, gossiping, reading, napping, or otherwise not doing work, or else they go home for the day almost as soon as they come in.
• Subverted: Trope Co. Inc. seems to have everything covered, despite only 50 people being employed.
  • Trope Co. Inc. has one worker for each client or customer.
• Double Subverted: Each of those employees are doing the work of 2 or 3 people just to keep up with the volume of work there is. Many of them complain of feeling overworked and underappreciated.
  • Then it hits some hard times, and has to lay off a large portion of its workforce.
• Parodied: Bob, the sole employee, fakes a different accent each time he interacts with a client over the phone, and shifts between several offices.
• Zig Zagged: Sometimes Trope Co. Inc. has enough people to do the work, sometimes it has too few, and sometimes it has too many.
• Averted: Trope Co. Inc. has just the right amount of workers.
  • Trope Co. Inc. has too many people to do the work.
• Enforced: A Work Com about the stresses of the modern corporate world.
• Lampshaded: "Too many balls, not enough jugglers!"
• Implied: Trope Co. Inc. has a large office building but there is almost no one inside and the few workers that are present are frantically running around.
• Invoked: Trope Co. Inc. goes through a large layoff and hiring freeze, leaving the remaining employees to pick up the slack.
• Exploited: Mr. Pointyhair sees this as a way of saving money: he can have half the employees, and pay half as much to keep them.
• Defied:
  • Mr. Pointyhair knows that if there aren't enough people to do the work, employee morale will suffer (which could lead to a strike or a lawsuit), and customer service will suffer as well. Also, tired and overworked employees make mistakes, sometimes critical ones. Mr. Pointyhair doesn't want that to happen, so he hires just the right amount of people. He sees his employees as an asset, not a liability.
  • Trope Co. buys robots to reduce the need for human workers.
• Discussed: ???
• Conversed: ???
• Deconstructed: The combination of Trope Co. having too few employees and too many jobs causes productivity and product quality to fall, which then leads to the company falling into a spiral of losing money until they finally go bankrupt.