Narrative:

I returned from a break and looked at the 'numbers' for bae sector and showed a yellow 26 or 28; I can't remember. I saw there was no one on break and was assigned bae sector to let that controller go home. I asked the supervisor about the lack of staffing and the high traffic count coming up at bae. [The supervisor] said hold-overtime was not approved. I plugged in at bae and was getting busy. I had asked for a d-side. It was getting much worse and needed help right away. I asked at least 5 times for a d-side. It took maybe 15 minutes or so before I got one. The sector was near out of control. We had [a nearby sector] traffic from the low side. It was humid and aircraft were not climbing. Swap north was getting out of hand and departures opposite direction was a problem too. Most aircraft were complaining about chop/turbulence and was tying up the freq. I stopped taking hand-offs here and there from the low side and he couldn't take my hand-offs as a result.where is flow in all this? How about hold-overtime? We had plenty of people that went home. I never complain about working busy periods; I enjoy it. And I understand we need to move aircraft but this was a totally unsafe situation. I ended up 2.5 hours on the position. I completely lost track of time so times are approximate. Please really look into this. Better flow! Better management with traffic volume forecast!

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: ZAU Center Controller reported their session was out of control due to traffic and no flow control from the Traffic Management Unit.

Narrative: I returned from a break and looked at the 'numbers' for BAE sector and showed a yellow 26 or 28; I can't remember. I saw there was no one on break and was assigned BAE sector to let that controller go home. I asked the Supervisor about the lack of staffing and the high traffic count coming up at BAE. [The Supervisor] said hold-overtime was not approved. I plugged in at BAE and was getting busy. I had asked for a D-side. It was getting much worse and needed help right away. I asked at least 5 times for a D-side. It took maybe 15 minutes or so before I got one. The sector was near out of control. We had [a nearby sector] traffic from the low side. It was humid and aircraft were not climbing. Swap north was getting out of hand and departures opposite direction was a problem too. Most aircraft were complaining about chop/turbulence and was tying up the freq. I stopped taking hand-offs here and there from the low side and he couldn't take my hand-offs as a result.Where is flow in all this? How about hold-overtime? We had plenty of people that went home. I never complain about working busy periods; I enjoy it. And I understand we need to move aircraft but this was a totally unsafe situation. I ended up 2.5 hours on the position. I completely lost track of time so times are approximate. Please really look into this. Better flow! Better management with traffic volume forecast!

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.