Did you ever work a job that required two people, but your stingy employer insisted that one was enough? Then you understand the problem with the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship.

One of the LCS’s supposed advantages is its much smaller crew compared to other vessels. Where a Navy frigate might have 200 sailors, the frigate-size LCS has just 40—although, to be fair, two different 40-person crews take turns running the ship.

LCS is a jack-of-all-trades warship that can carry different modules for various missions—anti-submarine warfare, surface warfare or mine-hunting.

The idea was that automation would enable fewer sailors to operate the $400-million LCS for all these missions. This saves on manpower costs as well as on precious shipboard space for crew accommodations.

But a new Government Accountability Office report proves what any Burger King worker already knows—cutting your workforce by 80 percent without also decreasing its workload … isn’t always a great idea.

When the GAO studied USS Freedom’s recent 10-month deployment to Singapore, the auditors found that crews worked too hard. “Freedom crews averaged about six hours of sleep per day compared to the Navy standard of eight hours,” the GAO stated.

“Some key departments, such as engineering and operations, averaged even fewer.”

And this happened despite the Navy temporarily adding 10 extra sailors to the crew and sending contractors aboard.

Missing sleep isn’t exactly a new problem for Navy sailors. But the sailing branch has workload standards for a reason. “Crew members told us that their sleep hours decreased significantly during major equipment casualties, particularly those affecting the ship’s diesel generators and other engineering systems,” the GAO explained.