That's exactly why it sounded normal to me to be honest.
Deployments and my last duty station. My last duty station was Fort Irwin. We had rotations that were 7 days a week for a month or 2 at a time depending on the tempo at the time. I woke up at 4am, drove out to a rail yard about 2 hours away, worked all day and partially into the night, then had to drive back every day. When we weren't on rotation you would think it'd be like every other day on a base, but all the training for the units on the base happened while we were on rotation, so we had to do makeup training on our own and that consumed the majority of our downtime. Add in that despite the long hours we still had to do our CQ and Staff Duties at the Barracks, Battalion, and Brigade buildings which were 24 hour shifts. Rotations were scheduled around holidays when able, but not for us, since we received the units and their equipment, we would be out doing our portion of the rotation during the majority of the 4 day weekends. Sometimes they would take our unit into consideration, but it wasn't often since literally the entire rest of the installation was doing their rotation when we were off rotation.
So, while I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying it's normal to me. Certainly would have been nice to get more money for more hours, but that's the risk you take when you get a salary position. Though I can't say I've ever asked the Army for a day off on account of stress.