Stressful Days at Work
Cats: Personal|Sorry for the work-related post today, but this was something I’ve been meaning to share. Despite the title of this post, I want to say that I really like my job. I think it’s a good fit in a lot of ways:
- - It’s mostly sedentary but I can stand up while working if I need to stretch my legs.
- - I’m not tethered to my desk/phone or constantly monitored.
- - It’s mostly task-oriented but I get to talk with lots of people.
- - There are few hard deadlines, and my bosses are fair.
- - I like the people on my team.
Unfortunately, things have been more stressful lately because of things surrounding having an interim supervisor. Our interim supervisor is great, but the new supervisor was just announced yesterday, and so it’s currently an unstable situation. Our previous supervisor is one of the greatest people you’d ever meet, but it seems he wasn’t getting the job done.
With the turnover in that position, naturally the interim supervisor and our manager have been going over procedures with us to see what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, what needs to change, etc. I think it’s good that these things are being done: it’s never good to go too long without questioning why we do the things we do, especially if they’re not as efficient as they could be. Plus there has been some interpersonal strain amongst the team because we’ll get behind on certain things, while trying to keep up on other things, and each person thinks their tasks are more important than the next person’s. So the extra attention from up the ladder is not unwelcome or unnecessary, but since they’re shining a spotlight on everything, it’s natural for us to get a little tense from the extra scrutiny. And with the extra scrutiny comes changes handed down from above, and all forms of change can be stress-inducing.
For me, the light at the end of this tunnel has been that we’re getting a new supervisor, and after a period of them learning the ropes and sorting us out, we’ll be left pretty much alone again to get our work done. That’s fairly unrealistic, but it’s been what has gotten me through the day, aside from my growing photographic shrine to my son on my desk. (There’s something about imagining that I’m holding him that makes everything else go away.)
But yesterday came another hint of hope: I heard throught the grapevine that our manager has submitted to home office to make an additional position in our department. Hooray! More help! This is something I’ve started to mention to people when asked what needs changing in the department. We just need another full-time set of hands that does the same things we do. Not an intern, or part-time underpaid helper loaned from another department. No, I think our department’s responsibilities have grown, and our department has not. So this is all good stuff, and I was very excited just to hear that such a change was being submitted to home office, even if it never pans out. It could very well be rejected right now for budget reasons, or whatever, but it means so much to me that our manager would even try to request the extra person.
