Is this just middle management?

[Zoe Girl]

So we are going into winter break, for me that means working winter break camp. I also did the Thanksgiving break 2 day camp. (we get to choose our dates ahead of time). So I am only supposed to do Jan 4/5 but it keeps on getting bigger. I have been trying to get the person I am mentoring contacted and finally contacted her yesterday. Other people have not kept her in the loop and it is looking bad. And the Friday before break everyone is busy, so I am asking who is working on Monday and Tuesday (these are work days) and getting bumped around from person to person. I can help her get the job done those days but apparently everyone else has gotten enough work done to take the time off. I can't possibly do that. How do these people have enough time to take off when my job category is so busy? I have a huge list and just like the snow day I won't be able to get things done because everyone else is not working. I needed a text answered about snow day policies on the snow day and never got an answer. Grrr,

I feel if Monday and Tuesday are work days, the 4th and 5th are work days, and our department runs full day programming those days and a few more, I could maybe get some work done with my colleagues. And how do all the supervisors who are bleeding staff have time to take off when the rest of us are struggling? I am working over 40 hours most weeks, am beating myself up for not doing more towards this mentoring, and then have a huge list to do Monday and Tuesday, but if I need to talk to anyone I am screwed

I had a talk with the supervisor for my camp and her response to a cleaning up issue was to put away everything 45 minutes before camp is done and just take kids to the gym. I am not impressed.

[iris lilies]

I hear ya on not being able to get things done because everyone is off work. It was one of several things that made me a grinch about "the holidays" at work. Between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day any work other than the routine slowed to a crawl because decision makers were not at work to make decisions.

And then, about January 2nd, the winter flu went around and it was another two to four weeks before everyone who insisted on making a decision about new work could grace us with their presence. By then all new projects were queued and the decision makers who imposed the deadlines could not keep to any reasonable timeline.

Can you tell I'm glad to be retired, Haha.

Last week I met with the new President of our neighborhood organization who had an ambitious timeline for a project, but I didn't let that ruffle me. If we get it done, fine, but if we don't meet her timeline, fine. As it turns out we couldn't even convene the committee before "The Holidays" because key people were out of town, so I am seeing the same damn pattern in volunteer work. But that is fine, I'm not paid to get any of this volunteer work done and guess what, it won't be done by her deadline which has already passed!

[SteveinMN]

Not an impressive response from the supervisor, for sure. But IMHO a bunch of individual responses are being conflated to arrive at your conclusion.

Different workers have different timetables. Where I worked, I was busiest at the middle of the month, testing software so it could be installed before the end-of-month freeze. The sales people were busy at the end of the month, trying to book business. The accounting folks were busy at the beginning of the month, closing the books for the previous month. If you're working on interstitial programs, it doesn't surprise me that you're busy when everyone else is kind of winding up.

As for the time-off crowd, I think much of that is a reaction to today's world of work. DW used to put in a lot of overtime before we met -- a couple nights a week as well as email checks and phone calls over weekends. I like to think that the reason she stopped was because she wanted to spend more time with me :). But what really did it was the same thing that's happening everywhere else: work speeds up, workers go away and are never replaced, budgets are cut, new processes are introduced without training or the time to learn it,... DW realized a couple of years ago that she could put in another 20-30 hours every week and still never catch up. A pace which used to be deployed for special once-a-year-type projects is now the expectation. And, as much as you can give, they always want more. Maybe it speaks to a weak work ethic; maybe it just speaks to trying to maintain one's health and sanity in a work environment run amok. But many people have quit expending so much additional effort because doing so doesn't seem to fix anything. In addition, in the case of your supervisory staff, they likely are not the reason they don't have enough/replacement staff in their groups. Is it fair -- or even possible -- to make them pay for upper-management's (bad) decisions?

That last part also speaks to the issue of boundaries. If this camp is expanding beyond the original two days, who is informing TPTB that the change in duration is causing specific issues? Did planning for this session consider the difficulty in finding people at work at this time of year? Is there documentation being created that people who should be available are not? I'm not trying to point a finger; as originally scoped this camp may have been very do-able. But if external demands are changing that, is it really your sole responsibility to accommodate that? I'm not suggesting you drop everything and take the rest of the year off :). I understand that you want this to be a success. But you're part of a team and it's not right to expect you to be the one to carry the ball without getting a few key tackles along the way.

[Zoe Girl]

Okay freak out over, a lot calmer. Apparently they DID staff for those days. I just need to share some plans and I offered to drop off some shopping items since I am going anyway (the person working camp has a different schedule and should not be one of us working days over the break). I even got a heartfelt 'bless you' today. The essential supervisor answered my call, my supervisor is still taking Monday off but I can live with that. Still there are a few things I need help with like trying to advertise the 2 positions I am trying to fill and I am not sure anyone will be around to help with that.

Now to just deal with all the people who will not read emails over break and come back frantic. My parents who sign up for clubs and activities have all been told to email me over break about new clubs and I will respond and the general start date for the new session. If they check my email newsletter over break I should be good. I won't be on site the first day back so the office staff can remind people to email.

[freshstart]

I agree with what everyone said, eventually you realize working harder isn't necessarily working smarter if no one around you is putting in the effort. I got put on it seemed like endless task forces, committees and special projects when my peers were not. They were in addition to my regular work, I felt obligated to work with these teams to get done what we were assigned to do. After a few years of this happening a several different jobs and plans never coming to fruition (all for the same company), I realized how bad middle management was, that I had been placed in the role of Sisyphus over and over and it was all (mostly) pointless. I got paid exactly the same as everyone else and I stopped or I would do one project that I actually cared about and thought stood a snowball's chance in hell of being implemented. In terms of daily work, I learned who the key people were with the power and the willingness to help out with concerns and stopped addressing it to the person it should go to and she was happy as a clam that she was left out of decision-making.

As for time off, as a nurse you work holidays or at least the days around them. At my last job, we were closed on 6 holidays but there were rules about time off. Like only 2 days off between 12/1 and 1/6, or two weeks from 6/1-9/10. It wasn't bad and ensured everyone got time off but middle management would take all of say, Christmas week, take me out of the field to work their job thus making every other nurse have to work harder. Because she had kids. All of us had kids, too. Whatever, at least they were gone and we could run ourselves and at least I wasn't one of them, since every time they offered, I'd make less than 1k more a year to be absolutely miserable in an office all day. oops, my teenager is actually TALKING to me, gotta go. It's about One Direction and I just learned what "shipped" means.

oh, I stopped reading management emails on my days off (well, I read them occasionally but did not respond unless it was a patient concern), are you expecting employees or just parents to read their emails on their break?

[Zoe Girl]

oh, I stopped reading management emails on my days off (well, I read them occasionally but did not respond unless it was a patient concern), are you expecting employees or just parents to read their emails on their break?

I do check my emails once over the weekend and just see if there is anything actually urgent, there rarely is. I am expecting the parents who I have told to look for an email during break about upcoming clubs to check, but I will leave plenty of time. I do expect all of us who are classified 235's to check on Monday and Tuesday which are regular work days, or the supervisor that is on call for camp to answer camp days and maybe the day before because camp starts at 6 am. It is the nature of our business since our programs start very early in the morning that we should be checking the night before.