Tag: supervisor

Draining

What a day this one has been.

I was out on vacation last week and it was glorious. Today I went back to work for the first time and KA-BOOOM!!! A huge administrative change was announced just as I punched in for the day. I had 506 emails in my inbox and a meeting with my manager at 9:00am and a meeting with my director at 10:00am and DAMN did that come out of nowhere and just bowl me over.

It’s nothing bad. It’s going to make me very busy through October and November and into the beginning of December, but busy in a good way. I just didn’t see it coming and it has left me feeling drained and worn and sort of like a wrung out dish rag today.

I mean, woah!

I Feel Bad About This

I feel like I dropped a ball at work. I did not, but I feel like I did.

One of the guys in my group was struggling with an issue on Friday. He was sending out chat messages to the rest of us during the morning and I was chipping in where I could. His problem involved a functionality that 10 years ago I was the authority on. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to look into it myself, but I am still often the guy who can straighten things out even though I don’t personally support customers anymore and therefore never have this sort of issue assigned to me directly.

He asked if anyone was available to jump on a video chat and look things over with him. Right about the same time my boss’ boss pulled a whole bunch of people, including me, into a different discussion and I had to shift my focus to that. By the start of the work day today (Monday) my issue was pretty much worked out but my coworker was still struggling. He was on another video call with a few people from other groups and they were trying to figure out what was going wrong. I joined the call and within a few minutes knew what the problem was and how to fix it.

Damn it.

By 10:00am today everything was fine and dandy and right as rain. That’s good. What I am upset with myself about is that if I could have just freed up a few minutes on Friday I could have saved my coworker a lot of stress and had it all wrapped up three days earlier. The customer would have been happy, my coworker would have been happy, and I would have felt like a (very minor) hero. Instead, I feel like let everyone down. Again, I did not, and the thing I was looking at on Friday is really important and has all sorts of upper management eyes on it, but I still wish I could have been there for my coworker sooner than I was. That’s all.

Meet the New Stress, Same as the Old Stress

I wrote a little yesterday evening about getting stressed out at work over something that didn’t deserve to be stressed out over. It happens now and then, you know? It’s work.

I was working on a project yesterday and this morning I reviewed it with the person I submitted it to and it was fine. No problem. Helpful. It did what it needed to do. All is well. Nice, huh?

Unfortunately, 60% of my group is out either on vacation or sick today. We are going to be seriously short handed. Oh good! Hello, work stress. Nice to see you again, my old friend.

Heh, what can you do, right? Just roll with it, babie.

Telecommute

I will not be telecommuting tomorrow.  I will be going to new supervisor orientation, but that’s not what this is about.

In my division, Programmer/Analysts with a certain amount of tenure get to telecommute twice a week.  As of last week I am no longer a Programmer/Analyst.  As of last week I am a Supervisor.  Supervisors in my division get one day of telecommuting per week, regardless of tenure.  Well, you have to be there for three years before you get your one day of telecommuting, but that is company wide, regardless of division.  But you get the gist here.

I don’t get two days at home anymore.  I get one.  No more Mondays working at the dining room table.  I hope this move is a good one.  I hope an extra day of driving to Westwood doesn’t drive me out of my mind.  I don’t think I made a mistake.  I mean I’ve been filling the Supervisor’s roll for the most part for five months already, how much worse can it be?  Still… I hope I didn’t make a mistake.

Promotion

I got promoted today. The downside is that I lose my second telecommute day. I’m back to driving in on Mondays again.

The upside is… is… Is there an upside? I’ll let you know when I figure it out.