Yes, it's been a dreadfully long time
but I have good reason: I've been exhausted from overworking.
Work has been stressfull this entire calendar year, first with higher than average volumes, then with huge staffing issues with our India partners that was causing quality issues while they were in the process of training new hires, which took a month or two of lots of extra QA on our side to make sure our final product was the same quality as before, then with a string of quits and resignations (and yes, there's a huge difference, having lived through at least 5 this calendar year, and they seem to come in pairs more often than not - insert other shoe falling quip here) plus a few terminations of new hire potentials due to the obvious you're-just-not-right-for-the-job situations (and we kept some of these temps longer than we probably should have because we were really trying to make it work and it just didn't). We're *still* trying to find one more full time employee to join my team (it's been months at this point), and one of my most valued (as a person as well as a team member) coworkers resigned last week and has two more weeks with us before I've got to have ensured my team can survive adequately without her. That one was a real blow, and I'm going to miss her terribly and hope that her life brings her happy things and that she might be able to come back in the future, once her life brings the aforementioned happy things that she richly deserves.
The funny thing is, I'm not really that high up on the food chain at work, but I feel like I've become "part of the team" of supervisors and managers that help keep the office running. Or maybe that's just what it means to become my role as team leader: a liason of sorts between my line staff and the supervisors, part of both worlds - it's to the point where I feel I'm an equal when in company of either at any given time.
All this to say, this whole year has been hard, and only seems to be getting harder. These last two-three weeks have been particularly so, to the point that I've barely seen my housemates (not to mention I've barely made any dinners at home, which makes me sad); my typical day of late has been to go to work, come home, eat a frozen dinner or some couscous while watching an ep of Firefly, take the dog out and put him to bed, and then go to bed myself. I'm really hoping for some breaks soon at work - we've got this new system that's supposed to be rolling out slowly across our jobs over the next few months starting next week that I'm told will significantly cut our processing times, which I desperately want to believe but right now it seems like Doctor-Who's-Floor-500-has-walls-lined-with-gold promise of relief. [side note: loving Doctor Who, can't believe it took me this long to start watching it. Can't wait to see more (and more Torchwood)! Hurrah for British television.]
It's just that, as great as the OT has been to my paycheck and has freed up some money for the baby preparations in our home, I'm worried that I'm going to end up being that family member who's never home for the kid. I mean, it's not as bad since I'm just the live-in auntie and not the parents, but I want to actually be a part of the family in deed as well as in technically-inaccurate-label-that's-true-because-we-say-so. I want to help show [redacted: I almost used her name and Melissa would have killed me] the world, and I can't do that if my job keeps sucking life out of me.
Enough of my whingeing. I know things will work out sooner or later, I'm just starting to get real impatient for things to improve.
Work has been stressfull this entire calendar year, first with higher than average volumes, then with huge staffing issues with our India partners that was causing quality issues while they were in the process of training new hires, which took a month or two of lots of extra QA on our side to make sure our final product was the same quality as before, then with a string of quits and resignations (and yes, there's a huge difference, having lived through at least 5 this calendar year, and they seem to come in pairs more often than not - insert other shoe falling quip here) plus a few terminations of new hire potentials due to the obvious you're-just-not-right-for-the-job situations (and we kept some of these temps longer than we probably should have because we were really trying to make it work and it just didn't). We're *still* trying to find one more full time employee to join my team (it's been months at this point), and one of my most valued (as a person as well as a team member) coworkers resigned last week and has two more weeks with us before I've got to have ensured my team can survive adequately without her. That one was a real blow, and I'm going to miss her terribly and hope that her life brings her happy things and that she might be able to come back in the future, once her life brings the aforementioned happy things that she richly deserves.
The funny thing is, I'm not really that high up on the food chain at work, but I feel like I've become "part of the team" of supervisors and managers that help keep the office running. Or maybe that's just what it means to become my role as team leader: a liason of sorts between my line staff and the supervisors, part of both worlds - it's to the point where I feel I'm an equal when in company of either at any given time.
All this to say, this whole year has been hard, and only seems to be getting harder. These last two-three weeks have been particularly so, to the point that I've barely seen my housemates (not to mention I've barely made any dinners at home, which makes me sad); my typical day of late has been to go to work, come home, eat a frozen dinner or some couscous while watching an ep of Firefly, take the dog out and put him to bed, and then go to bed myself. I'm really hoping for some breaks soon at work - we've got this new system that's supposed to be rolling out slowly across our jobs over the next few months starting next week that I'm told will significantly cut our processing times, which I desperately want to believe but right now it seems like Doctor-Who's-Floor-500-has-walls-lined-with-gold promise of relief. [side note: loving Doctor Who, can't believe it took me this long to start watching it. Can't wait to see more (and more Torchwood)! Hurrah for British television.]
It's just that, as great as the OT has been to my paycheck and has freed up some money for the baby preparations in our home, I'm worried that I'm going to end up being that family member who's never home for the kid. I mean, it's not as bad since I'm just the live-in auntie and not the parents, but I want to actually be a part of the family in deed as well as in technically-inaccurate-label-that's-true-because-we-say-so. I want to help show [redacted: I almost used her name and Melissa would have killed me] the world, and I can't do that if my job keeps sucking life out of me.
Enough of my whingeing. I know things will work out sooner or later, I'm just starting to get real impatient for things to improve.