Bob is trapped in his job, how would you resolve this problem?

In My Humble Opinion
21

This is typically handled by ‘Bob’ continuing at the job until he can’t take it any more and decides to quit. Occasionally his employer recognizes that he’s worth more money and he gets paid more, maybe even gets a promotion. Most often he does quit, regrets it for a while, finds another job, the same, worse, or better, but realizes he’s better off than he was.

What ‘Bob’ should do is get his resume together and get out there and start looking. He’ll either find something better or see what he’s got isn’t as bad as he thought for the time being.

22

Until ‘Bob’ acknowledges the role he has played in creating this situation, ain’t nothing going to change. He’s ‘volunteering’? Because he ‘feels’ he must? Writing off his leave without compensation? Working 60 hrs, paid for only 37? That’s ALL on him, no one else can change any of that, but him. And if he doesn’t get a grip on that, it will just reproduce itself in his next workplace, I fear.

All change comes with risk. Bob’s family is much more at risk of losing everything from Bob crashing his life due to these exhausting circumstances, which could turn out to be permanent. Bob’s health could be very negatively impacted by a medical episode triggered by stress. The short term risk of switching jobs will seem like the easy path should that happen, I should think.

So what’s Bob prepared to do to create change? Has he been working on his resume? Beating the bushes and contacts for other opportunities? Is he networking for other openings? Or is he just lamenting where he’s at, without taking any real responsibility for contributing to the dysfunctional dynamic himself? Hoping the desired changes just fall down like rain from above?

If Bob really wants this to change, he needs to change Bob. That’s my opinion anyway!

Wishing Bob Good Luck regardless!

23

Because he must. The price of not volunteering is the risk of immediate costly failure - essentially, the situation has become boolean in the sense that staying is only possible at 150%+ participation level.

Bob is an idiot for walking into the situation with his eyes open; the warning signs were there (although not all of the facts were apparent - for example, Bob was not aware that in the space of five years, three of his predecessors in the role failed due to the prevailing situation - one quit outright; one was fired for allowing a business critical failure; one was overworked into long term illness and nearly died).

24

It sounds like the most fortunate of Bob’s predecessors quit. I’d suggest Bob try to follow in his footsteps.

25

Bob needs a new job, no question there. The situation is not going to get better, and the only end game here is “Bob breaks down completely.”

In the meantime, Bob’s tools are prioritization, delegation and setting expectations.

Bob needs to ruthlessly triage his workload. Anything not directly related to his most critical tasks comes off. That means skipping or sending a subordinate to any meetings that are not absolutely critical- even if they are ones he is expected to be at (like routine senior staff meetings.) No more time spent polishing power points or writing well-crafted emails. No side projects. If it’s not at the core of his work, it doesn’t get done.

I assume Bob is delegating as much as he can, but if he hadn’t already he needs to find a team member that can take on some of the higher-level work he is doing. Even if they don’t do it perfectly, it will likely be good enough.

Then Bob needs to be upfront with the trade-offs when taking on new tasks. He needs to say “With available resources, you can expect quality X for this. If you want higher quality, we will reduce resources for A and B, which will now have quality Z”. He needs to make his superiors aware that that they are actively making choices when they over-extend him, and they those choices come with trade-offs.

This works because he is not saying “no” or refusing new work. He is simply laying out the available choices.

26

Hmm. Unless Bob is the CEO of the corporation, it’s not the price of not volunteering that would lead to failure; it’s the price of insufficiently staffing the job. Whoever decided that 37 hours a week sufficed to complete this work–work that takes 60+ hours a week to complete–is the one with responsibility for failure.

Can you meet with your boss? Tell her that you can’t sustain work with this many unpaid hours, that you need to stick to your assigned workload. Suggest an alternative–subcontracting with another company for on-call duties, or hiring an assistant, or something, I don’t know the industry.

It sounds to me like you’re putting all the decisionmaking responsibility on yourself. That’s an awesome favor you’re doing for your boss, but you may not want to do that favor. If your boss hasn’t allocated enough manpower to get the job done, that’s on her, not on you.

27

He needs to tell his job that it’s not on. He really does. It may be hard, but it’s the only possible solution. The employers are the only ones in this situation with the power to fix things - by giving Bob more resources - and they’re not doing it. They’re expecting loyalty to them and their business, and not giving anything back.

Imagine you were the manager of - say - a big furniture store, and someone comes in and buys a dining table off you. Then when they come to take it home, they start carting out a bunch of chairs too. “Oh, but obviously a table’s useless without some chairs to put round it. No, we’re not really interested in having a conversation about paying for them. We just need them so we’re taking them.”

You’d think they were off their tree. How is expecting 60+ hours work while paying for 37 different really? It’s still taking something you haven’t paid for.

I suspect that half the trouble in these situations is that management thinks it’s reasonable to expect extra unpaid time out of its employees and the employee in his heart of hearts believes them. Don’t. It’s nothing more or less than a genteel mugging.

28

If he’s senior management, what does it mean to only be paid for 37 hours a week?

Also, how much does Bob get paid?

29

The other question here is “Why is the company ok with the imminent failure of Bob’s division?” Because that’s the state they are in-- imminent failure. Either management doesn’t know this or doesn’t care.

Is it because Bob’s work isn’t their field so they don’t know what’s realistic? Is it because resources are genuinely that tight? Is it because they don’t fully understand how dire the situation is? Is it because they don’t think Bob’s work is actually that critical?

Each of these suggests a different approach.

30

“Overworked into long term illness until he nearly died!”

Bob needs to recognize a few things, in my opinion.

  1. It’s no accident that they’ve over worked someone till they quit, or another to illness. That’s their way. Find people who they can exploit. People who just keep rising to the challenge. People who just keep taking it, as more and more is piled on. People who can convince themselves only 150% participation is acceptable. The world needs people with this kind of fortitude and work ethic, no doubt. But such persons can be easily exploited.

  2. Bob needs to recognize that he is, in fact, replaceable. Like all the rest of us. Of course his employer likes him to feel otherwise as it makes him really easy to exploit. If Bob has a stroke tomorrow, life will go on. They will shift the load to the next workhorse in line that’s convinced he ‘must’ do as the company ‘needs’, as though it was his life on the line.

  3. Guys like Bob, who become so invested in ‘but I’m essential!’ Are the same ones who are crushed when they are now forced out by ill health. Often falling into deep depression because they couldn’t, ‘hold up’ or ‘go the distance’. They’d have been far better off acting before the job and their health were gone. Being the agent of change is a power position. Being a victim of change, not so much.

Bob wants his job to get, or be, different. This company is not going to change its stripes. The only change open to Bob is to find other work. But his ‘I’m essential’ and ‘its a risk!’, thinking is holding him back. But ‘I’m essential!’, is all about his ego, come down to it. He should save that for a company that’s worth it. This one is just using that trait in him, to exploit him, to their advantage.

In my experience the Gods always send a pebble before they send a brick. Bob should act now before the bricks start coming. When you can see what you should do, but hesitate because it’s less than ideal, or ignore the signs altogether, there’s usually a pretty high cost. Bob should act now while he’s still in control.

Wishing Bob Good Luck!

31

I was in a situation like this. My supervisors kept adding “just one more little thing” to my workload every week until they’d added about 90 minutes a day. I went to HR and demanded a detailed job description that HR (not my supervisors) realistically thought could be accomplished in 40 hours a week. When the HR person asked me why, and I told them, she was shocked. We ended up in a meeting with everyone in my position, my direct supervisors, their supervisor, and HR. We ended up with our job description, and some grumpy bosses for about two weeks, but we didn’t care, because life was so much better in so many ways. The things I did do, I did so much better.

A friend of mine, in a similar situation, but with no support from coworkers, because no one was in exactly her position, requested a lateral transfer. She had to wait about four months before something came up, but something did, and she is much happier as well.

32

Don’t quit. Take your vacation, dial your hours back to reasonable levels, and start looking for another job. A senior manager’s skill set can’t be that narrow where no other job can be found. It may require a step down in level and salary, but if that comes with more reasonable hours your per hour earnings should go way up.

33

If Bob doesn’t want to carry on like this until he’s forced to stop because he cannot physically continue, then he needs to change something.

[ul]
[li]Is he in a position to hire more staff? (Temps are good, too, at this point.) [/li][li]Can he delegate more of his work to his existing staff? (I’ve seen managers become overwhelmed with all the things they feel they have to do and meetings they have to go to, when actually I think they could have shared that workload better and been less overworked themselves. Development opportunities for more junior staff, an excellent thing all round!)[/li][li]Is he senior enough to say ‘no’ to things, and try and reduce the workload that way? [/li][li]What happens if this critical service (which is apparently massively under-resourced, despite being critical) fails - you say it will be perceived as Bob’s fault. What happens then? Is there anything Bob can do to soften that blow, since that looks like an increasingly likely outcome - it might be worth seeing whether the world would end if that actually happened.[/li][/ul]

If Bob doesn’t change anything, he’s going to become ill. Then the company will have to make do without him, because he won’t be able to be there. Bob could try pointing this out to his line manager, and suggesting that it would be better to properly resource his team while he’s still there to manage it, rather than waiting until he’s too sick to handle it and they’re trying to respond to a crisis situation. (I realise this probably won’t help Bob’s career very much. But nor will having a heart attack or a mental breakdown…)

34

[quote=“Mangetout, post:1, topic:757872”]

[li]Although he’s good at what he does, the job market for his skills is somewhat narrow, so although there are opportunities out there, they don’t come up too often [/li][/QUOTE]

This cuts both ways, though. If his skillset is so specialized that it’s difficult to find work, then it also means that it won’t be easy to quickly hire and train a new Bob. Meanwhile, if Bob’s job is so vital to the company that his failure means extreme harm to the company, then Bob has way more leverage than he’s actually exercising.

35

Which is more important? The family home or the life and health of a member of the family?

There’s is a thing called “downsizing”. Bob should look into it.

36

What would happen if Bob did become ill? If he go cancer, had a heart attack, got in a car wreck? Would the company literally go out of business?

What if he got a little bit ill–missed a couple weeks because he got pneumonia, had his appendix out? Would they fire him after the entire system melted down?

If Bob has any sort of relationship with a doctor, I’d get a medical leave of a week or so. Bob needs it–sincerely. And I’d use that week to get past thinking about how to deal with the next fire and instead think further ahead. The solution is most likely 1) making the changes above to make the short term bearable, even if that means they start compiling documentation to fire him and 2) finding another job. What a week gives Bob is a chance to think about jobs more broadly–if hes senior level, he has a lot of skills. Bob also needs to call everyone he’s ever known or worked with and talk to them about potential opportunities.

37

Bob seems to have a great deal of leverage here.

Overall, though, this question reminds me of the type one so often sees in relationship advice columns, basically asking “how can I get my significant other to stop taking advantage of me without provoking conflict?” Usually, the unfortunate fact is that there is no way of doing so without conflict of some sort.

38

I’m with Manda JO here. I hate to phrase it like this, but what if ‘Bob’ had a stroke at work today and died? Would the company collapse immediately?

Remove yourself -er- Bob - from the equation in a drastic and irreversible way, and really think through what the company does to solve the problem.

Then realize that if you did take vacation, them thinking all those bad things are ‘Bob’s’ fault? So damn what? It really doesn’t matter to you. If it’s legal to take your leave, they can’t deny it, and I bet there are anti-retaliation laws in the UK if they do anything more than bluster.

Seriously. Make a doctor’s appt. Tell the doc what you told us about your stress and fatigue, and ask for a doctor-mandated sick leave of about week, or at least three days. The office can’t deny that, and if everything goes balls-up because ONE PERSON is gone for three days? That’s shitty organization, and even if they SAY it’s Bob’s fault, any reasonable judge or jury will easily be able to tell the difference.

Use the sick time to find a new job working ANYWHERE else. (Is there no one else in the family that can hold a paying job? No one you can float a temporary loan from?)

39

I guess my question is why does Bob feel like he has to go to such extraordinary lengths at his company? Are other people working these long hours? Is he up for some sort of promotion? Is that just the culture of the company? Or does he just feel personally obligated for some reason?

Until fairly recently in my career, I’ve often found myself in similar positions where I was working longs hours trying to meet some ridiculous deadline without the proper resources. A couple of things I learned:

  • If a company is so dysfunctional that you have to kill yourself to make it work, chances are there isn’t much of a future there anyway.
  • If the company isn’t willing to support you with proper staff, they probably aren’t going to support you with a promotion or a raise either.
  • If you are the only person in the office when the cleaning staff are emptying waste buckets, you are doing something wrong.
  • At some point you WILL have a personal obligation that you will be unwilling or unable to cancel (even if it is your upcoming trip to the hospital). So you might as well draw a line in the sand now.
  • If they are going to fire you for something, might as well be for not working like their work bitch.
  • As a senior manager, I wouldn’t expect you to be “doing” things yourself. If stuff needs to get done, you need to learn how to make a compelling argument to your managers that you need the proper resources.
  • If you are the only person who can do the work, that in and of itself is leverage.
40

If I were Bob (and I have been in a similar position before), I would take a couple actions. First, take a couple days off and use that time to plan – no, plot – how I am going to change things. Decide what I’m in control of and what I can’t control.

Next, I’d look closely at my outgoing expenses and cut back anything I could – or do whatever it takes to shore up my personal savings, so that I can be without a job for a minute (“a minute” is defined by me as any period of time). If the spouse has to take on a job, or I have to take on a second job, so be it. I put myself in a financial position to be able to afford a little risk.

And then I’d implement a lot of the strategies that have been suggested here. Restructure your organizational system. Delegate more. Don’t be careless but try to care less. Allow non-mission-critical projects or parts of projects to fall behind or even fail. Keep management informed of those priority choices. “Sure I can take that on, but we are well past peak capacity in terms of workload, so which would you rather I put on the back burner, project B, Project C, or Project D.” In fact, better yet, rather than posing questions to management, I just inform them what I’m going to do. “Yes, my team will take that on, but we’re going to have to put project C on a slow-burn schedule and leverage the time we spent on Project D because the return on project D isn’t really outputting to the level that makes the amount of effort worthwhile.”

But I will say that I stopped allowing companies to take advantage of my work ethic. For every hour a salaried employee works over 40 (or 37 as the case may be), your hourly rate is driven down (even though you’re not paid by the hour, your time still has value). Bob is teaching his company what he is worth. Bob is worth so much more, but his company will take anything he gives to it. So Bob keeps giving and giving and giving and all the while, the company exploits that to Bob’s detriment.

So Bob should make a plan, start looking for a job, and shore up his finances so that he can afford to take a hit, be laid off or fired or even walk off and quit in a big huff. And Bob should also start leaving earlier, using more sick/vacation time (even if it’s just a few hours), and start prioritizing. Bob will probably not be lying on his deathbed someday wishing he’d worked more and given more to some faceless corporation that doesn’t give two fucks about him. Bob will most likely wish he’d taken more time off and spent more time with his family and whatever other pursuits and interests Bob has that would be so much more fulfilling and rewarding.

I stepped off the corporate ladder for that very reason. It wasn’t worth it to me. I’d rather have a personal life and I’d rather not be an asshole in my personal life because I’m so damn stressed out in my professional life. So I just stopped being Management and stepped down to more of a front-line professional position that requires zero management. I actually make more money and have a tiny fraction of the stress and by far enjoy my job much much more.