People who follow my life closely – okay, there aren’t any of you. My various doper pals (perhaps a few?) have perhaps read one or another of the comments I’ve made over the last few months about my feeling overwhelmed at work. We (i.e., the company, meaning, in day-to-day-terms, me) started up eight new magazine titles over the course of about three months, and just when all of that yahoo started dying down, not one but two of my underlings quit. These were the two people I was forseeing doing most of the editing of these titles and about 3/4 of the pre-existing ones. I lived through April and May, which were about interviewing possible candidates and working ahead as far as we could to live through the departure of these two. One new person started a month ago, and although she’s enthusiastic and a fast learner, she’s still a trainee. The other started yesterday. Usually new hires spend about two weeks learning the general stuff that’s happening with someone else before I take them on to start teaching them the particulars of my stuff. It turns out that the person who trained new hire #1 did such a shitty job that my boss wants me to do all of the training of new hire #2. Can’t you just talk to the person who did a shitty job and have them do a better job? No – either you’re naturally a good trainer, or you’re not. :eek: Well, isn’t this yet another example of rewarding this woman for her incompetence? (She can’t manage her time worth a damn and is periodically taken out of the rotation for routine jobs that everyone else has to do because she’s so far behind.) Well, everyone else is rewarded for their incompetence, so why not her? 
Okay.
Yesterday morning, I came in and wrote up a little to-do list for my boss. I started with the stuff that’s legitimately in my job description, and laid it all out – I have to do X every day, it takes about an hour; I have to do Y twice a week, it takes six to eight hours a time; I have to do Z four to five times a week, two hours a time, etc. It came to 34 to 42 hours a week (3 to 5 of which I do at home). Plus there’s two other jobs that are once a month, one takes about 40 hours, the other takes about 5. Plus there’s a fun little job that is only four times a year, 8-10 hours a shot. Then I gave my estimates for ongoing, but short-term jobs – how much time it will take to train these two, in addition to reviewing their work (which is a legitimate part of my job). Then I made a list of the stuff that I haven’t had a chance to do because I’ve been so effin’ backed up for the last six months – some of which is fairly urgent.
So I put this all together and emailed it to my boss.
Her response (and I quote): “Nice job of overwhelming me!”
Her two specific suggestions were that we check old time logs to see how long these things actually take me, because obviously they can’t possibly take as long as I think they do – yeah, like I’ve got time to fill out an effin’ spread sheet on this for you – and that we assign the fun little job that takes 10 hours, 4 times a year, and give that to someone else.
Sheesh.
That’s all I have to say. Sheesh.
