Wednesday, August 19, 2009

At a loss

I could use some serious advice, y'all. I'm totally at a loss with my whole work situation. I'm sure, if you've been following my tweets, you know that I'm pretty unhappy with my job right now and have starting looking for something else. Well, being in the homebuilding industry, there's not a whole heck of a lot of opportunities out there right now, but I'm still looking. Even willing to take a pay cut to find something better. But that's beside the point. What I'm really at a loss with is what happened today at work. Here's the story:

I got back to work yesterday from vacation. I had a monitor so I was only in the office half the day and my boss was out the whole day so I didn't see him until today. Well, as usual, he calls me up about 10:30am and wants to see when we can meet to "go over some things". This is a weekly occurrence so I'm not too terribly concerned, but I am like completely overwhelmed with work at the moment so I'm really stressed about that and I know he's going to ask about it all. So I go in his office and he shuts the door. Uh oh. Now what?

He starts the conversation casually, per the usual...asks about vacation...how things are going. Then he starts in on what I've got going on. How do I feel about all this stuff. What can I do about it all. You know. Then he starts saying how he has been sensing that I'm getting frustrated and unhappy and overwhelmed and burnt out. Oh. Have I been that obvious? And he really wants to involve me in other things because I do great work and he values me as an employee and wants to see me grow...not fester. So I tell him that I would love to get involved in other things, but the responsibilities that make up my every day are really weighing me down and take up all my time and I don't have anything left to do anything else. And I don't know what to do about that. I can't not do my every day activities. I mean, I'm just at a loss. He wants me to do more, I want to do more, but I have too much other stuff in the way and no one else to pawn it off on.

Then I also start feeling a little guilty because he was completely right about me being frustrated, unhappy, overwhelmed and burnt out. I'm looking for a new job because of that yet here he is telling me he doesn't want me to go anywhere...he'd rather us work together to make a plan that will free up more of my time to do other things I'd rather be doing.

Ahhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!

The kicker? So they just did this crack-down on internet using while I was out and sent out the report to all the managers about how much time people are spending on the internet and where they're going. Well, apparently, my time on the internet was like double other people's time who have to be on the internet all day as part of their job...AND I have sites like blogs and such. And he didn't even get on to me about it! Just told me to "be more cognizant" about how much time I spend. Really?? Now I feel even more awful! Here I am wasting time being totally unhappy and all he can do is tell me how great I am and how much I mean to the company. Great.

So? What am I supposed to do with this??

1 comment:

Valerie said...

I know you are burnt our right now and you have sooooo much on your plate, but it really seems like he cares and that you do work at a good company.

I was in a meeting yesterday, said I was overwhelmed and stressed...they basically said sorry, suck it up, oh and here's some more work.

It could be worse!

The fact that he didn't even care about the internet usage says a lot! You do great work Julie and you can tell they don't want to lose you!