Unreasonable urgent work requests AIBU?

[Biffkipandchip]

I have a reasonably nice, moderately paid job for a large organisation. It's fairly technical and I work part time.

There are only 3 people who do this sort of work amongst a few thousand staff, and in the last year our workload has gone a bit crazy. Crazy in so much as we are booked up for a few months, however people keep requesting work and expecting us to drop everything and help them. They are also massively patronising about how easy they think my job is and nothing I do should apparently take more than 5 minutes.

I had a pretty pissy phone call followed by an email this week where once again they wanted something urgently for next week, which would take me only 2 minutes (I wish). I explained it wasn't possible as we have a few big deadlines next week that the colleague really should be in the know about, but they persisted to the point where I have no choice but to work over the weekend unpaid again. They are willing to pay to outsource for a large quantity of stationary supplies (several hundred) but apparently can't afford to outsource the bit they need from me.

I've just spent about 4 hours on their work and wondering if I should send it to them right now so they understand that their demands put me in the position of working until 1am? Would they even give a shit?

I've done this before to meet an urgent request and the colleague had the cheek to ask me if I had nothing better to do at 3am

Feel your pain. Not n your field but what I do has a similarly distinct skill set and people (not the majority I've encountered, tbf) can have similarly unrealistic expectations. I work for myself now, so one of my selling points is my ability to meet tight deadlines, but I set them myself, and no way should you be in this position as an employee.

Could you send out an email to all (agreed by your line manager), ostensibly a reminder of the procedure for getting work done by you, including a general reminder of turnaround times - along the lines of 'We generally need X days'/weeks' notice of a project and in most cases X days/weeks to get it done. As we have been in great demand recently, this may take longer in some instances. We will let you know after review how long we expect it to take.' (When I was an employee we did this as a subtle way of clarifying issues that were coming up with people's 'use' of us). Then you can always refer them to the email. If that doesn't work, your manager or someone higher up needs to reinforce your boundaries. Agree with Di11y that you need a system where anyone who thinks they take priority over existing projects needs to go through your boss.

I was in a similar position though completely different line of work but the following might help...
I introduced a "work request form" so before we worked on anyone's project the request had been signed off by the project manager, it then came to me as the team manager and I allocated the job to someone in my team, or did it myself if we were busy.
Despite my line manager being skeptical about "just adding more paperwork for everyone" it really helped. It forced people to think about what they needed, stopped someone calling on a member of my team they perceived as "soft", I was able to show my line manager when we needed an extra person as I was having to bill more and more hours to projects than doing my own job.

Ahh I thought design straight away too. I work in in-house comms and we're always having documents that should have been with us weeks ago land with ridiculously short turn arounds, so by the time it's been through our sign off process there's even less time for design. We've stopped doing most of the design ourselves now and started saying they have to pay one of our freelancers - who also end up working stupid hours but at least it's paid and on their terms.

Agree with having your manager involved and possibly with all requests going via them. And the project or whatever should have have design time/budget costed in - so if that was added up then there should be budget for extra support.

We had this at a firm I worked for as a group pa. They ended up training all the pa's in the basic graphics used most (cvs and submissions/fee proposals) and the graphics dept were used for the fancier stuff (proper marketing stuff). Is that an option? It would work out cheaper for the firm.

Did you email it at 3am? Years ago when I was working for a company where I was the only one doing a particular job, my boss called me in to his office 45 mins after my official leaving time and asked me to do something immediately. He didn’t explain it well. He was French and despite it having been easier to explain it in French, he did it in English and wasn’t clear. So I gave him the information but omitted a certain section.

The next day, he was furious because in his opinion I’d done the bare minimum. The irony is that it took me longer because I started with a complete spreadsheet and omitted the stuff I understood he didn’t want. I then went on to explain to him he’d asked me to do this after hours and how I had worked. He looked at me confused. He didn’t even know my contracted hours. I never did overtime again and left a few months later. By the time I left, my job was working like clockwork as it was a newly formed role and I’d done all of the donkey work setting it up. Then the company didn’t bother to replace me. Just expected the customers services team and a secretary to do some of the admin and the IT department to do the rest. 🙄

Some companies are rubbish. From what I see out there, overtime seems to be the norm. It definitely was when I worked. The last company I worked for used to shut on time so I could only work my hours. I was really confused at first.

My point is the more you give, the more is expected of you. It sounds as if they need more people. I hope you can make them see this.

What @TheMagnificentEthel suggested is brilliant.

Put it back in their laps, don't accept responsibility for it.

It's the same with graphic design where I work. My friend who works in that area was suffering in a similar way, and here's what worked for her

• do a complete stop off unpaid overtime
• make your massager aware just how much you've been doing in your own time and tell them you're stopping because it's bad for your health, unsustainable and is only a sticking plaster on the real problem which is lack of resource
• tell the manager you want them to implement a work planner, whereby teams have to book your time in advance. Make this as visible as possible.
• build in time for last minute rush jobs, but teams have to get your managers satirical before getting a "rush slot"
• put together a guide as to how long common jobs take (be realistic, don't be tempted to underestimate the time need). Refer to this effect single time someone asks you to fir a job in. If there's not a slot big enough four their job, they need to negotiate the time with your manager
• fruit the last minute chancers, challenge them as to why it's last minute. Theo tell you it's because outdid other priorities - that's your chance to point out you're in the same boat.
• if a job isn't ready for you, tell the team they need to take it back. In my workplace folk would send a document to design, then continue to take text changes which threw all the graphic work out. Just say no to this - if its not signed off, you don't touch it.

Basically, she insisted that her manager actually manage the work, acting as a gatekeeper, and she was a bit more ballsy with the chancers, but had hard facts (eg the timed job sheets) to back her up

Good luck!

but they persisted to the point where I have no choice but to work over the weekend unpaid again.

You do have a choice, and that word is no. It is difficult to say no as no one wants to be thought of (at work) as uncooperative or unhelpful but you must start to get used to doing this. As a pp said, the more you work in your own time, the more you will be expected to do it in the future. You'll hear 'You coped in the past, why can't you cope now?'

As for pissy phone calls, you need a stock paragraph to trot out. Mine is as follows: 'I don't appreciate the tone you are speaking to me with. I have been polite and professional to you and I expect to be treated the same in return. If you are not able to use a respectful tone with me then I will terminate this phone call.' If they are pissy to you after you say that, you simply say 'Please phone back when you can be respectful' and put the phone down.

Oh dear, lots of typos! Hopefully it still makes sense!

As a PP has mentioned, a request system works wonders. Ours has been made on sharepoint, so it automatically emails people when needed.

EG -
When a new request comes into me for triage it emails me.
When we’ve set a delivery date for the task, it emails the requestor.

Speak to your line manager about overtime for such 'urgent situations' but I'd push for time and a half at least!

I’ve ended up being a bit of a gatekeeper for the design team, and tell everyone I need six weeks to do something new, with design, approvals etc. I have to confess I occasionally rush stuff through, but our design is outsourced and there are quite a lot of them.

Interesting to hear the process from Ethel though, I must admit I’d love to see what they actually do. I might ask if I can go and visit for a day. When we’re not so busy...🙄

But yes, get your boss to be gate keeper. My boss manages our workload and has a fit when I blithely say oh yes, I can help then am overworked. I don’t do 3am though.

Trouble is, everyone with MS paint thinks they are a designer

I have been known to suggest (in jest) to clients for them to stick to doing their job, and I’ll get on with mine 😂

Thanks all, a lot of good advice on Here. I didn't email as I thought I might type something I'd regret. Will contemplate what to say today.

Was considering something like

Dear Colleague,

Following our chat and email last week, I can see that waiting for the work isn't an option for you and neither is paying for an external designer.

As I explained we have x deadline to meet for this week, so are at capacity with such a limited staff pool.

The work requested takes more than 2 minutes to complete as you suggested.

As a gesture of goodwill I have spent 4 hours of my weekend in order to meet your deadline. Unfortunately having to do this is becoming more common for our overstretched department, but this will save you money and provide the professional standard of document that is in keeping with the organisation.

Kind regards

Biffkipandchip

I probably won't send that actually, but that's what I feel like sending

Don't answer the phone or any emails outside of your contracted hours.

Put an 'out of hours' message on your email stating what your working hours are.

And then go and talk to your line manager about what's being asked/expected of you.

But don't do the work! It will make no difference to the requester that you sent it at 3 or 4 or 5am, because as far as they are concerned, they've got what they wanted!

And the more you do this, the more it will be expected.

Send that email to your line manager for them to send on it matey and his line manager.

Do not give up any of your weekend again.

No is a valid and appropriate response

The other thing to suggest is that if your job will only take 2mins, then for them to come and do it themselves.

It’s rude, presumptuous and disrespectful

I think it's important that you do flag to the requester that you worked over the weekend. Otherwise they'll be thinking "Biff" pissed and moaned about this but it obviously wasn't that time consuming because I have it first thing Monday morning."
Not realising that you spent 4 hours of your weekend doing it.

Incidentally I think you shouldn't be working weekends
Fuck that shit

I have completed your urgent project. Before I send it across to you please furnish the email address so that I can send you the invoice for the 4 hours overtime that I had to put in.

Do these people genuinely believe they're asking for a 2 minute job or are they deliberately taking the piss? I ask because it might be worth pushing back on that in particular, eg. "this is a 4 hour job and it's 4.30pm on a Friday. Are you really expecting me to give up my Friday night for this?" I wonder if some of them honestly haven't got a clue.

Also I don't know if this works for design but when I was in a support role I used to give people the option of doing a shit job now (eg reworking a previous piece of work, pulling a budget figure out of my arse that would have to be revisited later in the project, etc) or doing it properly but in a couple of days. Sometimes they actually would rather have a shit piece of work now than a perfectly polished thing a day after they needed to get back to their client. It doesn't feel good sending out half arsed work but I did at least get a reputation for being able to meet silly deadlines.

This is a problem for your manager (unless you are in a senior / management position yourself). I manage a team in a very different field but with very similar problems! We come at the end of the project activities so it is always us gating completion and there is huge pressure from clients and project managers. Usually everything has overrun further up the chain so we get lots of things very last minute requiring quick turnaround.

I say no a lot (usually in terms of “this is out capacity, you have asked us to do x, to achieve this deadline we will have to drop y or z, what is the company priority?). It’s not always popular but I see it as my job to protect my team and make sure they are not massively overburdened, and I get paid for making these decisions. If I thought one of them was working till 3am to achieve a deadline I would be horrified and do something about it immediately! This approach has worked in the long term because we have finally got permission to recruit more staff as the work wasn’t getting done. As long as the work happens no one will do anything to ameliorate the situation.

We also have a work request system as pp mentioned so everything comes into the team via management and gets triaged, with the due date being assessed for realism and returned to the requestor if ridiculous (fairly common for us to be asked to complete a task that takes 3 weeks in the next two days!).

If there is no one more senior than you that you can push this up to, you just need to get better at saying no. You absolutely don’t “have to” work at 3am and provided you turn up every day and work hard whilst you’re supposed to be there you don’t owe anybody anything.

Honestly, you need to make them aware you worked unpaid at the weekend, otherwise as a previous poster said all they will see is they emailed you on Friday and got it first thing Monday - so it must only be a 2 minute job and you were just trying it on.

Why haven’t you spoken to your line manager about the extra work requests?

Perhaps write a list of all of the extra work requests, who it’s been requested by, when they wanted the work done by, and how long it’s taken you to complete. This will give you written evidence to show your line manager that it’s impacting your own workload, and that something needs to be done.

The automatic email response is a good idea too, and I’d speak to your line manager about agreeing a timescale for responding to work requests that are outside of your own work load. You could put something like x requests will be responded to within x number of working days and take x number of days/hours to complete, and any urgent work requests will need to be agreed with senior management as they impact other deadlines...

And I wouldn’t send the work that you’ve done until working hours on Monday morning.

but they persisted to the point where I have no choice but to work over the weekend unpaid again.

Why did you do this?

Does this person have managerial power over you? Could they have fired you for refusing?

If not, why did you do it? Why is it phrased as ‘I had no choice’? I don’t understand, sorry.