To just let my boss deal with this

[StrawberryCrunch]

I am so stressed at the moment.

Work is ridiculously busy, I currently have nearly 500 emails in my inbox that are all expecting detailed responses asap, piles of post and files around my desk and phone calls coming in one after the other.

I have had enough. I have been in and out of hospital over the past few days finding out whether my pregnancy is going to continue or not (possible missed miscarriage). I now have to wait two weeks to find out if it has or not.

A client has called this morning very angry saying they are going to be in the office this morning and demanding to see me.

AIBU to say my boss will have to see them? I am ready to walk out at the moment, am on the verge of tears and will likely end up telling this person to go and fuck themselves.

Not very professional of course but I don't know what to do with myself at the moment, my head is a complete mess from stress at work and the stress of the pregnancy issues.

Print off all the emails is this a legal thing or are you a time traveller from the 90s?

Sometimes you don't have a choice. You have emails coming in every 5 minutes but then post also coming in the mail. If you just deal with emails you end up never getting through your physical post. So you print them off and deal with everything together in the order it came in.

I suspected legal on reading this.

Op, you won't ever catch up. You'll just end up running yourself into the ground and ultimately fail anyway (missing some things important and get blamed, ruin your mental health, or a mix of it).

I've been where you are.

The cavalry isn't coming, and the only power you have right now is to protect yourself.

Go to your GP. Raise the red flag at work, you cannot out run this, and if you try for a while yet.. no one will think "she's amazing, she saved the day".. no one is paying attention, you're just covering up the workload problem.

I doubt you'll listen.. these companies take on ultra organised, high achievers and break them... I've done it, at my own cost... Please listen to what I've written here.

I've thought for a while that I desperately want another job but it's all I've ever done since leaving education, the office is right by my house so really convenient and pay is much better than I'd get elsewhere so I feel sort of trapped.

Although at the moment I'm really struggling to care about anything other than this pregnancy issue hence feeling like I could just up and walk out any minute.

I also guessed solicitors from your post OP. I left a horribly stressful solicitor job last year and honestly can say I have never looked back. The impact on my health and well being was horrific. I didn’t realise until s few months later how bad it had been. No job is worth it imo.
Can you speak to hr or your boss. Cover yourself with follow up emails and keep copies. No one can deal with that volume of work and if you slip up you will be blamed for that. The sra also blame the overwhelmed employee not the crappy employers with unreasonable systems of work. I read the Law Society gazette and the disciplinary reports and it appalls me how overworked people clearly struggling are treated.

My immediate advice - use the 2-min rule - any email that can be replied to properly within 2 mins, do 20 of them. Keep a tally, be strict and, at the end of the 20 emails, get up and make a cup of tea.

Then, come back and sort through post. Anything that can be done within 2 mins, do them. Max of 20.

Then do 5 bigger replies - emails that aren’t horrendously awful but need longer than 2 mins.

You get my drift - break it into chunks and get up out of your chair between each section. You’ll have cleared nearly 50 things by the end of today.

Longer term - you must explain the situation to your male boss. Can you even work from home in the job you do? Or are there files in the office you need access to?

Can you even work from home in the job you do? Or are there files in the office you need access to?

They don't offer home working. I'd need access to our computer system in order to work and the paper files in the office. I also have to answer the phone regularly too.

Please remember that pregnancy and miscarriage are protected characteristics, if you need time off you can and should take it.

It's not your fault that your office is understaffed and its not your responsibility to fix it.

The problem with suggestions like the two minutes rule, take a break, manage your work methods... All of it assumes the employee can control this if only they had the right approach.

My experience of dealing with a similar setup was that a twenty minutes block would be interrupted by two calls. The an important "department all hands" conf call for 30 mins. Then a client meeting.

Honestly, sometimes employees , no Matter how competent they are, are simply over whelmed.

I got to the point where I was just so over worked, trying to keep so many stakeholders happy, that I was working 100+ hrs week for weeks, I am mega organised and skilled. Exceptional prioritisation and expectation management skills.

Yet my employers response to this toxic mess was for HR to send us a link to a recorded well being webinar. Or offer a stress management course. Which, if I took a fucking half day to attend, would simply put me a half day behind & probably get interrupted 3 times by urgent calls anyway. HR admin staff, the point of contact for escalation, barely understand what we do, and have never worked at similar pressure levels, and even if they did, have no control about our workload or operations.

Put bluntly: sometimes you cannot optimise your way out of workloads like the op's. Sometimes you just need to recognise that you need to protect yourself and get out.

Also to add , suggestions that are common like can't you catch-up in evenings.. work on the train instead while commuting home.. and so on.. it simply exacerbates the problem. Why are employees so over worked that we think it's ok to suggest
doing extra working from homeif you wre up at 6, did 12hrs in office without lunch, another hour to home.. you end up seeing partner and kids for 30min while shoving in food, then logging back on at 9pm?!
I did this as the norm, and we wonder why families are so fractured. Why elderly relatives fend for themselves. Why volunteering in the community isn't popular. Why people are on so many depression drugs.

This isn't a working life I think is sustainable, and unfortunately the time we recognise it seems to be when the employee has truly already been broken down.

They don't offer home working. I'd need access to our computer system in order to work and the paper files in the office. I also have to answer the phone regularly too.

Get signed off.

Dennis, yes I've done all that extra working before. I haven't done for a long time. I leave at 5pm now. Especially at the moment when I'm ready to run home in tears by 5. Can't stay another minute.

Firstly, if you feel comfortable to do so, talk to either your boss or HR. Explain about your hospital and go home.

Id then self cert for 5 days, and in the meantime, go to your gp, to get signed off.

Your health and well being come first.
Basically your employers know they have a high volume workload but have made no provision for this, or for the fact that during the summer they will have even less people in the office and on top of that any consideration or provision or backup plan for sickness or emergency. Supposing you'd had a car accident. There would be no choice.
This is down to them cheeseparing and it's affecting the service they offer their clients so its doubly down to them.
They now need to take action and get some temporary help in.
Its their problem. Please don't let their lack of foresight permanently affect your health and well being

Please put yourself first, your health is more important than your job. Speak to your manager in confidence - doesn't matter that he's a man, presumably he has a mother/wife/sister/girlfriend and will be able to empathise with your situation.
Wishing you all the best with your pregnancy, I sincerely hope you get good news.

Speak to your boss so that they’re aware of the pregnancy and then get a note from the GP.

The office sounds toxic (the organisation, not the people) and no amount of optimising your working time or tinkering around with emails is going to resolve it. So focus on your health for now. Good luck with everything x

*Print off all the emails is this a legal thing or are you a time traveller from the 90s?

Sometimes you don't have a choice. You have emails coming in every 5 minutes but then post also coming in the mail. If you just deal with emails you end up never getting through your physical post. So you print them off and deal with everything together in the order it came in.*
Yup, exactly the same thing for medical secretaries. People email and then 'phone up 5 mins later to see if you've got their email and what the answer is. If you don't print them off, you can't keep track (plus, we have to file their emails & our replies in their notes as they are part of their medical records).

Yes MrsJoyful I hate that 'i sent an email 5 mins ago, have you received it?'.

Despite me having an automatic reply on saying I won't be able to reply instantly to emails received etc. Etc.

Add that to the calls and the people who thinks its okay to just turn up at the office and expect to see you. Drives me mad. You wouldn't just turn up at your GPs surgery and expect to be seen, why on earth would you think it's acceptable to do to your solicitor?

Gosh OP, you sound utterly overwhelmed, understandably. You must be so so anxious about your possible miscarriage. I have been in that position of the awful two-week wait and it is the absolute worst thing in the world.

One thing my mum always says is “don’t make big decisions when you’re upset” and I think that’s very good advice. For that reason, please don’t run out on your job until you feel better, have got through this few weeks and are able to properly think about whether or not it is the right job for you and what you may want to do instead.

If you are at the point of feeling like you “can’t stay another minute” and don’t think you can bear it, this is a pretty good indicator that you may not be well enough to work at the moment and should maybe be signed off.

I agree with the comments that you should be speaking to your (Boss’s) boss. That is what they are there for. If either one of these situations was happening for you alone, I’d still say that. It is their responsibility to supervise your workload, this includes OVERwork as much as underwork. Also, how can they look after your well-being if you have not explained this major life event that is happening for you. I hope that if you explained about your pregnancy/ possible miscarriage, they’d be very supportive.

Finally, if you do decide to stay at work (and I understand not wanting to go off because it’ll all build up in your absence) the advice about just doing one thing at a time is the way to go. Just one thing. And keep telling yourself “I can only do what I can do.”

I really hope it goes well for you.

How are you today?

Very stressed at work again today emails up to nearly 600 and just can't get to any of them.

Feel generally horrible as well as I still feel pregnant. Still have horrible nausea and a bit of vomitting today, cramping and tiredness. The nurse said that can still happen though sometimes even if I have had a missed miscarriage so not getting hopes up. Would just rather feel normal though if I have!

Please speak to your manager. Failing that having time off sick will allow you to mentally and physically rest

Get. Signed. Off.

Health is more important than any of this other bullshit.

Thanks all. I have my next hospital appointment this week so going to try and make a Dr's appointment.