My line manager is on vacation and I had agreed to cover some of the meetings that were scheduled for the two weeks that she is gone. Unfortunately, my workload is higher than usual, which was unexpected. Several of the meetings I had agreed to cover last at least half a day. In the meantime, my own work is piling up. Some of these meeting are about staff schedules and I am worried that things will really go awry in the department if I don't sit in on these, but I am also under quite a bit of pressure to finish some urgent tasks, some of which have customer deadlines coming up soon and could result in fines if not finished in time.
I am leaning towards finishing my own tasks first, but I also feel conflicted on what I should do and could really use some input. What is the right thing to do in these situations?
YABU: Supervisor meetings come first as they affect the entire department
YANBU: You were hired to prioritize the tasks in your job description