Working late to finish a project at work - AIBU

[notagainnn]

I'm working on a project for our client. The client was late in giving us the documents needed to start on the project, so instead of 2 months to work on it I have a week. One of the pieces of work I received to work on is in really bad shape and requires a lot more time and effort than was expected. As a result, I'm falling behind on my deadlines.

I was supposed to finish it by end of day today, so it could go to senior management for our internal review tomorrow morning. I worked until 8pm and I'm still not even half-way through. I also noticed when working on it this evening that it's incomplete and we need to go back to the client to get some more documents for it (which is going to put us even further behind, and I feel guilty for not noticing it earlier and flagging it).

In the past, I would have worked until midnight and then got up at 5am to get it done for internal review. But, I have been off sick recently due to stress and anxiety and I have to be more strict with myself with taking breaks and establishing boundaries. My line manager isn't involved in this project, but I know would be annoyed at me for working late.

I'm feeling really stressed and anxious about it. I don't know whether to get up early tomorrow morning to do as much as I can before 9am, or whether to somehow start the difficult conversation with the project manager that I need more time?

I have also just finished my gradual return to work plan, and feel like I've dived right in at the deep end as September is our busiest month

It’s hard to vote YABU/YANBU based on your Op what option denotes what?

I went with YABU to care so much
the client handed it in late! They didn’t give you enough time. YABU to be stressed and anxious you’ve don’t what you can with what you had

don’t kill your self to get the end results here when the client didn’t have the decency to get you the information on time

How annoying (and darn typical).

If you, I'd put 2 hours aside first thing tomorrow to review.

Go through it and create an index.

Create a one page overview.

"We've received
X
Y
Z

From client.

"we need
A
B
C
D
E

in full to proceed"

Definity go to the project manager. I have been the exact same as you in the past and had a meltdown and decided enough was enough.
Since 'experimenting' with telling people stuff isnt going to be ready on time, or adding extra time onto how long i estimated something would take to complete, i've found that it gets surprisingly easier.
Ultimately, the telling off you MIGHT get will fade, but staying up all night to not even maybe finish it is a vile feeling. Your line manager has your back it sounds like, you can absolutely down tools here.

I don't know what your work/ sector is like so I say this with kindness, but with just those facts it reads to me as though the time to flag this was days and weeks ago. If the client is 7 weeks late in giving you something for a 2 month project, then youve known for 7 weeks that this was undeliverable, and should have been communicating that and setting expectations accordingly, with both the client and SMT/SLT. Are there not processes and contracts for later delivery?

Start the conversation, surely the client must understand you can be 7 weeks late with the information and expect the same deadline. Frankly if I were the client and that actually happened I would think I was overpaying or being lied to about how long things take!

I've learnt to really care much less about things like this. I used to work late to get things delivered to deadlines and you really never got any thanks or appreciation for it. Much better to let your project lead know asap how late it is that you received the content and how incomplete it is. You can only do what you can in the time available - not slog your guts out trying to finish it.

Have you communicated to senior management already? I have no problem with people missing deadlines so long as they communicate early and frequently.

I don't interact with the client myself, it's above me and they have told the client all of this, but at the end of the day the work still sits with me.

I received the work this morning, but as I've gone through it today I've noticed things that are missing/need changing - more than there should be

Send an email now. Say you’ve worked on the project till 8pm but it still needs a lot of attention. Then set your alarm for your normal waking time. Don’t get up early.

This - but I'd also add the dates the info was requested and the dates it was received, plus for new information required an ETA on completion after you have the information (so for example 2 working days after data x has been provided).

Wait i've just re read,so it was given to you late and missing bits?? Nah you shouldnt feel bad at all, get yourself to bed and dont log in early tomorrow either.
May i ask who/why it was agreed it would still be due by COP today even though you should have had two months? That deadline should have been extended. I used to just nod and agree i could get it done so if thats you too, take this as a nudge to next time say look, i need more time (and then overestimate how much time you need!)

So the documents you needed from the client arrived seven weeks after they were supposed to? At that point (or at regular intervals during those seven weeks) the person managing the relationship with the client should have said, very sorry but we are no longer in a position to meet the proposed timeline. If we receive what we need by X, we can deliver by Y. If we don’t, we can’t. This should have been revisited every time there was a conversation with the client. It should never have been allowed to get to the point where you were trying to squeeze two months’ worth of work into one week. You need to have a really honest conversation with your manager about how this happened, and document the factors that contributed to this, and agree a plan to prevent it from happening again. Did you underestimate the amount of time you needed? Did you misunderstand the process or the requirements? Did you feel you wouldn’t be supported if you flagged the issue?

There is absolutely no point in working silly hours at this stage to try and recover the situation. Even if you do manage to get the work done, the quality will surely be awful. Take a step back, speak up about the situation and get help in putting a realistic plan in place for recovering it.

I came on to say, also with kindness, roughly what @SavingsThreads said. You and/or your project manager (depending on the division of responsibility in your organisation) should have been flagging/escalating this weeks ago and managing the client's expectations accordingly. I'm not quite sure what your AIBU is - you certainly shouldn't be working all night to compensate for the extreme lateness of your client but I think you have to ask wider questions about why you are in this position at all.

Depends on your role, sector and how much you get paid. I'ts common in my industry but I work across APAC

I massively cross posted with you there OP but I still think you need to be asking yourself how you've ended up in this position because it's certainly not a reasonable situation. Is it that your manager is unsupportive, is your PM incompetent, is this an organisational level issue and is there any prospect of that changing? Etc etc.

So, re-reading, it sounds as though the discussions with the client were going on over your head, and you weren’t listened to when you flagged internally that you didn’t have what you needed. You need to make more noise, sooner. Every single meeting, every time you provide an update “I need to raise that I’m blocked on this because I haven’t received X, so won’t be able to meet the deadline”. Tell the project manager it needs to go on the RAID log and be escalated appropriately. If there’s no RAID log, escalate through your line management that there is no mechanism for managing project risks, and that this is in itself a risk. You need to make it harder for the PM to ignore you than it is for them to manage the client properly. And don’t feel bad about it- that’s their job.

I've just reread my message and I think it sounds like I was blaming you, which was not at all my intention. What I'm trying to say is, is this a one-off fuck up, will lessons be learned, or is this a result of deeply embedded dysfunction in your organisation. If the latter, I'd be thinking about looking around for other options because it's not worth sacrificing your mental health and well-being in an environment that isn't valuing you.

Ah that's different then OP, sorry I assumed. There's clearly nothing you could have done so I wouldn't consider the deadline even relevant at this point. I'd sent a progress update tomorrow to the client/PM/SMT depending on what's appropriate, outlining what else is needed and the new time scales. Treat it as a given, as anything else would be unreasonable.

I wasn't around to flag it earlier as I was off sick, then I returned on reduced hours and responsibility. I've only started actually working on this project this week

“But, I have been off sick recently due to stress and anxiety and I have to be more strict with myself with taking breaks and establishing boundaries.”

You need to make the right decision here, and that means learning from your recent experience.

I think that going all out and working through the night can be a valid option. But not for you. Here you have your opportunity to establish those boundaries. Put the work aside, go to bed.

Well then it's not doable. Shut down your laptop and update your PM tomorrow.

It sounds like your management are failing in their duty of care to you as an employee.

This is what I was going to say. It's insane that you are trying to deliver something in a week that was planned to take 2 months. You aren't in the wrong not to work all hours to do it, but you've done yourself no favours. You'll need to be honest with the senior team and let one of them deal with the client if necessary to say that the project isn't deliverable on time as they didn't facilitate its progress.

How so?
The company have supported a phased return to work after stress absence, and OP herself said her own line manager would be annoyed at her for working late.

She has to take personal responsibility for a duty of care to herself. Nothing suggests that she can’t say (at 09:00 tomorrow) “these are the reasons this can’t be completed, given xyz input by x date, a delivery of y date would be realistic.”