Stressed - work 3 days a week but boss is trying to get me to squeeze 5 days worth of work in - anyone else in same situation??

[pinky27]

Hiya, Knew it would be tricky getting all my work done in 3 days but everytime I see my boss or any of the managers they seem to ask me to do more and more - I can't fit it all into 3 days so am ending up working at the weekend or evening - feeling down about it cos wanted to work part-time so I could spend quality time with baby. Is anyone else in the same situation? What should I do? Should I talk to my boss/a manager?? Thanks

Did you previously work fulltime in this role? How long have you been doing three days? If you moved from five to three days a week, was there any agreement about which elements of your role you would give up? Have you spoken to your line manager at all about this?

I can empathise, I work 4 days but so far this week have logged about 45 hours. Problem with my job is that they will scope a project at X and think it is the right size to give me, bit when scope and timelines change I am often left with a much heavier work load and no way to offload it. My boss is aware of it, but neither of us can really figure out how to avoid this.

I'm afraid I just do the extra; when it happens slowly enough that I can see the sandstorm coming, I make my boss aware and give up projects to whoever is free. The problem is that I end up stressed and tired - this Friday night I was still at work at 7pm when DH called and said I had to come home because Ds2 had a fever. raced home, put baby to bed, back on laptop to work until 11pm. Yesterday morning, at doctor's saturday surgery with baby who is pretty poorly, then home to more work and housework, and all he while I was being crabby with toddler who wanted some attention. BUT I would still prefer this to FT, when the evenings and weekends would be the norm rather than the exception.

If you previously worked full time before, how did you propose the work would be done in 3 days rather than 5?

I am having exactly the same problem. I have gone back to a similar job as before but because things had changed a full time person moved to another role and they have given me her role. It is making her feel good that I can't manage it part time but I feel terrible and under so much pressure got emotional at work today. Also I have one person reporting to me and he is currently on two weeks holiday so I am doing his work too. Please help with some really practical tips? I work in an office and my job is a mix of BAU where I have a 48hr turnaround to meet but then I have bigger projects mixed in with this which mean lots of meetings. I am missing some less important deadlines which I never did before this other than that my work is still good. There was no formal or informal proposal of how the work would get done I just said to my boss I want to do 3 days and he said do 3.5 and take the half day as your hols allowance - so this wasn't ideal either. I really don't want to increase my hours but it seems the only way to avoid this stress.

I have found that asking a manager to prioritise can help in this kind of situation.

For this to work you need to be realisitic about the amount of time each task will take to complete and maintain a list of incomplete tasks. Then every time you are given a new task, ask your manager to re-prioritise the list.

That way your manager will make the decisions about what gets done first, he or she will see that you are not forgetting things and finally might actually recognise that you are being given too much work.