Expected to fulfil full time workload in part time hours

[Markmyplace13]

Please advise if you can. Our department took over another department within the company 7 months ago with no real plans made to staff the extra workload. Subsequently most of it was given to me and it was agreed my working hours would increase from 22 to 26 hours per week. I am run ragged! I barely have time to take a loo break and never take lunch (although I'm deducted the hour in my salary) simply because the volume of work is so heavy. I do more out of work just to stay on top of things. It is without a doubt a full time role if not more but I'm probably way too conscientious and proud and have persevered for this long.
I spoke to my line manager who was aware there was too much work and she put in a request further up the line to increase my hours to full time and the response back was I need to work 'smarter' within the hours I have and 'people who say they are too busy often are doing too many unnecessary things'. In other words they don't want to find the money within the budget to fund an extra day a week for me. At this managers request I have compiled a list of 'critical' and 'not so critical' tasks that need to be completed and he will go through each one telling me what I need to focus on and what I should 'throw in the bin' (his words). Needless to say the critical list is huge and there is no one else within our tiny team who can do it.
I'm fuming and need some perspective please. I just want to leave and drop them right in it but know that's probably not the answer. I am completely drained. Help!

every time i have met people this has happened to, they have left, exhausted, and the job has then been advertised as at least 2 jobs

i dont know what the solution is, but prioritise yourself, take lunch, leave work unfinished if needs be

I second the approach of taking lunch and leaving on time, with work unfinished if need be.
If you can, log what you are doing and the times you ate doing it, eg 9-10am dealing with overnight emails, 10-12 admin for Project A, 12-1 preparing report for project B, 1-2 unpaid lunch break etc.
Log your time spent on phone calls and make sure you can demonstrate that every paid minute is fully utilised.
If work is unfinished you will have a business case to recruit another person or share the workload.

They usually try this one. They will leave it and see how you get on. If you manage to do the job they will congratulate themselves on having pushed you to be more efficient. Maybe they really don't need you to do the job as well as you are doing. They will only take you seriously if they see with their own eyes that there is a danger of something going wrong or something does go wrong. You could try going back to them in a month and saying I've tried everything and I still can't manage it. If you continue to work through your lunch they will just let you do that.

You need to look for another job.

Threaten to leave and if they don't immediately do anything to address your concerns then just leave. They don't care about you.

Stop working yourself ragged. You need to put your concerns on paper to your boss to get the ball rolling. Make notes at all meetings. They will try and fob you off. Some firms do this knowingly overworking someone until they leave - just counting the savings they are making until you go and then recruit someone full time once you have gone.

Work smarter is just making it sound like your fault. It plainly isn't and you cant carry on like this.

Id the critical list is huge and there is nothing further which can be moved to the non-critical side, could you put timings against each task, showing on average how many hours a week each task takes. Presumably this will add up to way more than 26 hours, in which case you ask them - as management - to make the executive decision about which parts of your role they will remove.

This was me last year. Ended up off sick with extreme anxiety and then resigned after 9 weeks when it became obvious I couldn't go back.

Please take care of yourself because your bosses won't.

Thank you for replying. Really appreciate your advice and perspective. If it was financially viable I would hand in my notice in the morning. I have given so much to this company often to the detriment of time which should have been spent with dd's and feel like I've been slapped in the face. I see the full time staff chatting for ages, faffing about and taking their full lunch breaks and I don't have time to run to the loo!
On your suggestions I'm going to log the timings for each task which will more than demonstrate the need for more support, take lunch starting from tomorrow, perhaps be a little less efficient than usual (this will be hard but prob neccessary) and when things start to build up as they inevitably will let them faff around deciding how to deal with it. Oh and look for another bloomin job!!! Thanks again all.

Socks that's what I'm worried about. Have cried most of the night because I feel so stuck. I know I need to leave but I'm so wiped out I don't know if I have the energy to be on top form for a new job.
What happened after you resigned? Did you get another job or are you not ready? Sorry this happened to you.

Watching thread as I am in exactly the same position. I now seem to have developed cystitis due to holding my wee until i have time to go.

I have seven days' annual leave to use before the end of March, which I dare not take due to work getting behind. I'll lose these. I often work half an hour over at each end of the day too

Like you OP, I cannot leave for financial reasons.

If I come up with any ideas I'll come back and post.

I am SAHM now. My notice period only expired on 5th December, so I haven't been out of work for long. We have 3 kids, 7,5 and 2 and a half renovated house so there is more than enough to keep me busy here.

Mental health wise, I am taking citalopram and having counselling, which is slowly working, although I still have bad days when I can do nothing but cry and worry about things I have no control over.

I'm hoping to return to work next year when my youngest starts preschool, but I don't know if I will feel able to go back to my previous career, although I'm hoping to stay in the same industry in a less pressured role, if such a thing exists. I'm starting to put feelers out with people to see about freelance work, which luckily is very prevalent in engineering, so that may also be a possibility. I am not well enough right now though, I am looking at next January really I think.

We are hard up now without my salary, but scraping by and we will be OK in the short term. I spend so much less now I'm not in work!

This is rubbish. Completely rubbish. Holding in wee is going to do you no good whatsoever.

I always ask this, but are you in a union or could up join one?

Secondly, I think there are online time sheet proformas that might help. What might also be useful for your "logging" is a document sharing app called "quip". It's free and can be used simultaneously on desktop, laptop, tablet or phone. I used it when we kept time sheets at work (am a teacher).

thenightsky book your holiday - you have actually earnt this holiday! Speak to manager, line manager, Cheif Exec, whoever. You should not be under the position where you can't take off time owed because of poor organisation or staffing on the company's part.

It's very dangerous ground when you start working through lunch and staying late every day. Nothing wrong with a bit of give and take but this sounds like it's all take.

Hate to say it, but I'm sure they are waiting for you to resign so they can employ a full timer.

I would start looking for something else. Make sure you book the morning off and come in to work in your interview suit. A colleague did this when he was angling for a pay rise. it worked too!

Feel for you all, so tough. Was made redundant whilst on mat leave and offered the 'perfect' pt job. Expected to produce much higher output than hours allowed without adequate training. Ended up leaving after 8 weeks, jobless but with redundancy as they made it clear I wasn't up to the role rather than expectations being too high.

If you're in a secure role, ie not temp contract, been there two years, I would wage a war on HR and your line manager.

Agree priorities
Work your hours efficiently and no more, logging what doing and how long it takes
If feel pressured to work unwanted overtime log and complain to line manager and HR.
Push your line manager for solutions, demand regular meetings to discuss how it's going, complain to HR if they are cancelled.

They have a duty of care for your health and it is the business responsibility to ensure your workload is reasonable.

I feel for you. Shortly after I left an old job, I heard that my replacement spent much of the time weeping in the loos. Last I heard, the management had had to go out and get a temp to help the replacement, but even with two people doing my old job, things were not going well at all. So utterly short-sighted. If they'd given me a temp and started treating me with some respect, I'd have stayed. I have to say, though, although it took me years to make my mind up to leave, I had no regrets at all once I did it. Life became so much more relaxed. It's not good for your health to be so stressed at work.

Op, what type of job is this? Is it a support role?

I find that management have no idea of workloads because they've never done the job. Find myself saying, "Well, it does take a bit longer than five miinutes to do X, Y, Z........".

I had to leave my job which was like this and I changed industries - I now get a lunch break except on particularly busy weeks. I can't see any other solution for you unless you feel able to work to rule.

We hear you. I resigned from a job that paid £8.50 an hour, breaks unpaid, and that was impossible in the hours, a full-timer having resigned and not been replaced and her jobs shared out between the rest of us. They advertised my replacement full time at £27K. She lasted six weeks. They rang me up at my new job offering me £9.50 an hour with none of the shit parts of the job. I took the most enormous pleasure in turning them down.

I would take a different approach re the 'critical list'. Start with your list of hours (break included) and write a list of tasks that you can do within the hours. Send a list to your manager of all the tasks that don't fit into the hours. Do your job and leave on time. Fuck 'em.

[I may say that I worked the equivalent of an extra day last week - so I'm the last person to be able to help you! It's got to stop].

Please look after yourself. Your employers are not and will not. As someone once said, the cemeteries are full of indispensable people!

Definitely take your lunch break, go to the toilet when you have to, work your set hours and then go home; do not take any work home. Ask your line manager to prioritise the critical work and work through the list in the (paid) hours you have. You'll probably stress about what isn't being done but it is better than slogging for more hours - you can spend that time updating your CV and looking for another job.

I have a close friend in almost the same position except she is already working full time. She handed her notice in two weeks ago, the boss refused to accept it so they talked. Friend put in a list of demands which included going down to four days a week, less work and no work from another office of the same company. She has the boss over a barrel as the company would need to employ two people to replace friend. Haven't heard an update yet but expect there will be some haggling that goes on and if it isn't to friend's liking she is happy to walk. She is lucky to be in a financial position where she can do that and not have to worry about having another job lined up straight away.

Love wobble's idea of booking a morning off and coming in wearing your interview suit!

This seems fairly common practice then which is just not on. When I looked at the extra I would be earning and feeling stupidly confident that the extra hours would be agreed because it really is a no brainer I realised we could really do with that extra money rather than scraping along and being super stressed with fitting the workload into shorter hours.
So I need a full time job really in a role that has been well thought out but I feel too worn down to even consider an application form. Don't you have to be feeling strong to go after a good job and impress enough to get it? I have lost myself!
Socks it sounds like you have enough on with your little ones but you have a good plan for next year. It's the pits that you were caused such distress.
Thenightsky I've had 3 urinary tract infections in past year! Please please take your holiday owed! Or ask for renumeration for the days you haven't used but really you could probably do with the rest.
Wobble it's a coordinating role but has ended up being the dump everything on role and yes management have no idea of the work that goes into each task and don't really care.
Lots of good ideas on this thread. I'm really going to use them and stand up for myself and ladies, I took my first lunch break in 3 years today thanks to you. Thank you!!!

Go you, yay for taking a lunch break!! Small steps MarkMy, but big steps.

Just an example of what I got up to - mid May last year my youngest child started to throw up about 11pm. DH is self employed so no chance of him not being able to work as no work = no pay, and pissing off a client. I had a full blown panic attack at the thought of not being able to go to work as my workload was spiralling out of control at that point. So I cleared up the sick, changed the beds, popped DD2 into bed with her father and went to work. At 3am. Worked until about 11am, went home and DH went to work, leaving me with a nicely rested and unwilling to nap 1yo. I thought this was a normal way to solve the problem of a sick child, and indeed did it three or four times. The fact that it left me exhausted and unable to be a decent Mum to the kids, I just ignored that.

Summer holidays - I just about managed 1 full week off, and the odd few days here and there.

I staggered on until about the middle of October when I had a full on breakdown, I suppose. I walked out of the office one lunchtime after a particularly horrid meeting with my boss when he basically blamed me for my workload as I "couldn't do overtime due to childcare committments". Came out of that meeting to an email sacking the company as I hadn't done some work in a timely fashion and literally just walked out. I have never been back in that office since.

You need to:
List all the jobs that are needed each week.
Go to your manager and ask them which order they would like you to do them in. Do them in that order.
Take your lunch.
Leave on time
Do no extra work out of hours.
The next week - make the list again and ask your manager which order they would like you to do them in.
Rinse and repeat.

If asked, you tell them that as they have given you enough work for two people, either they get half the job done or employ another person. As you are not a wizard and can not create time out of nowhere. Push it back to them as it is their problem, not yours.

This seems to be a bit of a common problem nowadays.

At least full time will give you much more bargaining power (whether you decide to stay or go to another company).