Work stress - at breaking point.

[TurtleBeach]

I am at my wits end with work. I love my job, as in my career choice, but the company I work for has interpreted the remit in such a way that it is physically and mentally impossible to do all that is required of me. I should work 35 hours per week, 9-5 Mon-Fri with an hour for lunch. In reality I arrive in the office at 7.30am (having already been emailing, reading documents on the train for 40 minutes) and rarely leave before 7pm. I make a point of taking one lunch break per week for a 30 min gym session but on all the other days, I work straight through. I’m often in back-to-back meetings and end out ducking out to cram a sandwich down my throat whilst sitting on the loo. There’s a real culture of “lunch is for wimps” around here. I continue to email on the train home, usually getting in at 8pm then always do at least 3 hours of work in the evenings. Obviously trying to fit in dinner, family time and a bit of downtime/me-time before I go to bed for it all to start again the next morning. This routine means I rarely get more than 5 hours sleep and I’m constantly shattered and a headache that never ever goes away. I also usually put aside a Saturday morning until lunchtime and a couple of hours on a Sunday evening to keep on top of things. The thing is that even with working all these hours, there is so much of the job that I still can’t fit in. Things are going wrong because I’m not on top of everything in my remit, I have to say no to further projects or initiatives and have got a reputation for being difficult. I know I am prioritising the vital stuff and often get praised for the work I have done but I’m also constantly having to justify why I’ve not been involved in other things. It’s like they want me to splice myself 4 ways so I can be on top of everything at once. There is no option to slow down or work fewer hours as I’d get even less done and could put my job at risk. I am also constantly told that the person in the post before me did a much better job – conveniently forgetting that legislation around this role has completely changed, Brexit is having a huge effect and, most importantly, that person resigned due to stress and long hours. I stupidly took the job on knowing this and thinking I could change things.

I check in to work constantly when on holidays so rarely get a proper break. I recently took two days off to have a long weekend – we went to a fairly remote place with no wifi and dodgy phone signal. I kept telling myself that it is fine to disconnect for a couple of days but on the last day, I started physically throwing up with the anxiety of having to go back and face whatever was waiting for me.

A big part of the problem is that I manage a team which is not large enough for the volume, scale and complexity of work. I have repeatedly asked and provided business plans for more resource but it’s just not possible. On paper, the team looks large – 13 people, but compared to people doing similar work in other organisations, it is small, plus we are dealing with a whole lot of extra stuff that our director has deemed to fall into our remit. The flip-side of this is that as well as a huge amount of work to do in my main remit, I also have to line manage all 13 people and there are constant HR issues to deal with and regular catch-ups to see how everyone is getting on, which can swallow up half my working week but with no actual time carved out in the contract for this. I’d love to implement a structure whereby I have some deputies/assistant managers and share out the line management of staff but the workload is so high, I can’t possibly delegate this side of things to anyone without taking something else away and there is nowhere for it to go, nor is there budget to promote anyone, so ultimately the burden falls on me. Meanwhile the management above me are gleefully coming up with the next big thing and giving me more projects to take on.

Most evenings I am in tears after the stress of a long day and the thought of what will come tomorrow. Every morning I stand on the street corner opposite my office, waiting to cross the road, and fantasise about walking in front of a car or bus rather than walk through those doors. I’d never actually do it but the fact that I’m capable of these thoughts really scares me.

DH is very understanding but this job has also destroyed my relationships with other family members. I hardly see friends and family because I’m either working or tired from so much work and they all think I am making excuses. My parents get angry because I am never in when they call, my sister tells me she doesn’t want to hear about my work and she doesn’t believe that a job like mine could possibly be busy because the sector in which I work has a bit of a reputation for having nice, comfortable jobs. My own role, however, is rather niche and there are not many opportunities to move around in this field. I’ve been with this company for 3 years and in that time have applied for 2 other posts – one was unsuccessful, mainly because I was going through such a hard time that I gave a terrible interview just trying to stop myself crying when talking about my experience with the current company, and the second looked promising, I had pulled myself together, but the post was withdrawn due to lack of funding and reprioritisation. Believe me, I am trying to get out but I have worked and studied hard to get where I am so don’t want to change career path or take a post which could end up being detrimental to my future career. We need the money so I can’t just quit but in the meantime, this situation is utterly unsustainable. I went to the GP six months ago to talk about the effect this is having on my health – I don’t know what I expected, I can’t be signed off as that won’t solve the problem, there will just be more for me to deal with when I get back and my boss takes a very dim view of people who “claim to be stressed and can’t cope with work” – anyway, I was just brushed off with the GP saying she also didn’t believe my job could be that stressful and I must be exaggerating. She did say that my blood pressure was very high but refused to accept that it could be due to stress, just saying I need to lose weight (my bmi is in the overweight field and I am trying to control it but it is hard with this job as I’m usually eating on the go and have no time for exercise. I used to run and go to the gym regularly but have put 1.5 stone since starting this job) .

I don’t know what advice I am hoping for. I just need to vent and hopefully find a sympathetic ear before I go completely crazy.

Gosh, this is very much me at the moment!

I don't have a team as such though I do manage various Suppliers that provide IT services to the company I work for.

I honestly don't think there is an answer other than to leave.

I'm currently signed off with stress and it took me at least two weeks to stop crying and worrying about whether my work was being done.

I have utterly awful management who don't give a shite about the welfare of staff. My Line Manager doesn't do 'people' stuff so I get next to no support on anything.

Sorry, I know that's probably not helpful, but honestly, what are the chances of you getting what you need to be able to have a sustainable work/life balance with your current employer?

I don't know how much helpful advice I can offer but what I will say is I was in a similar position to you 4 years ago (although perhaps less niche than what you indicate). I was becoming ill with heart palpitations and constant anxiety/stress. I couldn't switch off, was constantly working evenings and weekends, checking my phone and worrying about the next day.
I tried some mindfulness techniques at home which slightly helped for a while and then one day I applied for some new jobs. Some were definitely not right for me but one was and I never looked back.
I did however take a pay cut but it meant I was working set hours (that did not require me to do anything from home) and my new work was very close to home too so much less travel.
I'm much happier and healthier though earning less money. As I say I'm sorry this isn't advice as such, but hope you can see that your health and happier is worth more than fuelling a business/company that's happy to drive you into the ground.

Oh my gosh you poor thing. Please please see a different GP, you are going to burn out continuing like this! Do you have a union? I've no idea what type of job you're in but if it's not known for being so stressful then it's defintely the company/boss. I would therefore take some time out on the sick whilst looking for something else.

Look after yourself.

OP I was in a very similar position to you 2 years ago so I really feel for you. Sending you a big hug and lots of sympathy.

I'm sorry that your GP was so unsympathetic. Can you try seeing someone else? I know having time off work will bring a new set of problems (such as your unsympathetic boss etc) but it sounds like you're at absolute breaking point and you need signing off. This may be the only way in which your boss will take notice or what you're saying - but more importantly, I think you need to do this before you breakdown completely. When you wrote about how you feel when crossing the road and being hit by a car, that is a red flag to me that you have to stop and get help. NOW. And if the world falls apart while you take a breather, let the world fall apart.

I won't bore you with my story but I was in a scarily similar situation (down to the same team size, all-consuming working hours, being 'on' all the time - plus throw in some demanding clients). I repeatedly asked my management - and my client - for help but like you OP, they did nothing and I continued to work myself into the ground in the hope that they would eventually see sense. One Fri night (after a doing the usual 16-18+ hour intense days at work - and with the usual weekend work coming up), I was in tears as I was driving home. My route takes me through a fairly long tunnel. As I entered the tunnel I realised that the only way the work stress was going to stop was if I turned my steering wheel and rammed my car into the side of the tunnel and killed myself. That was literally a turning point for me. I knew my stress levels had crossed a line and despite my career going really well, I had to stop. No-one else was going to stop things for me.

That Sun eve I emailed my boss and HR to say that I was signing myself off with stress, and sent them the evidence of my multiple requests for help which had been ignored. I pointed out that they had a duty of care to me that they were failing to meet. It created a storm of course. HR were great, my boss was an arse. My GP was supportive and in the end, I stayed off sick and I negotiated my departure while I was off. I never went back to that job although I left the company on good terms (except with my boss but that's his loss). It was a hard decision at the time but I had to put both my mental and physical health first. You need to do the same OP. When you get to the point when you are fantasising about being runover by a car, you know it's time to take a break.

OP my only advice is to do what you are contracted to do and practice self care. Every employer nowadays seems to push people at breaking point. And if you do as they want you to do, you will indeed break down. Please remember that everything is a choice. Just because someone says 'only wimps work contractual hours, or take a break' then let them have their opinion and do your thing. Don't let anyone around you at work dictate how you should feel. You are the only one that can control what impacts you. If they want to sack you due to you sticking to your contract then let them. Join a Union, speak to ACAS, to OH and HR, raise grievances if need be. But never feel powerless because you aren't. You work to live, you don't live to work. Please keep us updated.

Thank you. It means so much to receive such supportive comments. I was really worried that I’d just get a barrage of people saying that it doesn’t sound that bad, that everyone has to work long hours and I need to get a grip. I had to go off to the toilets for a little cry when I read these.

I have arranged a 1:1 with my boss this afternoon, buoyed by these comments. When I’ve raised these issues before, she has been very supportive and I always leave her office feeling really supported and motivated, then I realise it is all lip service and nothing is actually being done to solve the situation. I realise now, I need to push for action.

I am trying to leave. I know it is the only real solution and I have worked out the size of pay cut I can take to get out. I know it will be worth it. It is just so hard to find something in this field and I don’t want to abandon years of working up the ladder, further study and qualifications etc because of this employer. I get so angry with myself when I think that I had a good opportunity to leave but I threw it away because my frame of mind resulted in a terrible interview.

The problem with just doing what is in my contract is that everything is in there. It’s just impossible to do it all. Recently we have taken on a very large and important project and I should be at the helm of this. However, I’m also dealing with several other very large and important projects and there was genuinely nothing which could have been dropped and with the hours I work, there was no capacity to absorb anything further. So I tried taking a lighter touch approach to some of the projects, delegating work to others in order to try to cover everything as equally as possible. There was a bit of a disaster with the new project, things started going badly wrong and by the time I found out and tried to put things right, it was too late – the damage had been done and I have been given full blame. Which is correct, I suppose, it was in my remit. I’ve been told that I can’t delegate the things I have been because the tasks are too high level for my team but that’s my point – I can’t do it all myself so I need a restructured team which allows work to be better shared. The only thing I could stop doing, in order to free up time, is the hands-on assistance to the team, 1:1 catch-up meetings, training etc. But then I feel so guilty that they will suffer as a result. I have a lot of respect for my team and I want to be a good manager to them. They shouldn’t be caught in my crossfire. Also, although it isn’t spelt out in my contract, when I have raised this before, my manager points out that leading the team is implicit in much of my contract. The company also has a policy of everyone getting at least 30 minutes 1:1 time with their manager once a fortnight and full team meetings should take place weekly. This takes up huge amounts of time but the team really values all of this.

When I say that the sector has a reputation for being easy, I don’t want to give away too many details but it’s like working for the council/local government (with apologies to anyone reading who works in these places – there are not my own views). These places have a reputation for being quite comfortable, there is often flexitime and staff have a reputation for being jobsworths which many people interpret as resulting from not having enough to do. I work in a professional role, employed by a company like this, if that makes any sense, and I think part of the issue is that they don’t really know what to do with me so have interpreted the remit in a certain way, landing me with things that seem alien to many of my industry counterparts. So my job in another company would likely be busy/demanding but manageable and would “normal” jobs in my company but I am somewhere in between and it is really hard to explain just how draining this can be. I am very senior and get paid a reasonable amount of money and I think that gets peoples’ backs up as well – if I get paid this amount, then I should expect to work hard and suck it up. But this isn’t just working hard. This is taking over my life and putting me in impossible situations. Also, I should say that my salary isn’t 6 figures or anything like that – far from it, but it is above national average.

I am still doubtful about going back to the GP. I understand that a breather would be beneficial but if I wasn’t at work, I don’t know what I would do – I’d feel so guilty sitting around at home when I’m not actually sick. I also expect I’d end up being managed out of my job and I can’t let that happen. I do need to leave but it has to be on my own terms and I can’t end up unemployed.

Anyway, I’ve been writing this post in worktime which isn’t helping the situation. I’d better sign off MN and get on with the onslaught. I’ll try to check in again tonight to see if there are any more kind words and give you an update from my meeting with my boss.

Turtle, when someone such as you is on the corporate hamster-wheel, driving yourself towards a nervous breakdown and physical exhaustion trying to be "all things to all people", it becomes difficult to contemplate that there is an alternative.

Your health is everything , above a handsome salary and remuneration package that invariably comes with this type of professional role. It becomes seductive, the status, the ability to use one's intellectual capabilities and to provide real financial security for one's family. But it comes at too high a price to be reasonable or sustainable.

Taking time off work with stress is invaluable and has so many benefits. 1 month in your situation, maybe 6 weeks, is meaningful. It separates you from distraction, it stops you worrying about the workload, it frees your mind and spirit to focus on what you want to do next, what alternatives there might be and what type of organisation might value your skills. It enables you to go for walks during the day, stop and smell the roses, see there is a life behind just corporate.

It is only if and when you've made that decision, to step away from the madness, that you might experience the sense of relief. Most powerfully, it re-enforces to your organisation that you are a living breathing person, that you have choice and empowerment to go elsewhere.

Depending on how they behave towards you, it will test their ability to value what they bring. If they give you platitudes but make no tangible specific commitments to you about what can change, but instead continue to bury their head in the sand, leaving you to cope alone, then you have your answer....

I was in a similar work situation a few years ago when I had a 18 month old baby, so totally understand your situation.

In short, you can not continue to work like this and must get out. I got that ill working in my job, I set myself 8 weeks to find a job otherwise I was going to resign and take some time off in the short term. I think I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and they treated me terribly. I did manage to find a new job in that time, though looking back now, I should have left sooner. I do understand if walking out isn't an option though!

I think you're right to go through the motions with raising the issue with your boss, though that doesn't sound too hopefully given they've just paid lip service to you before.

Although it's hard, I would move completely to doing your contracted hours only and take your entitled lunch break each day. I would be telling your boss how many additional hours you have been working, and that you'll be stopping this with immediate effect (as long as you don't have a cause in your contract that refers to 'reasonable' unpaid overtime). You will prioritise, but they will need to take responsibility for the work that doesn't get done.

Please take care of yourself. Life is too short to feel like this x

..it will test their ability to value what you bring

I think you have the choice of leaving (which you are trying to do), getting signed off sick with stress (only you can know if this will poison your relationship with your employer and result in an even worse working environment, or not), or spelling it out in words of one syllable to your line manager that you CANNOT do everything in the contracted hours and you are no longer prepared to work x-hours per week and put your health at risk, so what exactly do they want you to do? Put the onus back on them to find a solution.

Again - this might very well poison your relationship, but at the moment you are heading for major burn-out and your life sounds absolutely horrendous - so will you really be worse off?

And as for them praising your predecessor for how much work they got through - don't fall for that! You are not your predecessor. They left with stress anyway, and the working environment has changed. You may need to be brutally honest with your boss about what you can/can't do and what you are actually prepared to do going forward.

I have been there, throwing up, fantasising that something bad would happen so I didn’t have to go in, and eventually I cracked one day after 4 years and I stayed in bed. Literally. For a few weeks and ended up having 8 months off and a nervous breakdown.

How long would you get sick pay for if you were signed off?

You can’t carry on, this is insane and you will crack one day, it’s only a matter of when not if. Please be kind to yourself. What would you say to a friend who told you this?

I understand you have worked hard to get where you are but in the scale of things IT DOESNT MATTER. You can only take what you can take and living miserably is not sustainable or fun.

I think of it like this. The firm you work for is not the only firm in the town you are in. Your town is not the only town in your county, your county is not the only town in England, England is not the only country in GB. GB is not the only country in Europe, Europe is not the only country in the world.

If you are very senior then you will have transferable skills. Really. There will be a way out but you won’t be able to see it now.

I am back at work now, still senior but different role. I work 9-5 and always take my lunch. I never check emails outside of the office. Life is great once again. I took a pay cut but it was 100% worth every penny.

OP you sound exactly like a friend of mine. She works insane hours and is constantly checking emails on her own time. She has an extremely demanding boss who did the role before my friend, and she was a workaholic who never switched off and now expects the same from her staff.

I can see the effect it's having on her and every time I see her I plead with her to leave the job. She's in a senior position and has great professional qualifications, she would have no problem finding a new job but she just can't see the wood for the trees. She says she doesn't want to throw away what she's worked so hard for, doesn't want to lose entitlement to maternity leave, etc, but the job is destroying her.

OP please for your own health go sick for a few weeks and then, if you want to, have talks with your employer about a way forward. See a different GP if you can. Don't be afraid to leave if you need to. If you can afford it, it might do you the world of good to have a bit of time off to recover from all of this. Good luck with it all x

OP you may have heard of "sunk cost fallacy" which is relevant to your situation.

You feel you've already invested so much and you can't bear to throw it away. This is a natural response.

What you've invested is already 'in the bag' and will look great on your CV. None of your Herculean effort is lost!

You have great advice here on focusing in your health. What you are doing is not sustainable. What day is the GP?

Been there, soldiered on, collapsed, thankfully got another job by then.What I sadly learned though is that getting a new job with less stress doesn't mean getting straight back into a stress-free being. The damage was done with me and even though I am slowly getting better, a year on and I'm only about 50% functioning.

I hadn't realised all the bad habits I got into to cope with it all and sadly these bad ha its are fully ingrained now. I know it, I know what I need to do to get out of it, but it's become so much part of me, doing so goes against all what I've learned to be right. I don't need to stress and worry about producing a last minute report on a tight deadline any longer or worry that it will criticised, yet I still go to sleep anxious, going over and over what I need to put in any report I have days to write under no pressure.

It is going to take time to get over it but in the meantime I still struggle with mental exhaustion and poor sleep. Get out of this before more damage is done to you.

Been there done that. Also internal promotion thinking I can change things. Currently working through my notice and already much happier. Lasted only 18mths so well done to you but honestly there is so much more to life.

Good grief. Read back on your post and ask yourself whether any of this is worth it.

When you or your husband or your sister or someone in your life gets cancer or similar, will you feel as though you had spent your time wisely? Or will you wish you had opted out of this NIGHTMARE much sooner to get on with what life is actually about?

I am contracted to work 24hrs a week. I get probably 40hrs worth lobbed at me but I push it right back again. No decent employer puts their staff through that crap.

Take sick leave, get yourself into better physical shape, and trust that you deserve better than this.

@TurtleBeach How are you getting on? Have been thinking about you this week.

This would be my advice, first slow down a smidge. There is a lot going on here so there is no particular order to my advice.

First, start working from home, don't ask just do. Inform your line manager that one morning a week you will work from home. Then build to more. Don't put in a request just do it. If the business is over working you without asking you just WFH.

Only 20% of your work is recognised by the business it's a variant of Pareto's law, so bear that in mind.

13 people to manage, well that means you can delegate 1/13th of your work to each of them. This is a time to be tough with yourself, don't hold on to it delegate it.

The people management stuff 1-2-1s can be as short as you ok?, do you need any support? And these are my concerns! Try to reduce it to minutes. Also does it need to be at the frequency HR likes to think it should be.

Document reading, delegate it to your team and tell then "Do I need to make a decision" that can be done under the guise of professional development.

Send people off to meetings on your behalf.

If your overburdened and under staffed something will give, make sure it's not you.

Look at your own workload and say, do I need to do this?

Start reading Forbes. Inc, and hbr for tips and tricks to life hack your actual work load.

Also manage up, identify the key people you have to satisfy, not the needy demanding ones, but the ones who are decision makers.

Learn to keep a journal of times
7:40 left home
8:10 read doc X
8:45 @ desk
9:05 had coffee caught up with Bhavna
9:15 reviewed emails
9:17 answered slack
10:00 team meeting
...

It doesn't have to be exact and you don't have to do it there and then but at the end of the week review it and start to see the patterns of time eating.

Put off needy people till the last minute and make sure when you do interact with them 10 mins later youve got a meeting to get to.

Start to build slack into your workload, you do this with a combination of delegation and task analysis.

Take up some stress management and self care exercises, take a 5 mins break ever hour, floor walk, and casually chat with people. Every couple of hours walk out the building and around it. Get fresh air and sunlight.. if someone can't wait 10 mins for you to decompress and are snarky, then it's more about them than you.

Learn to push back, sorry my team is to busy right now come back to me in x. Add wiggle room to schedules and deadlines.

Compartmentalise, when at home only think about work for 45mins after 8pm and use that time to plan your immediate needs. Do not catastrophise. That's for your bosses to do and only react if it is business threatening

Build in zero thought time at home and at work. After looking at your actual daily work from the note book I suggested above. Identify times in the day when you can switch off and I mean really switch off, no personal stuff or social media. Clear down your mental desk.

Overall, you need to look out for yourself, no one else will as they have many issues too which they are keeping to themselves. Building in self care and flexibility into you work life balance is critical to keeping it balanced.

Thank you everyone. It has been a bit of a difficult week but I am taking the advice on board. There have been some positives and negatives this week, which I will summarise below:

1. I had a 1:1 with my boss where, for the first time I admitted I am at breaking point, which seemed to cause some genuine alarm. As a result of this I have drafted a paper which sets out the workload and structural issues for both me and my team and suggests a restructure, breaking the work into sections rather than everyone doing everything and with three supervisors looking after three main areas of work – this will allow me to delegate to the supervisors (at present, there is only one person with the training and responsibility built into their remit to allow me to delegate and that person is as stretched as I am) and have them line manage a cohort of staff each. With this plan, I will need to either recruit one new person to enable work to be redistributed or look at our processes and see if we can streamline. My boss has agreed to this and we are going to bring in a Lean Thinking consultant in early January. I have asked for a commitment to this in writing.
2. Having a bit more headspace, I have come to the realisation that there is a particular person, senior to me but does not line manage me, who not only directly affects my work because much of it is generated by her activities but is also very critical of everything I do. A lot of the “your predecessor used to…” comments have come from this person. I am realising now that she has hugely affected the pressure I put on myself so this needs to be addressed. I had a meeting with her on Monday to talk about the need to respect my time and expertise and the need to work in partnership. It did not go well – she went crazy, saying I had no right to bring these things up with her and again criticising the way I work, bringing up examples of everything I don’t do and where things have been delayed at my end. I held it together but ended up in floods of tears in the toilet afterwards and really was on the verge of walking out at that point. My line manager has now spoken with her line manager to see if something can be worked out
3. Unfortunately a large section of my team is currently away at the moment through a combination of holidays, sickness and family bereavement. This leaves the remaining members juggling even more as it is a particularly busy time of year. It’s therefore not a great time for me to get myself signed off or start working contracted hours but then this is the point I’ve been making to my boss – if the standard was manageable then we would all be able to absorb extra work during crunch times. Working long hours and still not getting everything done on a daily basis leaves no slack for this kind of thing.
4. I’m still looking at job sites constantly and I hear what everyone is saying but I really need to make a move meaningful, I can’t just leave for anything. Right now though, the thought of being able to walk out of here for good is what is keeping me going. Every day that passes here is another day closer to my next job.
5. Unfortunately there is a clause in my contract which states that at my level it is necessary to work beyond contracted hours according to business needs. My argument is that this should be due to particular times of staffing crisis or big projects but not on an ongoing basis. It does make it very hard to push back on work though as this clause will always be pointed to.
6. I took time out yesterday to attend a resilience and mindfulness at work course which was helpful.

I don’t know if anything will improve but I feel a bit more positive about this week’s actions. I think I’ll also start keeping that diary and see if this brings any revelations!

Thank you again.

It sounds like you've had a really productive week, well done! I'm glad your boss was receptive. As for the nightmare woman in (2), it sounds like her behaviour has reflected badly on her and this has been recognised by both your and her line management. This can only be a good thing, even if getting to this point was emotionally very hard on you. You're making headway OP, you can do this!

in no order.

point 5 is impossible to police, 117% if business are not technologically savvy enough to know how to do such a thing anyway - it's just a bully clause

point 2 devise a strategy to deal with that person they are obviously callous and a bully, probably hasn't transitioned to a different way of working and was very reliant on your predecessor.

point 6 excellent, use it learn to take time out at work

point 1 it looks like you have a weak leader. but at least they understood made you made it explicitly clear. run delegation meetings with your supervisors weekly get them to delegate too.

point 3 put forward a suggestion for temps, get them doing the less experienced staffs work, boost your less experienced staff into the sick, holiday and here enebt gaps. Tell them it's on the job training for potential promotion in the future and is part of your retainment plan if questioned.

point 4 spit on never leave a job if you haven't got a job to go to.

be kind to yourself reduce your out of hours work to zero over time.

did you get an opportunity to get WFH?

The run up to Christmas is often a tough time for any business but the Christmas new year gap is often dead as a doornail (unless your retail). use that time to recharge

WFH isn't an option that is offered here but I do use a laptop rather than a desktop so recently have been taking the opportunity to hide out in unused offices for a couple of hours at a time in order to get my head down and focus on specific project work - that's what enabled me to draft up the report on restructuring the team this week, although my boss has said she's not massively impressed by this working method and the team are a bit grumpy about me not being around to handhold them through everything.

We do close between christmas and new year so am focused on that break for now and will do anything I can for 2019 to be different.

Hi @TurtleBeach

Good to hear what's been going on. The business plan around a restructure sounds promising at least.

Re: no 5 and clause, I've always thought this should be at a reasonable level.

This is a useful article to read, looks like they can't make you work 48+ hours unless you have opted out. From your OP, it sounds like you're working way over that, so you have an instant argument to bring to at least reduce total hours down to 48.

www.hrzone.com/lead/change/ask-the-expert-how-legal-are-contract-clauses-to-work-overtime-for-no-pay

Turtle you sound like an amazing and inspiring manager but you are wasted there because they will eventually drive you into the ground and will never appreciate your contribution until after you've gone.

Think about your longer term needs and create an exit strategy even if you can't move on Immediately.