Frustrated by my bosses attitude

[Randommother]

I work in a high pressure role, but recently it’s become too much. I spend most of my time on conference calls, with barely any time in between to do my actual job. I start in the morning with a stack of emails that need my attention, but I’m straight into calls, where I pick up more actions I won’t have time to do - and it’s getting to the point of overwhelming me.

Yesterday I had a meeting with my boss, so I decided to raise it with him - I’d rather flag now that I’m feeling swamped l, before it gets to the stage where I totally crumble. His response was to open my calendar, and compare it to his - saying I wish I was a quite as you, look how busy my calendar is!!

Im fucking furious!! Yes his calendar is busy, yes he has a lot of calls, but I have deliverables I need to create and I don’t have the bloody time to do them!! When things slip I have to answer to him, but it really feels like he just doesn’t have my back.

im not sure how to deal with this - surely when an employee tells you they’re struggling with an ever increasing workload, diminishing their issues is not an appropriate way to respond?!

No it wasn’t appropriate, hope you leave and find another job as he sounds useless.

Totally inappropriate.

I had similar with my last manager. I worked out that what she was really saying was 'I don't care about your workload and I will do nothing to support you with it'. I got a new job!

@Motnight same here!!

I had this before and decided to leave. Its not healthy.

Maybe you should have replied 'I wish so had your salary'

I am actually in a similar situation, endless pointless meetings and no time to do any actual work not helped by the fact that we are also very short staffed. Manager says we have no need for more staff and talks management bs about streamlining and delegating. I cannot delegate to others who are in the same or worse position than I am in with workload.

I'd email him something like "As per our conversation yesterday, I am currently attending X hours of meetings per week in relation to projects 1,2,3 & 4. This means I have 3 hrs to complete all the actions which is not enough. I believe my priority should be 1 & 2, so if you confirm that I will focus on these two, which means I will not be able to attend all the meetings and complete activities for 3 and 4.
Perhaps these projects could be deprioritised is there or any other capacity available to support them ?. Please advise."

May not help but at least a paper trail shows you have flagged it.

I agree with an email outlining your contracted hours vs the hours you need to complete your mandatory tasks, then how much time you're using to conference calls that aren't critical to the successful delivery of your tasks.

Then ask him for a solution because the situation is swiftly becoming untenable and your reputation as a team will falter because of it.

This isn't about the competition of "more" (like the who is more tired argument many new parents have) but trying to work together as colleagues to ensure the time you're being paid for is being used in the best way, because you're certainly not going to work for free!

I had similar and ultimately ended up leaving as his response was to volunteer me for yet another steering committee. It was the final straw.

How much control over your calls do you have? I did have some success just refusing to take meetings. In some organisations people are obsessed with them so I decided that if an issue could be dealt with via email or phone I wasn’t going to allow a meeting for it. I was relatively senior though so could force it through.

Death by meetings. He’s an arse, he gets paid more than you! Agree with the poster above about an emailing outlining your hours, meetings, and times to work on your actual work, so it’s all on writing.

Could you start blocking out large chunks of your diary as time to do your work, so going forward there’s less time to put meetings in?

I swear some managers have to make themselves seem busy with meetings about meetings about a catch up about a meeting from last month grrr

I've had one of these, complained she was in back to back meetings all day, but she booked the vast majority of them herself and when you got in them it could have either been an email or it was a rehash of a previous conversation where yet again no actions were decided on.

She also used to set deadlines that were deliberately too short because she enjoyed the sense of urgency and frantic working, but it never let up it was one unachievable deadline after another. (and she wasn't the one doing the work either!)

I left after she told me to 'change my mindset' because the reality was she was never going to change her mindset and she wouldn't have cared if she worked me into a nervous breakdown for no reason at all other than to feed her ego.

I have since had a couple of amazing bosses who protect their team, set fair deadlines and try not to overload meetings. You probably need a new job unfortunately as you will be unlikely to be able to change his mind.

If deliverables are for projects you might get more support from your PM than your line manager. Tell the PM there are too many meetings and you cant deliver, they can potentially cut back on wasted time on meetings, find more resources or reallocate work, change deadlines. Thats their job.

Are you able to book out time in your calendar?

I need to be brutal sometimes and not attend meetings that I would otherwise go to and find the less meetings I am at the less actions I get!

You’ve had some good suggestions here OP.

Is the issue your role/boss (in which case you might be able to influence things) or the overall company culture (in which case you’d do better to move on if you can)

I had the same and left : too many meetings being the main problem