The Work Thread 2 - Get back to work!

[joyjoy22]

When the bills can't wait.

[Qikz]

I'm off on compassionate leave (I went in the last 2 weeks after my mum passed away) and I feel really guilty about messaging in every morning and I have no idea why. I know if I go there im not going to be a big help anyways.

[Green Gecko]

Would you mind if I used the vector to get some embroidery done?
If that's ok could you email over when you can.

So... you've been quoted for some embroidery work and they need to charge an artwork/digitisation fee?

Yeah, nope. It sounds like a reasonable request, what was it, about 30 mins sorting that out on my end because the art wasn't ready? I've already spent 4 hours writing emails and performing tests, I'm not showing up at your door with free work.

"Hey, (I realise you're busy and you're done for the day, but) would you mind covering for me for an hour?"

Except without a salary, or returning favours, or commaderie, or anything really.

How about just strawberry floating pay for the work and get on with the project instead of trying to recycle freebies over and over?

[Squinty]

I'm off on compassionate leave (I went in the last 2 weeks after my mum passed away) and I feel really guilty about messaging in every morning and I have no idea why. I know if I go there im not going to be a big help anyways.

Honestly, don't feel guilty. It's pretty normal to do this.

[Lagamorph]

I've somehow found myself in a position where I now report in to 5 people

2 department heads, 2 team leaders and 1 regional manager, with my work split across 2 teams, 1 under each department.

[Lotus]

One of my colleagues/teammates has just left and, rather than replace her immediately, the company's basically given ~80% of her role to me.
I made it pretty clear that I wasn't happy with this, and it wasn't really manageable or sustainable, and the message I got back was "deal with it for Q1 and then we'll see what happens".

They keep making vague noises about replacing her, but I know the idea is to see how I get on and - assuming I don't strawberry float it up completely - just have her role and my current role done by me. I had a chat with one of the directors the other day and he basically said if I wanted a promotion, and to 'shape the role', I could do, but I need to go in with a plant to present to the management.

Now, this does make sense from a business point of view (not just in cost-saving, but in terms of the functions and nature of the role), and I can see how it might work, what areas we'd have to 'streamline', what areas could do with changes, etc. But I feel like I'm just making it easy for them by giving them what they want on a plate while massively increasing my workload and responsibility.
Other than asking for certain training courses which would result in me getting certain qualifications/certifications, alongside the salary increase (no idea what kind of increase I'd ask for here, or what their thinking is), but otherwise it doesn't feel like I have much leverage. It feels like unless I purposely strawberry float up, it's all coming my way anyway, whether I like it or not.

Has anybody been in a similar position?

[Ste]

I've been in a similar position a few times. I think they'll see this as a way of making a saving on the wage bill so they don't have any intention of replacing her.

It's my first day at my new job today. A few butterflies but not too bad.

[Slayerx]

I've been in a similar position a few times. I think they'll see this as a way of making a saving on the wage bill so they don't have any intention of replacing her.

It's my first day at my new job today. A few butterflies but not too bad.

Good luck with the new job.

I've started to put the feelers out for a new job, work at the moment has been horrible with annoucments last week of whos been redundant making the atmosphere tense to say the least.

[Moggy]

One of my colleagues/teammates has just left and, rather than replace her immediately, the company's basically given ~80% of her role to me.
I made it pretty clear that I wasn't happy with this, and it wasn't really manageable or sustainable, and the message I got back was "deal with it for Q1 and then we'll see what happens".

They keep making vague noises about replacing her, but I know the idea is to see how I get on and - assuming I don't strawberry float it up completely - just have her role and my current role done by me. I had a chat with one of the directors the other day and he basically said if I wanted a promotion, and to 'shape the role', I could do, but I need to go in with a plant to present to the management.

Now, this does make sense from a business point of view (not just in cost-saving, but in terms of the functions and nature of the role), and I can see how it might work, what areas we'd have to 'streamline', what areas could do with changes, etc. But I feel like I'm just making it easy for them by giving them what they want on a plate while massively increasing my workload and responsibility.
Other than asking for certain training courses which would result in me getting certain qualifications/certifications, alongside the salary increase (no idea what kind of increase I'd ask for here, or what their thinking is), but otherwise it doesn't feel like I have much leverage. It feels like unless I purposely strawberry float up, it's all coming my way anyway, whether I like it or not.

Has anybody been in a similar position?

Yeah I’ve been there. My team used to be 6 people and now it’s just me and the crazy lady I post about sometimes. 6 was way too many for what we do, but 2 just isn’t enough. But they are saving 4 salaries and we do get the work done, so they don’t give a gooseberry fool if we are too busy.

[Lotus]

Hmm. Might just have to go with it and see what happens and ask for as much money and training as I can get.

Was someone a while ago in here talking about asking for a 25k pay rise? How did that work out?

[Qikz]

Hmm. Might just have to go with it and see what happens and ask for as much money and training as I can get.

Was someone a while ago in here talking about asking for a 25k pay rise? How did that work out?

Honestly if youre doing her job as well you should get her salary on top of yours. It won't happen but strawberry float common sense.

[Lotus]

Hmm. Might just have to go with it and see what happens and ask for as much money and training as I can get.

Was someone a while ago in here talking about asking for a 25k pay rise? How did that work out?

Honestly if youre doing her job as well you should get her salary on top of yours. It won't happen but strawberry float common sense.

That would make me one of the highest paid people in the company. Would be nice, but yes, definitely isn't going to happen.

[Jenuall]

Unless it is very clearly communicated as a temporary scenario where you are covering additional activities whilst a more permanent solution is put in place - with a deadline set for when that solution should arrive, then I think it is perfectly reasonable to expect some remuneration boost in these circumstances.

[pjbetman]

One of my colleagues/teammates has just left and, rather than replace her immediately, the company's basically given ~80% of her role to me.
I made it pretty clear that I wasn't happy with this, and it wasn't really manageable or sustainable, and the message I got back was "deal with it for Q1 and then we'll see what happens".

They keep making vague noises about replacing her, but I know the idea is to see how I get on and - assuming I don't strawberry float it up completely - just have her role and my current role done by me. I had a chat with one of the directors the other day and he basically said if I wanted a promotion, and to 'shape the role', I could do, but I need to go in with a plant to present to the management.

Now, this does make sense from a business point of view (not just in cost-saving, but in terms of the functions and nature of the role), and I can see how it might work, what areas we'd have to 'streamline', what areas could do with changes, etc. But I feel like I'm just making it easy for them by giving them what they want on a plate while massively increasing my workload and responsibility.
Other than asking for certain training courses which would result in me getting certain qualifications/certifications, alongside the salary increase (no idea what kind of increase I'd ask for here, or what their thinking is), but otherwise it doesn't feel like I have much leverage. It feels like unless I purposely strawberry float up, it's all coming my way anyway, whether I like it or not.

Has anybody been in a similar position?

Have you got a job description of some sorts? How long have you been working there? Are you in a Union (if not get in one, don't use Unite though, they're shite)? If you have any sort of legal standing (2 years + service, job description/roles, HR department), I'd recommend telling them to strawberry float off!

[pjbetman]

Unless it is very clearly communicated as a temporary scenario where you are covering additional activities whilst a more permanent solution is put in place - with a deadline set for when that solution should arrive, then I think it is perfectly reasonable to expect some remuneration boost in these circumstances.

Yes. But if not, go on the sick for a few weeks.

[Green Gecko]

My procrastination is awful. Somebody [ACTION] me now.

This is what happens with a 10 day lead and like 3 jobs on the go at the moment. I spent all day yesterday sharpening chisels.

I don't use chisels. I have a giant strawberry floating cutting robot for that and I'm about to get a bandsaw as well for when I'm literally too lazy to program the computer and would prefer to just use skill instead... weird irony there.

What is work. My partner with a real job however has spent the past 2 days doing mostly crosswords. Ah the quiet periods, you either love them or you hate them or you're not fussed at all (well presuming you're getting paid).

Edit: Actually I just remembered what I was doing, grinding chisels fired steel dust strawberry floating everywhere so I had to hoover my entire workshop. Then I looked up hazard information for steel/iron dust (can cause cold-like symptoms which I had yesterday) as it's the first time I've done that and didn't bother hooking up extraction or wearing a mask. Now I'm shopping for measuring tapes since it's ebay money off time which is err totally important work.

Now place is dust free I can do moar T-shirts. Reeeally.

THANKS GRCADE

srs I should do some marketing or I'll complain when I have too much work to do and then complain I don't have time to do marketing etc etc

What does everyone else do in their slow periods? Do you literally just make up work (there's always something for me to do, which is probably the diligent thing to do) or just take advantage so you aren't stressed out when it gets busy again? It's horrible when it's super busy all the time but what's your ethic like when things slow down?

I've always been curious about how people deal with having too little to do differently. Some accept that is part of the nature of work and you should just chill, other get weird about it and find gooseberry fool to do.

Unfortunately I do have a habit of finding other gooseberry fool to do that is still useful but not really related to the thing I am meant to be doing, but it all comes around eventually, I think that's just part of managing your own time as you please so something I earn the right to do in the process. I end up learning different gooseberry fool everyday and stumbling across interesting ideas/projects I'd never think of if my mind was 100% focused on any given task. Seems super common with creative types, obvious if you worked on a factory line or call centre or something you'd get shot of pretty quick. I have an intuition for compensating for this and working insanely hard when necessary, but I can't seem to do that all the time, or work to a consistent rhythm like normal people.

Sometimes things like the pomodoro technique help. It's ticketing systems that do me in (and I have my own). Just the way they keep flooding in with requests. I can't deal with a high volume environment like that. I have to focus on quality not quantity.

[pjbetman]

My procrastination is awful. Somebody [ACTION] me now.

This is what happens with a 10 day lead and like 3 jobs on the go at the moment. I spent all day yesterday sharpening chisels.

I don't use chisels. I have a giant strawberry floating cutting robot for that and I'm about to get a bandsaw as well for when I'm literally too lazy to program the computer and would prefer to just use skill instead... weird irony there.

What is work. My partner with a real job however has spent the past 2 days doing mostly crosswords. Ah the quiet periods, you either love them or you hate them or you're not fussed at all (well presuming you're getting paid).

Edit: Actually I just remembered what I was doing, grinding chisels fired steel dust strawberry floating everywhere so I had to hoover my entire workshop. Then I looked up hazard information for steel/iron dust (can cause cold-like symptoms which I had yesterday) as it's the first time I've done that and didn't bother hooking up extraction or wearing a mask. Now I'm shopping for measuring tapes since it's ebay money off time which is err totally important work.

Now place is dust free I can do moar T-shirts. Reeeally.

THANKS GRCADE

srs I should do some marketing or I'll complain when I have too much work to do and then complain I don't have time to do marketing etc etc

What does everyone else do in their slow periods? Do you literally just make up work (there's always something for me to do, which is probably the diligent thing to do) or just take advantage so you aren't stressed out when it gets busy again? It's horrible when it's super busy all the time but what's your ethic like when things slow down?

I've always been curious about how people deal with having too little to do differently. Some accept that is part of the nature of work and you should just chill, other get weird about it and find gooseberry fool to do.

Unfortunately I do have a habit of finding other gooseberry fool to do that is still useful but not really related to the thing I am meant to be doing, but it all comes around eventually, I think that's just part of managing your own time as you please so something I earn the right to do in the process. I end up learning different gooseberry fool everyday and stumbling across interesting ideas/projects I'd never think of if my mind was 100% focused on any given task. Seems super common with creative types, obvious if you worked on a factory line or call centre or something you'd get shot of pretty quick. I have an intuition for compensating for this and working insanely hard when necessary, but I can't seem to do that all the time, or work to a consistent rhythm like normal people.

Sometimes things like the pomodoro technique help. It's ticketing systems that do me in (and I have my own). Just the way they keep flooding in with requests. I can't deal with a high volume environment like that. I have to focus on quality not quantity.

You could start by looking in your PM box, as I asked you for some design work a few months ago

[Drumstick]

omg

You could start by looking in your PM box, as I asked you for some design work a few months ago

[Jenuall]

I am strawberry floating terrible for procrastination!

If I'm working in an environment where there is any flexibility on when something can be done you can bet that I will be putting it off and finding something else to arse about with until the last minute. Depending on the scenario this may be a case of me being completely distracted and spending time on entirely unrelated things (internet, games, TV, classic procrastination activities like cleaning things that really don't need cleaning etc.) In other cases I'll really focus in on one tiny aspect of the job I should be doing that isn't actually all that important or relevant - for example I once spent several days constructing a massively over-complicated bash script to automate the checkout, compile, build, test, and deployment of a bit of software I was working on. Even though to do these steps manually only really took a few minutes and it was not something that I was ever going to need to do that often. But because there was something else that I could have been doing but that I didn't really want to do I laboured over this overly complex script to automate it under the self-justification that "it was going to be helpful"!

My PhD took far longer than it should have done because of this. My supervisors were pretty hands off and so my time was basically my own to manage and I spent more time digging into areas that were personally interesting/fulfilling rather than knuckling down on the research - the teaching side of things being one of those, despite this supposedly only being a small part of my initial role. Whilst pretty much everything I did was still related to the overall goal of my thesis I know I would have finished it much earlier if I'd been able to better control my tendency to procrastinate and become distracted!

I always like the idea of working for myself, working from home etc. But I know from experience that I really operate more efficiently as part of a setup where people are a bit more aware of what I am doing and there are fewer opportunities to procrastinate and get distracted.

[Moggy]

Those saying they are terrible for procrastination sure like writing long posts.