Overwhelmed

I am getting swamped at work. As I’m sure most of you have read in the news, a LOT of businesses are coming to Boston and the surrounding areas now. A LOT. And it’s not as easy as just packing up your stuff and moving to Bev-er-leeee (Hills, that is). And each one of those businesses comes here and needs… Stuff. Or people – or the services that people we have provide. So I, and others in my offices, are super busy. I could probably spend 20 hours a day at work, but I’m not falling into that habit. With so many businesses coming here, my company needs to have one or two more guys here doing this work.

So every other day or so I list all of the packages that I’m working on and I prioritize them. And I have my boss buy in on my list. Sometimes she re arranges numbers three, four, or five, but normally I’m right on. So if someone gets their panties in a twist because I’m not getting to their package fast enough, they can take it up with the boss… Our priorities are the big picture – not each and every little picture.

And today I was in the middle of what was on top of my list and one of the other supervisors in the directorate re-tasked me to work on one of his projects. Something that I had never worked on before and I had NO idea what the heck I was supposed to do. This stuff was WAY out of my lane. But my boss wasn’t around, so I started doing the best that I could. This was going to take me DAYS to complete.

Later on my boss came by and asked me a question about what I *supposed* to be doing and I asked her if she knew I was re-tasked and... all hack broke loose. She stomped off and went into the other room and there were some loud, uptight whispers going on! And a couple of, “Oh! NO!” Kinds of comments. My buddy told me, “Man, you really threw a sh!t grenade in there.” Making a long story short – it’s not my project any more. Remember my rule number 8? “If you think someone is lazy, they are. If you think they are sloughing work off on you, they are. If you think it’s their job, it is. If they can get you to do it one time, you have just set precedence.”

It really meant a lot to me that my boss stuck up for me and put that work on the section that is supposed to be doing it. Everyone that’s been there a while says that it’s been a long time since we’ve had the number of requests that I’m working now. I’ve got plenty to do on my own.

Enough of that… It was a nice day today. Another beautiful day. I didn’t get to go outside as much because of the amount of packages I’ve got going across my desk. I left work around nine this evening and hung out with some of the guys I know at the coffee house. Most of the talk centered around handguns. Some of these guys are avid collectors. Chris and I sat around and wished we could have heard what happened in our office when my boss flexed her authority. We know who wears that pants in that office.

And that wraps up my day. Time to git.