For three weeks now, I have been sleeping badly – either unable to get to sleep at night, or getting to sleep and waking up throughout the night, usually resulting in sleeping through the alarm in the morning. As I said in my very first post, I know I am a stress puppy – my shoulders feel like rock, and my skin has dry and itchy patches. TOH has been suffering as a result, constantly having to reassure me, and she has also been having to make dinner more often than usual (cooking is one of my tasks, but when I get home, I just want to sit down and not get up again).
I know that lots of people suffer stress from their work, but I am adamant that if I wanted that lifestyle, I would have gone for a job that pays at least twice as much as the rather average wage that I currently receive. The amount of stress that I am suffering per £ in the bank is not reading like a happy equation…
So why the hassle? Well, as a publicly-funded institution, we are having something of a financial crisis – so when members of staff leave, we are not given the funding to replace them. The CEO would describe it as a “recruitment freeze”, but then he also asks us to continue as if it is “business as usual”. This is not easy when we are missing 40% of our staff!
So far, so normal – loads of workplaces are short-staffed, and loads of people have to do extra work to compensate, with no financial reward. In my case though, I have to deal with LM as well.
Reasons why LM makes life difficult during a recruitment freeze:
- We have got a temp who helps us a few hours per day. When they arrive, LM has rarely given them any instructions as to what needs doing, which means that they come and ask me (disturbing my work – I am not supposed to be managing the temp)
- She is disorganised – you can barely see her desk underneath the bits of paper. She does not use a diary. She constantly seems surprised by appointments, meetings and events that the rest of us knew were happening
- She doesn’t get things done – if she has three tasks to do, you can guarantee that, one week later, at least one of them will not be done the following week
- She likes to have meetings. In fact, she has been heard to ask, “Who can I have a meeting with next?” Another colleague mentioned that if she didn’t spend all her time trying to have meetings, then maybe she would have time to get her work done
Patience is wearing thin…
Well, Minion, I ca nsympathise, but there must be a reason why she is the LM. I mean, I got shot of a truly dreadful boss a copuple of years back. He was incompetent, tactless, insensitive and bigoted. But he did have the odd redeeming feature – he was pretty good in a pitch situation (although terrible at finding pitches or following them up). So I’m curious – what is LM’s strongest suit.
Keep moaning!
Comment by JD — January 19, 2008 @ 7:41 pm |