At work these days, I really can’t do the amount of work that’s put in front of me. I really can’t. I’ve mentioned this before, and recently, even, but it’s just getting worse and worse.

We have three salesmen, where we once had no salesmen. These are people dedicated to getting us work, and they do. Unfortunately, Ed and Jerry both used to help around the office, but now spend most of their time actually selling stuff. So I’ve lost those two helping hands. Elyssa is pregnant, and leaving in a few weeks. So I’ve lost that set of helping hands. Margaret helps out a lot, and there’s still Rebekah. So basically there are two people to handle all the grunt work. Where once there were at least four, and sometimes five.

I have no one to delegate to. I have to do everything myself. I have no help to do things that need to be done but are secondary tasks. I have no associates, no team, no nothing to help me get the work done. Not a living, breathing soul to keep me accountable, to make sure that I’m actually getting stuff done, to work with me to eliminate errors.

It’s not that these people are hard to find. Office workers are pretty much a dime a dozen, if you’re willing to train them. It’s not like they’re terribly expensive either. I mean, I understand that your human cost is high in any company, but it’s a necessary cost, you know? Eliminating jobs by attrition may be good for the bottom line, but I doubt it’s a very good strategy overall.

So I don’t know what I’m going to do around here. I can’t keep saying, “Well, that didn’t get done because I didn’t have enough time in the day to do it,” because that’s starting to sound like a line, I say it so often. I work ten hours a day here, regularly. I’m not stupid. I’m not working dumb.

And it’s not just me. Everybody here is pretty much either underpaid or overworked, and sometime both.

I’m still not sure how to make this work, you know? I’m getting extremely stressed out with the amount of work I have waiting for me. It’s like this huge thing, always trailing behind me. And it’s really getting on my nerves.

Tags: employment