I really hate it when I get stressed and irrational. I feel like such a goose afterwards.
For the last six weeks I have been filling in for my manager at work. Gayle is full-time, I’m part-time and I’ve been trying to squeeze her work plus my work into a three day week. Inevitably it spilled over into longer days and even taking work home on the weekends. I let it consume me, my desire for recognition and pride in doing a good job. We all know what happens with pride – it goes out the door just before you fall flat on your face.
Yes, Gayle came back and suddenly I had to adjust to my former lowly status as her assistant! I had put in a lot of good work, but I’d also made some goofs because I was overworked, stressed and had lost focus. At first the goofs seemed insignificant in light of the heavy workload. In hindsight, I’d been compromising the qualities I was hired for – my competency and attention to detail. I wasn’t hired to be some sort of superwoman!
The first couple of days after she came back, I felt resentful and unappreciated. The stress and the emotion were building up. It finally erupted over something very silly – organising some junk mail flyers for a fundraising event that is coming up.
The idea had been put forward by one of the management committee, but neither Gayle or myself saw any merit in it. A waste of time and money we felt. Typical unwanted trivial interference by management when they should be sticking to policy and the big picture (I felt). Over the past six weeks I had been busying myself with other things and quietly hoping the flyers would be forgotten and nothing more would be said. But when Gayle met with the committee on her return, they insisted we get the flyers done.
That’s when I had my little dummy-spit about all the extra work I had been doing, and not having time for rubbish like flyers. Gayle was immediately sympathetic, which mollified me somewhat. And then within the space of an hour she had it all underway with free copying by the local MP’s office, free guillotining by a local copy shop and the distributor lined up to collect it all on Monday. She still disagreed with the idea, but saw that it had to be done and did it.
Yup. I feel like a goose.