Yep, My Boss Is Calling Me Out

Yep, what I wrote at the end of this blog post that I was afraid was going to happen did happen at work yesterday/Tuesday.  I got an e-mail from my boss pointing out -- well, maybe more like calling me out -- over working too much overtime.  He said that for some reason, I have been incapable of getting out of The Fourth Department within eight hours while the other two people who work there do.  He is asking me to see how I pace myself, but otherwise I'm not sure what concrete steps he wants to take regarding this.

I will not lie; I feel kind of attacked here.  Like I said before, I am working my ass off back there.  Sure, I sit back a bit and sip my coffee, but I have to, otherwise I'll have a damn heart attack trying to keep up with everything.  I am trying to balance doing the work fast with doing the work right.  And while there are a lot of problems that crop up out of nowhere and throw me for a loop (and, it needs to be said, eat up my time), I think I do my job pretty well.  But that means I stay until the work is done, and usually, there is too much work for me to do within eight hours.  But the work gets done.  That's my job, right?  I'm not sure if my boss, through this e-mail, sees it that way.  And so now I feel defensive about it.

I respect the hell out of the two people who also do that position.  But I find it extremely hard to believe that given the workload they surely face like I do, they get through everything that needs to be done within eight hours.  If the metrics say otherwise, well ... (shrug)

The other main way I feel defensive about this is that I don't know what else to do.  I am not going to cut corners in this position just so I don't do overtime.  But I think my boss thinks I'm just half-assing it back there when the reality is anything but.  I have to work at breakneck speed to get everything done before I have to walk out the door.  Now, as I said, everything is less stressful than when I started out back there because, for the most part, I know what I need to do now.  It's just that, on most days, there is a lot to do.  If he is telling me to push that work till the next day so I leave when I'm supposed to, fine, but that leaves more work for me the next day, and that, quite frankly, is stupid.  But I cannot and will not work any faster than I am doing now because I am busting my ass already.

I wonder if he expects me to reply to his message.  I am guessing that would be the elephant in the room if I don't.  But I think I know better than to lash out and say he's wrong about everything.  Then again, I don't think a milquetoast response represents how I really feel.  So I don't know right now what to reveal and what to conceal.

The only saving grace in this situation, as very unfortunate as it is, is that I might be the only person in the intermediate future who can do this job.  One of the two other people who can work in The Fourth Department is my supervisor, and like I said before, she has to do other things in other places because she's a supervisor.  The only other person who can do this job is not at work for the foreseeable future.  Maybe my boss, who I know is getting pressure over this from his bosses over my overtime -- he said so in the e-mail -- is dreading the probability that I am going to have to be in The Fourth Department for the time being and is seeing the dollar signs he might believe is showing up on my eyeballs like the tumblers on a slot machine.  I will do what I can.  But I already am giving him, and the company, everything I humanly can back there.  I am kind of scared that he's concluded that that's not enough.