Closing Time On Overtime

Welp, it happened: The new person, the person recently hired for the same position as I, will finally leave data entry and be trained in ... The Third Department, the department I used to love but now despise, the one that regularly makes me stay late day after day after day.  It's the one I have vaguely said takes up the most time during my workweek, and beginning this week, my supervisor and boss are doing something about it by beginning to show her how to do that position's duties.

I have to admit that I am surprised that she is being trained in this so soon after she came on board.  When I got broken in, I was in data entry for a long time.  Then I got trained in filing, and that also took a long, long time.  I thought that was The Way Things Were.  I also know that we are very short-staffed, so it's all hands on deck to get the day's work done.  That's been how it has been since the New Year, so I didn't think they would have time to progress in this new person's training so quickly.  I thought how things have been were how it was going to be for maybe the next 12 months, maybe in the fall at the earliest.  But no, it's now.

So why the apparent change?  Maybe I am wrong about the workload and in fact they do have the time to train her in now.  Or, and this might the more plausible reason, The Third Department is so backed up every day that, once the absolutely fundamental position of keying has been mastered (at least as much as one can), my higher-ups shunted her to The Third Department with the quickness.

If that is indeed the case ... well, dammit, I'm torn.  I have spoken up from time to time about how inundated I am every day when I work The Third Department.  Every day I'm back there I am doing the work of 1 1/2 people.  Heck, that department should be like it was, when two people were working it.  It doesn't make any damn sense to at least have a second person help out at least part of the day every day.  And maybe this move is an acknowledgement that one person can't do that position alone.

But as I've said before, when I work there, as pissed off and as strung out as I get at the end of the workday, I keep grinding knowing I am getting beaucoup overtime.  And as much stress I am under, and as disruptive staying ten-plus hours have become to maintaining work-life balance, getting proper rest and getting ready for the next day, I keep looking at the fat paychecks I've been banking and I haven't said a peep since my initial inveighing over how overworked I've become in The Third Department.  So, training the new person to help out means there is less work for me back there.  And that means I will not be able to stay late, and stay late as often.  Thus, less money.  And maybe I'll be less stressed, and maybe I'll see that I'm happy that I will get to leave work at a decent hour.  But right now, right as I type this, I am saddened that these fat OT paychecks are coming to an end, probably as soon as this week.