Monday at work was insane. And I know people say they have crazy days at work, but Monday I was teetering on the edge of freak out most of the day. I don’t normally get that stressed about work. Sure I might see how things can be done better and feel frustrated that I can’t do anything about it and decisions that need to be made are higher than even my managers’ level, but nothing approaching Monday. I’ve been working on some analysis that’s due at the end of the week. It’s been going rather well I think, and I’m learning a lot. Last Thursday a couple of schedule people came to my desk to ask me about some work I had done in June and July. Apparently the drawing associated with that work is on the schedule for release. Why? Because someone thinks it should be, even though we don’t have the part finalized, someone needs to check a box. That’s not what caused the insanity. I came and worked OT over the weekend on the stuff I’m working on that’s due at the end of this week. Monday my manager looks at the stuff I had done over the summer and says to redo it using newer information. Basically do a month’s amount of work in a few hours. I totally understood, and knew if I had more notice that things were happening, I could have been working towards getting it done. I didn’t want to be the reason the drawing didn’t get released, so I started redoing the work wanting to get it done for 3 pm. Of course stuff didn’t work exactly right, so I had to ask for help, but my usual channels to go to for help were not available every time I had to go ask. So I was delayed, and I could see what I needed to do and what I wanted to do but I couldn’t do it. The lack of available help bothers me a lot about my job. It’s not something that appears to be getting any better, even after MONTHS of this happening. In a staff meeting Monday afternoon, they actually said “we know you analysis guys are overworked, but we won’t ask you to do the work of 5 people.” I’m doing the work of 3 people, so maybe technically they are correct. Anyway, so it came to the 3 pm meeting and it went fine, I didn’t get put on the spot for anything, and me not having the new analysis ready was never an issue. The freak out never really came, but it did come really close. Today seemed to be much calmer, which is fine, but the overall picture hasn’t changed a bit, which is not fine. Unfortunately, there is nothing I can do about it.

Monday was balanced out with what I hope will be a seriously great experience using Craigslist. I don’t want to jinx it, so I’ll wait until the transaction is finalized Wednesday afternoon to type about it, but it definitely made up for a crappy day at work.