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November 2011 Moms
Work Problems, Need Advice
Warning, this is long!
I think I just had my first panic attack. My job lately has been horrible and stressful. I'm constantly being pulled in 50 directions, and my boss has this "I never do anything wrong" attitude where I feel like I take the blame for every mistake our team makes.
I was feeling overwhelmed before getting pregnant, but now it feels 10x worse. It started getting more resentful after finding out our maternity leave plan sucks, even though the company claims to have these "amazing" benefits.
I just had to email my boss in the middle of the day to say I was stepping away for personal time (I work from home) after a big spat through email. I told her I needed help on project 1 because she needed project 2 done by 9am. I continued to do 3 hours of work on project 2, only to find out that she had reassigned project 2 *not project 1 like I asked for help with* to someone else because she said I "said I couldn't handle it"... grrr!!!
Part of me thinks maybe I'm being a giant baby, but the other part thinks that even if I am being over dramatic, this stress isn't good for me or the baby. I really wish I could quit and go back to work my old retail, no stress, part time job until after the baby comes.
Is anyone else feeling more stressed at work, or am I alone here? Would you quit or try to tough it out?
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Re: Work Problems, Need Advice
Sweetheart, you need to nip this in the bud. I have an EXTREMELY stressfull job, and for the first 4 months of my pregnancy I let it get to me and almost exploded. On yet another late evening at work, my poor phone took the brunt of things when I threw it at my office door. I didn't have a phone for 10 days, and by God, those were the BEST 10 days I ever had.
If it is at all possible to sit face to face with your boss and discuss your workload during this time, then I would. Email or telephone conversations just don't convey the same emotions as a face to face. The stress hormone cortisol invades the amniotic fluid when it is high. So if it helps you to visualize, your baby is literaly swimming in stress which has been shown to possibly cause pre-term birth, and other issues with the pregnancy and baby.
Toughing it out is a BAD idea. I made a concerted effort to reduce my stress at the office by strictly sticking to 8am-5pm hours amoung other things. Since you work from home, your co-workers and supervisors do not see you on a daily basis, so your growing belly is NOT a constant reminder to them that you may need a slightly lighter workload at this stage.
Good luck!
Thanks, I know I do need to talk it out with my boss. I am a people pleaser by nature, and I'm always the one that takes on the extra work and says yes when all of my other team members say they are too busy. I didn't want pregnancy to become the reason why I can't keep up my work load, but I'm starting to think that pregnant or not I'd be feeling the same way.
I think I just need a career change... I am so burnt out.
From reading your post, it sounds to me like there are a few problems:
1. you aren't happy about your companies maternity leave - that stinks. And there is not much you can do about it. What is their policy?
2. Your boss is not allocating work properly and communicating with you properly - this is something you can address. Pregnant or not, you should be able to communicate with your boss on workload, timing and expectations. Also, if your boss is getting you help, your boss should communicate clearly with you what projects he/she is providing assistance for you. I would talk to your boss about that and focus on the fact that you want to work efficiently, and you want to partner with your team and work efficiently, and this can better be accomplished through better communication on workload allocation.
3. Before you agree to take on an extra project, tell your boss, let me revisit my current workload to see if this is something I can achieve. You can't always say no, but give yourself a few minutes to look at your workload and priorities before saying yes to see if this is something you can do in a reasonable timeframe.
I think these are challenges (#1 aside) that you would have if you weren't pregnant. Focus on teamwork and working efficiently, and remember that you don't have to agree to do every extra project that is thrown your way. It's OK to say no, or say, I can do this, but I will really need 3-4 more days to do it because I have projects A, B, and C due at the same time.
Good luck!
The policy is 6 weeks unpaid, and then I need to have child care set up for when I come back. (Even though I work from home, child care is required.) I can collect STD for 6 weeks, concurrent with the unpaid time, but only if my doctor signs off on it.
It isn't that horrible of a plan, and I'm not trying to sound whiny, it was really just upsetting because my boss's reaction to my pregnancy news was "Oh, just wait until you talk to HR. We have a fabulous maternity leave policy!"
FMLA does not apply because the 60 employees don't work within whatever mile distance the law requires... I'm having real issues with the concept of putting a 7 week old baby in day care.
And, your suggestions are right on. I'm going to take some time tonight to write out my thoughts on my workload, and then try to meet with her tomorrow about it.
Day care isn't really the issue at this point, I only added that because someone asked about the maternity leave policy. It's everything in my original post related to the job.
Wow - a double-whammy. Short maternity leave and it's unpaid. I guess to your boss, the fabulous benefit is that they hold your job for you? Would you be able to add on some vacation to extend it a week or two so that you could have more time with the baby? A lot of daycares here in SF won't take babies younger than 12 weeks...
Good luck talking to your boss.
This same thing happened to me when my boss got back from maternity leave last fall! Then when I didn't get project 1 done, she took everything away from me and since December I have sat here on my butt surfing the net for 6 hours a day. I do my job first thing in the am and then the rest of the day I have nothing to do. And the horrible thing is she shoved my other two jobs off onto a girl who already had a full work load and now I feel like that girl doesn't like me because of that! I'm sure they will all to a little dance when I walk at the door tomorrow at noon for my last day!
You need to tell your boss you need to have better communication! Maybe to protect yourself you should have HR sit in on the meeting with the two of you, so you have a 3rd party present.