Before the restructure of our team, I had a boss who pretty much left me to my own devices, and I delivered everything I needed to, but managed to do my hours of 8:00 til 4:30, and get to the gym 3 nights a week.
Since he moved on, and we restructured, my work/life balance has basically gone to shit. (Scuse the language).
- I keep getting stress-related excema that I never used to get.
- I've been on 4 sets of antibiotics this year where I never used to get ill at all.
- I've not managed to get to the gym regularly all year and am lucky if I manage once a week.
- My weight loss has completely stalled because partly of the above, and also because, to compromise for feeling so miserable at work during the week, I've been enjoying nice meals out at the weekends.
- I've been drinking wine every weekend when I hardly used to drink at all.
- I've been doing more and more data churning, setting up reports and bailing people out rather than added value stuff
- My boss doesn't trust me to produce anything that might be customer facing without her checking it over before it goes out
- I spend most of my time finding errors in the database and fighting with the agencies to get them fixed
- I get absolutely zero job satisfaction anymore
The thing that bugs me the most though, is that when we have big team meetings and my colleagues all stand up and talk about these great pieces of work that they've delivered and what it's meant for the business I feel wholly inadequate.
I accept that I am not the leadership type, I struggle with anything too strategic or creative. However, I am bloody good at data analysis and putting together arguments for things, and I am great at the technical side of things and have great attention to detail.
My immediate team thank me for the support that they get from me, but that's as far as it goes. It's not like I feel I can stand up in front of all these people who are delivering millions of pounds worth of trade and compare myself to them. But I do know that without me here, they wouldn't be able to do their jobs to the success that they do, but I rarely get the recognition for that. And I don't want to have to ask for it either.
Yesterday, I worked til gone 6:00 on a piece of work that was urgently needed for yesterday. It came about as a result of a meeting 2 WEEKS AGO. But as usual, it was a last minute desparate dash and I made it happen.
So, my boss sends out the piece of work - she's added in a summary of her own (something I could have done, but she never asked me to do it as she wanted to do it herself). She did at least copy me in on it, but the email made NO reference to the work that I had put in, or the fact that I had stayed late to do it, instead she asked the recipients to direct their questions and feedback to her.
I feel awful complaining as well, because the rest of team are all putting in long hours, but they are at least customer facing and feel like they have a purpose to what they do. We have our annual objectives review at the end of the year. Once again mine will read all about how I "helped" do this, and "supported" so and so, but I have nothing concrete to say "I owned this", "I did this and it resulted in £x business". My objectives are never tailored to reflect that, and so every year I feel like a failure.
I've got a meeting with my boss this avo. She's not a bad boss. She's new into the role, having just been promoted, so she's eager to make her mark too. I understand that she's trying to develop me, but what happened to acknowledging and playing to someone's strengths rather than just focusing on their weaknesses and making them feel completely inadequate when they can't improve in their weaker areas?
As a team, there is no work/life balance. I keep saying it's got to stop and it's not fair on all of us, but the only answer I get is a shrug of the shoulders and "the work's got to be done".
I know I'm lucky to have a job in this economic climate, and with a company that is performing really strongly too. I just can't help thinking there's got to be more to it...
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