I need a break from work.Work has been so, so stressful and hectic and frantic and apocalyptic the past couple of weeks (which I have, in my self-speak dubbed as Helly Weeks) that I've found myself so fatigued when I get home. Not much quality time with the missus and the baby because I basically am drained by the time I set my foot inside the house and drop my bag.
In the midst of rushing things that need to be ready for a company event in Barcelona, I've been slave-driving my people to work their arses hard to finish deadlines on top of other deadlines. Work has been raining cats and dogs these past two weeks that several of us had to go on overtime on weekends.
The ongoing (and continuing) renovations inside our new-look, old-feel office has not been helpful: you get distracted during the days with the contractors loitering the premises, you get anxiety attacks thinking where you will be seated in the master cheating arrangement; and during the nights, you had to deal with noisy contractors who, on top of the banging and crashing they were doing, were shouting and laughing, not considerate of the plight of others who had to stay for the better part of the night to slave away.
The worse part of the past two weeks for me has been the UK auditors' requirements (which, unfortunately, still persists up to now). Everyone know I'm innumerate (a person who has difficulty dealing with his 1s, 2s and 3s) but when the need arises, I can cope (I'm not just born with the natural affinity with numbers but rather with words). And cope I did, as I was (with no choice whatsoever and no freaking chance to adamantly and violently refuse) assigned to crunch the numbers for several reports that the forthcoming auditors required. Get this -- extract specific figures and data for each of our brands (nine in all) on a DAILY BASIS SINCE 2004!!! WTF!!!
I would've welcomed any assistance but none was offered even by the requesting department. At any rate, later on I would experience that even getting help from the other departments was a risk since you can't trust the accuracy with which they gathered the data. Good thing, one of my staff possessed the ability to understand what was needed and helped me out during the critical times.
Even my wife was unhappy with the situation. As a former accounting supervisor, she opined that the work I was doing was accounting work and asked what the heck was I doing with it? I said I had no choice as this task fell on me after the department that was supposed to be doing this happily passed the task along to someone else and left with no choice, and no say in the matter, I was left with the only option I could do -- work on it. Quitting did come to mind but with the family to feed, bills to pay, and a guitar and new DVD Combo drive to buy, I had to be practical and realistic. Idealism and principles are good stuff but they pale when reality bites.
So, I worked on the auditors' reports which began a coupe of Wednesdays back; came in early Friday until late, late evening; worked a full day on Saturday, came in early Monday and went overnight well into Tuesday. I got a break last Wednesday but last Thursday, an additional report was needed urgently so I went on another overnighter and went home before 6:00AM on Friday (I did go to work Friday after a shut-eye of 4 hours, I think).
Thinking it was over, I joyously came to work last Monday (the thrill punctuated by the chance to enjoy my new company-owned and loaned to me laptop) but the joy was cut short yesterday with the news that another report was needed (fortunately, the bosses were more considerate this time -- instead of daily, they went for monthly and just for this year).
All of this was happening while I was juggling my other duties as manager, writer, art director, liaison officer, marketing coordinator, department spokesman, troubleshooter, opinion and decision maker and sayer, email expert, meeting master etc. etc. (multi-tasking is a must-have if you're keen on becoming an employee in the company I work for).
And I knew I was grumpy, grumbly and totally spaced out -- and I apologize to everyone (especially my team) who felt the brunt of the past two weeks of stress and fatigue. As if adding injury, because of the urgency of task, I was forced to eat my lunch for the better part of last week on my workstation! Ka-awa-awa.
And, jeez, for the better part of each day, I was staring at my monitor while my fingers danced the keyboard (the numpad mostly) because the idiotic Excel wasn't working properly and wasn't converting text from our not-so-friendly database into numbers (I needed to calculate much of the data).
Pressure? Like 50,000 leagues under the sea pressure. The pressure to finish coupled with urgency was ballistic! I was eternally pressured the past couple of weeks thinking that my job was on the line. Not a few people heard me remark that I'm feeling the pressure because I was scared that if I didn't finish, I didn't have to bother going to the office the next day. Better to die than get fired.
Martyr? Nah. Like what I said to the office cleaner when she exclaimed her amazement that I was working overnight:
Cleaner: Wow! Ser, Ang sipag naman talaga, mag-o-overnight. Ang sipag-sipag ni ser.
Poor, Dumbfounded Ram: Hindi po kasipagan ito ... wala lang ako choice.
In consolation ...
I've calculated the total extra hours I've worked this past couple of weeks and with the Saturday work and two overnight sessions, I was amazed to have accumulated about 28 extra hours! That's good enough to offset for 3.5 days which I hope can be allowed to use.
Aarghhh!!! No more numbers, please! No more Helly Weeks, please!
