Discouraged

Along with rank comes responsibility. I’ve been selected for promotion, so I’m doing fine with the rank part. However, I’m having trouble keeping up with the responsibility part. After three months here, I expected to have a handle on all my assigned tasks, have settled into a routine, and to have generally cleared my desk by the end of every day. Unfortunately, this is not the case. I’ve somewhat streamlined some of the jobs that need to be done, one or two new tasks have landed on my desk that my predecessor did not have to cope with, but I expected with hard work and focus to be able to stay ‘afloat.’ This is simply not happening, however, and I am a little discouraged. There may be an opportunity to address this with my boss when I discuss with him the options regarding who will do the daily task stuff while I’m gone (I get two weeks of leave, which when incorporated with travel will amount to being gone for about three weeks, and though this doesn’t happen for two more months, we probably need to start planning for it now). The essential record keeping, data tracking, and report cataloging that I do amounts to about 2 hours a day. When I spend four or five days on a special project or wrapped up in a monthly (vice a daily) task that sucks several days of my time, I’m a least ten hours behind in the routine stuff, let alone the other parts of my job that have accumulated. If no one does anything while I’m gone, I’ll be facing over 40 hours of mind-numbing routine, not to mention all the ‘important’ priority tasks associated with my job.

To my knowledge, I’m not responsible for much more than the guys who held this job in the past were accountable to do—which could create the belief in the mind of my superiors that I’m slacking. However, I know from the management files, established processes and accumulated work that I inherited that a significant amount of this work was not getting done. I have been instilled with a certain amount of can-do attitude and ‘mission accomplishment’ mentality that makes crawling to my boss and whining about my work load difficult to do, especially given my great work conditions and quality of life compared to many others engaged in this fight. Please pray for wisdom and a solution (along with continued good health so I can keep on keeping on).

Semper Fi, Jon G.