Stress
Stress is unusual for me. In fact, if anything, I've always been told I need to be more concerned about matters than I am. The past week or two have been full of good times, but they've been tainted by an unusual outbreak of anxiety about a situation at work. I'll be going about my happy-go-lucky activities and suddenly I'll remember it and become sick to my stomach. I've even had it come into my mind while lying in bed. That's when I know there's something weird going on in Mattland.
It's my job to keep projects on time and under budget. I'm inexperienced and not very thoroughly trained. One client tends to have a flurry of activity of getting done at the last minute. Several such jobs got away from me and went over what we told the client the job would cost. I should have taken care of it months ago but I didn't know how to proceed when this happens. The lateness is making it worse. At least now my immediate supervisor knows about it and he's not very angry. I still have to 'fess up to the account services team I work with. Here's hoping they'll be will be so understanding. According to my boss, with luck he and I and the account team can fix it so that it doesn't become the client's problem. I already feel a great deal of relief from the nausea and sweating, simply because I told my boss about the situation.
Comments
rachelann1977 on Nov. 21, 2005 7:41 PM
Although I am not what you would call a happy-go-lucky sort of person, I have a lot of experience with the particular sort of stress you are talking about. It seems to be different from other kinds of stress, at least in my experience.
When I was working at BASF (a chemical company) in Southfield, I started out working through a temp agency but eventually managed to get hired for a permanent position when they bought out an old coil company in Chicago. This is unrelated except for one fact: when I was hired, I didn't really even know what job I was being hired for. The company BASF had absorbed had been forced to do a lot of downsizing and some people who had lived in Chicago all their lives relocated to Southfield. So, here I was, just looking for a permanent position so I could get BASF to pay for my undergrad, and I get pulled into an entirely different job. As a temp, I had not been expected to know much, but was trained well; In this new job, there was no-one to train me who had actually done the job in Chicago. I was responsible for running all kinds of tests I had never run before, which required materials we didn't have, and a boss who didn't really know how to order things through BASF, or where to order them from. The biggest problem we had was having to manage the calibration of the testing equipment. This is a very specialized job requiring specific equipment, supplies, and training, none of which we had. I often feared we were getting bad test results or that the equipment was not running properly, but I would hesitate to tell my boss because we had no protocol for what to do in such situations. For several years of my life, this situation plagued me every hour I was at work, and some of the hours when I was not.
This is the kind of stress that comes from being a responsible, organized person caught in a bad situation. Mistakes build up, or work builds up, and you feel you should have been able to do better, but you're not sure how. Maybe I'm projecting a little here, but this was the situation for me, at least. My solution: banish the word "should." It is exclusively used for purposes of guilt and is therefore useless and harmful in almost all circumstances. Use can, could, will, or even would and you will find the resulting statements to be much less stressful. It may be an overused therapist's trick, but it works. Also, if you use the subjective tense, always follow with a reasonable IF statement.
I don't know if this will help your current situation; I suspect talking to your boss was the most important thing you could've done. But it sounds like similar situations may arise in the future, so couldn't hurt, right?
matt-arnold on Nov. 21, 2005 8:05 PM
Was your income at risk because of that situation? Did you get chewed out a lot by unforgiving co-workers?
rachelann1977 on Nov. 21, 2005 8:45 PM
I don't know whether or not my income was at risk because my boss probably would not have fired me unless forced to do so, but the co-workers thing -- yes, all the time. It really sucked.
rachelann1977 on Nov. 21, 2005 8:53 PM
It was already such a long post, I tried to shorten it, and ended up not describing the situation very well. Many of the test results were bad. Several customers complained. Co-workers who requested the tests began to request crazy alternate tests and were convinced that we were just screwing up all of the tests because we couldn't do our job right. Eventually, we changed the way we ran tests, but until then, that's how it was.
I felt responsible for every problem even when I wasn't, and when I had done anything that made the situation worse, it ate at me even more.
You can only do so much, I guess that's what I was trying to say.
matt-arnold on Nov. 22, 2005 4:27 PM
Thank you very much for caring enough to comment here. Anxiety sometimes makes me clam up, but I still will spare enough words to thank you for sharing your experiences.
avt-tor on Nov. 22, 2005 2:53 AM
It's always a good idea to do the best you can and keep your boss in the loop about how you're doing. A problem that is reported early is a little problem.
sothisislife on Nov. 22, 2005 4:02 AM
Sorry to hear you are stressed, I know I have spent many nights awake worried about work stuff, and I wouldn't wish that on you. :(
Good luck.
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