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I've also been working in a non-profit organization that's seen so much more work since COVID hit. These last 9 months have been awful and have me seriously co

by fwip 6y ago

I've also been working in a non-profit organization that's seen so much more work since COVID hit. These last 9 months have been awful and have me seriously considering looking for another job. Everything is suddenly urgent and high-impact, being on-call until late every night with real (potentially deadly) consequences if you mess up.

kelnos 6y ago
Is management aware of this problem, and have they been able to hire more people to pick up some of the extra work? I get that extra budget has been difficult to come by during the pandemic, but it seems like they're missing the forest for the trees... if their undersized staff gets burned out and quits, the problem will only get worse until people do die.
- fwip 6y ago
  They are, and they have not yet done so. They have been promising to do so for a while.
vorpalhex 6y ago
> being on-call until late every night I don't know your situation but it's almost certainly not functional to be on call every night. People just don't function without rest and being on call tends to occupy a fair bit of mental and stress bandwidth.
- olyjohn 6y ago
  Right! And when you're on call, there are things you can't do, like go out of range of an internet connection, maybe you won't go see your friends, or go out to dinner because you don't want those activities interrupted... You need to be keeping tabs on your phone all the time. It keeps you in a high-alert mental state, just in case... and you don't really relax and unwind.
  - fwip 6y ago
    Agreed. The most relaxing thing I'm able to do while on-call is sit in the bath for a while - and even then, a few times my phone has gone off after five-ten minutes.
- fwip 6y ago
  Recently we've been able to flip it to every-other-day, which has been markedly better. But yeah, it's not something I can deal with much longer.
fwip 6y ago
Just following up: Part of what I forgot to express here is that the work is important, and I do care deeply about my coworkers - I've been at this job for 6 years, and half of my team has been there since I started. In some ways, it makes it better, because I can be proud of what we're doing. But it also makes it harder to take time off or set those boundaries, because I know that every day I'm not on call, somebody else has to be. Every day that I'm not doing work delays improvements and makes the rest of the team's lives harder. I try very hard to stop my normal workday at 8-9 hours and to not put in extra time on the weekends, but it's difficult to balance my own needs with both the needs of my co-workers and also with the demands of the work we're doing.

by fwip 6y ago

kelnos 6y ago

Is management aware of this problem, and have they been able to hire more people to pick up some of the extra work? I get that extra budget has been difficult to come by during the pandemic, but it seems like they're missing the forest for the trees... if their undersized staff gets burned out and quits, the problem will only get worse until people do die.

fwip 6y ago
They are, and they have not yet done so. They have been promising to do so for a while.

vorpalhex 6y ago

> being on-call until late every night I don't know your situation but it's almost certainly not functional to be on call every night. People just don't function without rest and being on call tends to occupy a fair bit of mental and stress bandwidth.

olyjohn 6y ago
Right! And when you're on call, there are things you can't do, like go out of range of an internet connection, maybe you won't go see your friends, or go out to dinner because you don't want those activities interrupted... You need to be keeping tabs on your phone all the time. It keeps you in a high-alert mental state, just in case... and you don't really relax and unwind.
- fwip 6y ago
  Agreed. The most relaxing thing I'm able to do while on-call is sit in the bath for a while - and even then, a few times my phone has gone off after five-ten minutes.
fwip 6y ago
Recently we've been able to flip it to every-other-day, which has been markedly better. But yeah, it's not something I can deal with much longer.

fwip 6y ago

Just following up: Part of what I forgot to express here is that the work is important, and I do care deeply about my coworkers - I've been at this job for 6 years, and half of my team has been there since I started. In some ways, it makes it better, because I can be proud of what we're doing. But it also makes it harder to take time off or set those boundaries, because I know that every day I'm not on call, somebody else has to be. Every day that I'm not doing work delays improvements and makes the rest of the team's lives harder. I try very hard to stop my normal workday at 8-9 hours and to not put in extra time on the weekends, but it's difficult to balance my own needs with both the needs of my co-workers and also with the demands of the work we're doing.