A Work-Related Tiger Turns Out to Be a Paper Tiger

Last weekend I was extremely stressed after an impossibly large workload was piled onto my team of five. I had to balance the training of a new colleague and answering of questions from within my team, with the regular daily tasks, surprise questions and requests from colleagues in other teams, and tasks associated with entering new clients' merchandise into our database.

After talks with angelically patient family members during the weekend, I drew up a mental list of observations and potential solutions to the situation. Keeping in mind Papa's advice on preparing presentations for school or university, I tried to have a list of keywords or main points that were most important to me, that should be mentioned. On Monday I asked the higher-ups in the company who set my team's tasks to meet with me, which they kindly did. And, much to my surprise, they agreed with what I said and also cleared up points that much reduced the feeling of pressure.

(Another colleague, whom I regard a bit as the older brother I never had and whom I'd asked for advice about the whole scenario, sat in on the meeting to assist if it was necessary. That was also very kind.)

I was afraid before the meeting that the large workload may have happened because I'd done something wrong, like my time management. But it seemed that my time management was, for once, not the main problem.

Therefore I was euphoric on Monday afternoon. On Tuesday — unlike in Canada where I guess the spectrum of Communism, Marxist-Leninism, and self-declared Socialism has less of a foothold, May 1st is a federal holiday here and we had the day off — I calmed down again. Since then I've been still stressed but happy.