Paving with Good Intentions

It's now been enough time for the dust to settle at work.

From what I can tell, over 10 colleagues were laid off from my part of the company, including two whom I'd consider friends and another whom I got along with really well.

An official email was sent around about one of them. So the rest I figured out through devious ways, in consultation with one or two other colleagues who were also worried for friends in other teams. I sent messages to two of them, one of whom answered so I'm especially anxious about the other one.

Last Friday the top management of my part of the company emphasized that we should take our time to digest things, etc. This week, there's a flurry of energy in the office and online.

I've felt guilty for feeling too exhausted and depressed by the past two weeks to go out to extended family events, let alone to the office.

New projects 'to make my team's life easier' are being generated from three different teams (besides my own) and my manager. As my team is in the throes of Fall/Winter-Black Friday season, I suggested that maybe we could coordinate between our four teams and agree on a set of projects per 2 weeks, to give me more time to focus on our regular Black Friday season tasks. But I think this suggestion was misunderstood, so now instead my team has been asked to work in 2-week sprints. I also felt pressured to soothe the feelings of colleagues by affirming that, yes, their projects are being made in a helpful spirit — which is fine, but is also exhausting because it requires me to set aside my own needs further for someone else's benefit.

A few clients have had major glitches: one requires a special feature that keeps malfunctioning and I've devoted a great deal of time to it, one has taken ages to finish working with and the teammate who was working on it directly was too stressed to communicate very well what was going on and where he was at (driving our client-facing colleague absolutely up the wall, so I put some energy into diplomatic efforts), and another has been sending us the same products as duplicates so that I have spent hours reviewing up to 9 times the exact same shoe. A few teammates were feeling sickish.

I'd admitted in an engineering manager meeting that I was overwhelmed and that I felt that I could no longer take holidays because of all the improvement projects for my team etc. I'd asked for support by letting me concentrate a bit on my team and on regular tasks. — But my embarrassing myself in this way was just seen as a rationale for more interference from outside the team.

I asked for a vacation day on Monday, in the end. In the request I wrote that I'd tried to 'set healthy boundaries' for myself and for the team; that I wasn't getting my point across; that this was all right because I understand that after the lay-offs people are stressed and want to get a lot done; so that I'd try just being 'offline' for a day. It was written, I hope, in a spirit of kindness. But I don't know if the explanation will be accepted.

I've also felt as if the campaign to get all colleagues to go to the office regularly is reviving.

I've kept saying I don't feel comfortable with it, but it is still assumed that I don't know what I want. It's not enough to say that I've had bad experiences in the past (maybe I need to go into the gory details e.g. the passenger who tried to attack me with his fists because I didn't open a train door quickly enough? ...). Or to not want Covid to spread further.

—Speaking of which, I generally do not understand why Germans and a few colleagues seem careless about the prospect of another heavy wave of Covid (I'm imagining transit and other functions disrupted because of weeks of sick leave, viral mutations, effects on the elderly and immune-deficient, etc.). I think it will worsen the economic problems that will already mark this fall and winter due to the high fuel prices and the rise of the cost of living.—

There was a period for maybe 3 days last week where top managers emphasized in lay-offs-related meetings that it was really our choice to go into the office ... then this week a massive relapse.

In general I've been under so much stress this Wednesday (also worrying that asking for space will also affect my half-yearly job performance review on Friday, or even more massive interference and pressure by colleagues who will start wanting to take over my job), that I went to sleep unusually early with a stomach-ache, waking up again at 3 a.m..

Thursday is my birthday, but so far it's not exactly happy.