Work seems to be getting a little better. It’s nice having a supervisor for once who actually cares what I’m doing and is able to provide feedback for me to work with, either positive or negative. They’ve hired my partner. She starts next Monday. They’re also bringing back the retired lady that was helping me out big time last year. FINALLY! FINALLY RELIEF!

My biggest problem is still the people I deal with every day. If I get things done in two weeks, they want them done in one. If I get them done in one, they want them done in three days. If I get them done in three days, they want them in 24 hours. And if their stuff isn’t on the top of the pile they’re emailing my supervisor. Look people, there are thirty of you, you each send me ten things at a time, and there is only one top of the pile. Our analysts each have one or two program offices to handle, but what the program offices don’t seem to get is that I handle them all! I am a bottleneck, my position is a bottleneck and always has been. The work flow is so large that it has to be handled by ten to twelve people before all converging on one person (me), who, when she’s finished, again passes it on to a larger group of six or seven, isn’t there something wrong with that?

It’s not like what I do is so easy an uninvolved that one person should be able to handle it without going insane. What do they expect? Do they expect things to move smoothly? Does anybody really not know what happens when you force three hundred cars into one lane on the highway? It is impossible for me to go through all of it every day. So, naturally, something has to sit, but it’s always left up to me to decide what that should be. Every day I have to decide who to piss off and who is going to pitch the smallest fit. No matter what I choose to ignore, it’s guaranteed to get me in trouble, so I have to pick what is going to cause the least damage. Sometimes I pick the wrong thing. Can I be blamed for that?