Midnight Pub

Exhaustion

~oracle

It's been a rough week.

I was asked to come into our office basically to assess the damage after a week of my manager being absent. She's been trying to manage from home after a COVID exposure, and it's been clear that she needs a pair of eyes and hands in that office to avoid catastrophe. That's why I'm the team lead under her. My boss and I both spot the trouble areas in similar ways, often drawing the same conclusions even if I don't necessarily know how to fix the problem.

It's not the mistakes I mind so much as the gross oversights, the giant piles of documents and pleadings left to fester. Even so, at a certain point it's just funny. I can feel my co-workers, especially those who have been in the office all this time, prickling at my laughter and I just don't have it in me to care. It's hilarious that I am the youngest by ten years, the least experienced by fifteen years, the newest member of our team by about six months. Still, I'm the only person who thinks to check what's being left on the desks of people who've been working from home for a full month. I'm the person who gets called to bail out the most experienced team members.

Meanwhile, my anxiety about being physically in the office has never been worse. It's not just the COVID risk, though of course I've seen several people not wearing their masks correctly. It's also the difficulty of having to put that public persona on again. It's trying to be the upbeat, easy going, knowledgeable leader while staring down a giant pile of someone else's fuck ups.

Every day I've left feeling heavy, muscle groups relaxing slowly as I drive home. I've had to phone a friend almost every day to make sure I don't fall asleep.

I've forgotten how exhausting it is to manage other peoples' feelings. I've spent so much time alone at home with the one person I never needed to explain myself to. Now that's been yanked away and replaced with co-workers determined to misunderstand even my kindnesses.

And I'm just tired. God I am so tired. Hopefully the weekend helps.

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~starbreaker wrote (thread):

I've been here, and the weekend never helps. It just isn't long enough for that. When we're working in an office 9-5, five days a week, for months or years on end we don't notice the weight of other people's emotions we carry. But if you've been working from home for months and have to go back to an office and back to dealing with other people you end up shouldering that burden again and it's more than anybody should have to bear.

You don't get paid enough for this. Nobody gets paid enough for this.