Two people quit last month, and all their work landed on me. Management’s brilliant solution was to tell me to "just prioritize." As if I hadn’t already been skipping lunches and answering emails at midnight. How do they expect us to keep functioning like this?
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Working through lunch and answering emails at midnight is on you. Highly unlikely your boss is telling you to do that. Like others have said, take your breaks, lunches and work your scheduled hours.
Stop hurting yourself!!! A wise man once shared with me a story that hit home and put things into perspective. One day a 55 yr old man died of a heart attack all alone. His wife left him, kids wanted nothing to do with him. He missed all their pivotal moments in life because he was so focused on his job. At his funeral a few co-workers were the only ones that got up to speak. All they said was “John was a hard worker, and a nice guy”. The next day they posted his position and that was the end of John. Moral of the Storey is work doesn’t matter— what matters is the people you impact in your personal lives that matter and carry your legacy. You are easily replaceable at work with the next guy/gal. You family, friends, kids— these are the folks that will remember who and what you did. No job will ever get my mental health, or take away from me giving my 150% to myself or them again!
I was one of the April 23 people with tenure as well. There was a time I worked all weekend on a project. Rarely did I ever log off at 5 PM and was always well logged on before 8 AM. it meant absolutely nothing. They didn't even attempt to fill us into open available positions within the company which they could have done. It was hard at first but I hear my prior team members pain and read the comments on this site and perhaps being laidoff was a blessing in disguise. I no longer need my anxiety medication and I am happy to share I will be starting a new position soon elsewhere. I think of you all daily and hope it improves for you but know there is life after UHC.
I’m in the same boat but I just do what is the most pressing for me because to them everything is a priority. I don’t care what gets done and doesn’t. I take my lunch and breaks,etc. When that computer clock rolls to 4:00 idc if I’m in the middle of responding to an email. I save it to draft and log off. They come to me left and right about stuff I haven’t completed and I just say ; well I’m one person! Then I purposely drag out that task another 2 days just to be annoying. As long as it’s getting done. I like my job and what I do, my team, etc. but after a while, you just get tired of it. This company is burning itself to the ground from the inside out. Sad to watch.
Nope! Don't do that. Work your 8 hours take your breaks and lunch. Some of us done that for years and it didn't mean anything on April 23rd when they laid us off with tenure of 20/30 years.
You are hurting your own mental health. Take your lunches and sign out of your laptop at the end of your scheduled work day. You can’t care about your job more than your direct lead, senior leadership or the C-suite team.
@ap Im good, I rather do the bare minimum and make my manager look bad because I stopped caring.
Remember you are just a number at UHC don't think they actually care about you because they don't. Everyone is replaceable. Do what you can and remember work/life balance.
That means the highest priority stuff gets attended to and low priority stuff gets thrown to the backburner.
When I hear "prioritize" it signals to me that they know not everything will get done, or at the very least not done in the normal time frames.
Take your lunch and don't answer emails at midnight. Do what you can with what takes priority and if it all takes priority then do a little of all it each day so nothing is too far behind/ nothing is being forgotten.
Start with taking your lunches on time and answering emails during paid work hours.
@OP you should look for something else and quit as well.