A little help

fulgencio

Hey guys,

I'm having a little trouble in work at the moment. A bit of background first...

I work in a sales office with around 25 staff (it's part of a much bigger company over over 300 people) and there's two team leaders - me and another guy. I'm relatively new to the job but the other guy has been doing it for years. I worked up through the team starting off as a newbie, then to our sales team and eventually up to team leader. There is a pretty big age gap between us both - he'd be coming up on 55 and i'm 38.

When I moved up to team leader originally, it came with some bits of the sales job and some new bits like being the trainer for new team members. Eventually over time, we started to use new technology and systems that both team leaders were trained on and I get that he might not be as comfortable with something new, but it's like he has no interest at all and just points everyone at me when something changes or they have a question. He's even taken to sending me emails reminding me to do stuff that he has the access and training to do himself.

If anyone gets a call escalation, he disappears or tells people that he's "too busy" to help and sends them to me. On days when I'm off, I've been told that he leaves the room if a call starts to turn sour and when the agent asks for help, he refuses to take it and instead feeds them what to say.

Last year when I went on holidays for a fortnight, none of the jobs that are assigned to me were done even though I gave him a run through on everything before I left. Queue angry phone call from line manager on my first morning back because he was told that I "didn't give enough training".

I've approached the line manager and have gone through some of these things with him, but it's almost like he makes me feel guilty that I'm troubling him and he's made vague promises about changing stuff, but nothing ever happens. He's even told me that he doesn't want the other team leader near the techie stuff because "he doesn't understand it" - to me, that basically means that everything new is coming at me from now on. I don't want to go to HR because that will make like even more awkward for me.

I genuinely feel like I could burst into tears when i'm in the office (but that's not a good look on a 38 year old man). I'm tired all the time and can't sleep properly. My friend has told me to go to the doctor and get signed off with stress

So has anyone gone through anything link this or can anyone give me any advice on what the best way forward would be? At this stage, I'm willing to try anything.

Cheers,
R

Berberis

Hey sorry to hear that work is putting all this pressure on you. No one should be made feel the way you do as a result of work, but unfortunately it appears to be all too common now. There are a lot of people like your co team leader and manager about who are not up to doing all the different roles of their job and get away with it by loading it on to people like yourself.
Few bits of advice I would give are
• When your co team leader leaves you emails with instructions to cover his work I would send reply stating you may not be able to fit that in due to your own work load commitments but might be able to fit it in if he can cover some of your jobs in return. I would also cc all email correspondence of this type to your line manager.
• Maybe a meeting with line manager or HR about redefining the team leader’s roles and responsibilities would be a good idea and ideally this meeting could look at both you and your co team leader’s current skills and divide the jobs workloads to specifically suit each person’s talents/skills i.e. you do the techie stuff and other team leader does the other.
I mentioned earlier that work is putting this pressure on you but to be honest unless something proactive is done by your line manager or HR dept. then you will have to take responsibility for relieving this pressure.
Learn how to turn off from work outside working hours, (not easy, it’s taken me nearly 30 yrs and a lot of hair loss before I have managed it)
Maybe consider leaving your current employer and finding a better one.
Definitely talk to someone GP and/or counsellor. No shame in that and the right one can be very beneficial in supporting people to be more reflective and take stock of their lives/self and help you find your own answers to alleviate problems.
Ps Nothing wrong with a 38yr old man crying, But there is something wrong with an organisation/employer when their employees feel the way you do because of the way the run it

Best of luck with whatever you do and never let the bastards wear you down because I could bet that both your co team leader and line manager are not being worn down by putting all their work load on you