My work didn’t literally explode (thank God). But the figurative use of the word is very strongly intentional.
I work in IT supporting a system. My boss and I are THE primary admins for this system in a company of about 20k employees. There are some others scattered around the company with lower rights, but we’re the end-of-the-line support for the system. So groups without their own admin come to us to support them on short-term projects. If they need long-term support, we usually train up an admin on their team for the tasks they need completed.
We usually have between one and three people come to us each month. The work varies from about two hours and close to forty spread out over a month depending on the project to implement their needs and run their project. Each one isn’t a lot alone.
Since October 1st we had 27 requests as of last Monday. Literally, from Nov 1-22 we had 15 people approach us with projects. Again, each one is a minimum 2 hours. We are talking a minimum of 30 hours of work on top of our ongoing tasks and requirement. And honestly, the average is probably 10 hours for a project. AFTER we understand what our “client” needs from our system. So…
I would be in a panic if it wasn’t that my manager’s manager jumped on the influx and the Friday before Thanksgiving ran it up to our department VP. Turns out one of the groups which we’ve trained SIX admins in is throwing all their small projects over the fence at us. Six admins. To our two. And we are taking care of the global tasks for the system. Including (and these six know it) a major UI update the system developer (it’s web-based, so we have limited options to delay updates). Won’t lie, I might not like that team right now.
AND. AND. We have two massive global projects coming down the pipe in 2025. Like a 6k employee intensive implementation project our system supports and a 9k employee implementation with a minimum (still to-be-finalized there might be up to 13) eight languages we will have help support.
When I say I understand why some people come home from work and plunk in front of a TV….. that was November. The week that 10 requests came in and we literally were trading off “you take this intake call and I’ll take that one.” Because the intake call is how we know whether we are looking at two hours of work, ten hours, or forty.
Deep breathing.
So yeah…. my writing on all levels has taken a terrible hit. and this doesn’t even include the fact Farming Simulator 25 came out (of course I love a farming sim….)
Dream by Day 