Burnout

Post 00016 | September 17th, 2022

I know it's been a while since my last update. I wish I've had more time and energy for enjoyable things like updating this website but work has been an absolute bitch this past month. This is mostly a rant, so feel free to skip it if that's not your thing.

Normally the holiday period is my favourite time to work. Production slows down, and the few higher ups who aren't away don't have any specials projects planned. This year was different. It's been a regular attack from all angles.

Some background: I work as a production planner. There are a couple of planners above me who figure out what customers want to buy and pass that list to me, who make it happen. I make a plan of the the most optimised way of producing said products and make sure the raw materials are ready at the right time. The problem is that these planners have recently switched desks, meaning I have a new planner to train. She's doing her best, bless her, but "capacity limit" is a foreign word to her. So she needs to trim the list. And then exchange something for something else. And then she has to try if she'd be able to add another order anyway. She seems nice. I like her, so I feel bad for saying no, but I need to stay in the realm of possibility and every time I say yes, a revision to her list is an hour lost of my work day.

Then there's this stupid war. Turns out Ukraine and Russia are some of the biggest producers of the raw materials I need to prepare. You can probably imagine what that does to the supply chain. It has put a strain on other suppliers who as a result are less reliable. Freight containers showing up a day early or a day late. We have limited space in our silos so we kind of have to produce it as it arrives. I need to make a new plan, a worse one. Floor people complain and I can do little else than apologise for something that's not my fault.

Anyway, apart from scheduling, I volunteer as a sort of IT supporter. Rather than having actual IT supporters, there are a handful of tech-savvy people who help their co-workers with any issues they might have. It usually works pretty well; We speak the same jargon and we are familiar with their workflow. However, some time ago our factory was sold off to another company and because of this, all the factory's IT infrastructure has to be replaced. Servers, client PCs, switches, access points, the lot. Some genius decided to start this migration during the holiday period. For me, it meant I've had to set up about forty people on about 10 different PCs during a time where we essentially were running with parallel IT infrastructure. Because the IT department has volunteer supporters who deal with most day-to-day issues, they really had no idea what they were getting into, so now they are behind schedule and have greatly reduced their office hours. There's very little help to get from them, so we have to figure most things out ourselves. The PCs they hand are not done deploying, meaning you are not able to set up people in one go. You get random errors when you try to access things. You just have to leave the PC to finish deploying, but its hassle for the users who complain to me for not doing my job properly. Once again, I find myself apologising for something that I can't do anything about.

And that's how it's been this past while. I've been trying my best trying to help people and keep production flowing and it's just not good enough. I found myself taking thirteen hour shifts - the legal maximum - and head home feeling guilty about all the stuff I didn't have time to do. It affected my sleep and my body was screaming for me to stop. Ever had your back feel shivering cold and scorching hot at the same time? Had your limbs twitch whenever you heard Outlook's "new mail" chime or found yourself unable to write because your arms were throbbing to much? I was one big "check engine" light and yet I kept driving down the motorway, adding another thing in the pile of things to worry about.

It was stupid of me. I proud that I managed to pull through it but angry with myself for even attempting. The only good thing that has come of this is that I know where my limit is.

That said, I hope I haven't made you worry about me. I am recovering. I'm getting rest and my body is back to its usual self. I've started enjoying things again. I'm over the worst hurdles and people are returning from their holidays. I'm still going to take it easy for a while, so bear with me if I'm not updating this site as much these next couple of weeks.