How to make bosses understand you have too much work

So I have worked where I am for 20 years. We have always had too much work. But in the last 4 or so years our case load has doubled. Also there have been complications due to zoom and people not wanting to leave their house for things.

So we were going to get help. Primarily because no one wants the job anymore. Everytime there is an opening... no one internally applies and several people who were in the job or advocating for the job have left. So someone was selected to help us out and he left. Several people in the job quit.

Now we are back where we started explaining again. For me it seems like a losing battle. They just wont' see. Because they don't want to. So we explain it again and again and again. So I don't even feel like bothering. But we are explaining it again to my boss... so I can't be rude.

Does anyone have any thoughts on how to explain it in a compelling way?

I would leave as well but I have 6 years left until my pension but if I were to get help and a better job I might be able to extend and have a better pension.

Nope. There’s no compelling way. Because they don’t care.

I am also coming on to 20 years in the same place.

We were always overworked but recently there is also a massive shortage so they’ve been hiring contractual employees who know absolutely nothing. So we now have to teach them and do their work (because they can’t or won’t learn) and I’d rather they didn’t hire anyone.

I was begging our director for the past 3-4 months to either train these people himself or don’t hire them because I can’t spend my time teaching them and then do their work because they can’t learn or don’t care enough to learn.

They don’t care that you have too much work. They really don’t.

They don’t care, so I stopped caring long ago. I do what one person can do in 8 hours. I work overtime only if it’s beneficial to me and even then I keep the amount low. I am a cog in a wheel and I have accepted that fact.

That is what I think. But I had thought the fact we were no longer able to attract candidates (and most of them quit) might change their views.

Nope. It doesn’t make a difference.

We can’t attract people either because it’s state wide shortage and the ones we occasionally attract just quit because they can’t handle the load. Or they only bring in people who can’t do the job. Still no change.

People spell it out in exit interviews why they are leaving and it still makes no difference

I agree with the others, I've never seen employees have luck with this either, unfortunately. I worked at this place where my department had really high turnover due to a terrible manager. We were always short staffed because someone had quit or been fired. And when someone was replaced, they took time to get up to speed. Somehow, they still expected us to maintain the same targets as when fully staffed, which wasn't possible. Some people found ways to cheat to make it look like they were doing more projects. Of course, that whole situation led to more people stressing out and leaving, or getting fired because of not meeting impossible targets.


It was a disaster for morale, but our department head's manager was not at all receptive to discussing it. It seemed like they decided that making us individual contributors take the fall for everything instead of the awful boss was better. Although, I think longer term, it made less and less economic sense for the business to have this constant staff turnover and overwork. She'd been there a while and would have gotten more severance than a newer worker. But still, it would probably have been better to take the one-time hit than continue as it was.

So as usual, I got nominated to make the speech -- to my own boss. Which is a dumb move because he doesn't listen to me. But everyone else is scared of talking to him. And of course I have to do it on a busy day for me.

I don’t know if this is something you could do, but if possible I’d recommend doing absolute bare minimum, no extras. It used to be called Work to Rule.

In my experience few employers listen to employees, it usually takes action of some sort. Ideally collective action. I’m guessing you’re not in a union?

I hold firm as much as I can do that but so much is stuffed into the job the bear minimum is never ending work and stress. No union.

We met yesterday and I gave my best speech but, I think it is not going to work. My boss gave off a couple of tells... that he just didn't understand. (or care) Which is annoying. Now he is meeting with other people within the week to advocate for us.

The employees had a meeting before this meeting and I mentioned how I hate going out for lunch with him and his interns because I know I will come back to a complete mess of emails and work (which could make me need to stay late) - i.e. I can't leave my desk for 2 hours during the day or I will pay for it and I didn't mention that at this meeting but someone else did. My bosses response was... kind of "well, you just have to make up your mind to disconnect from work and do things that are good for you." um... YOU ARE THE BOSS... you can do that we can't. So insulting.

He also said, can we do more telework so that you will have commute time to do the work? Um... number one... we already doing that -- and number two F** YOU. So your solution to a job that is exhausting is to give us more time to do more work?

Well guys, it sounds like you have some really crap supervisors, a truly good supervisor will not let this happen. I have quite a bit of experience in supervision,
First Lieutenant Army Rangers-->Started a medical practice with three other doctors who I was also office manager off for 9 employees--->Supervised a lab doing research (can't remember exactly but approximately 50 employees--->Got promoted to section chief of the D.O.D. side of that National Lab (Over 1,200 employees). Overworking someone in any of those jobs would have been most unwise; people could have been hurt of killed, the dangerous materials handled could have caused an industrial accident. A good supervisors role is to maximize productivity, in a safe and friendly working environment with an open door policy. If someone would have come to me, and said they had too much on them, which happened sometimes. Then it would be my job to be to see that work distribution was changed so they would not be over taxed or too stressed. Not much one can do about the stress in a combat setting, you can't like yell, "Hey you over there please stop lobbing grenades at us please." Part of good supervision is to see to it that work distribution is distributed out fairly, your goal is not to kill your employees. This approach also lowers turnover and will ultimately boost production, because happy employees work circles around disgruntled ones. You have some poorly trained supervisors who need to be thrown in the recycle bin, which is what I would have done,

Oh oh doubt. One of my bosses is disabled and got his entire career because of that. His incompetence is legendary.

The other boss got the benefit of my competence and now really doesn't need me but if he didn't have me... yikes.

I am trying to figure out how to slow down and do less work. It is difficult because doing so can lead to stress from me but I have gotten too much gaslighting and attitude this week.

In my case, I was lucky to be able to engineer an exit from that place receiving severance pay and unemployment compensation. Long story, but I live in a country with more worker protections in the U.S. and my husband is a lawyer, so he has some tricks of the trade.

Fortunately, my current freelance situation is much healthier. The company's owners' actually seem to want to create an environment where people want to stick around.


A few former co-workers have said that the revolving door continues at my old workplace. My replacement didn't even pass her 90-day probationary period!

I can't really leave because of the pension. A new guy started and rumor has it that he already is complaining.

One of the problems we have is that it is sort of a "caste" system where certain people get nicer jobs because of who they are and their status in the system. It is felt that certain people are more important than others.

Also, generally they will not let you out of the position. So if they find some fool to take one of this positions... (after they lied to you) they will never let you move up. IMHO because you weren't good enough for a job that isn't stressful all the time. Those jobs are reserved for people they like.

I pushed back a bit yesterday. My boss asked me to do something unnecessary and told him i couldn't figure out what he wanted and then he explained I told him I didn't think it was necessary and so if he wanted me to enter something he had to explicitly write it out. Enough of making it easy on him.

Yeah, the pension definitely complicates things. My husband is in a similar situation where he works for the government and will receive a significant payout if he lasts 15 years. So, he's definitely got those golden handcuffs. There also is sort of a caste system. He was strung along for a while with false promises of promotions that always went to someone else. He no longer believes any promotion is forthcoming.


He recently had to push back against his regional office trying to transfer him to a different center. Basically, his worthless former manager was in charge of that center and he's quite sure they want him to clean up whatever messes she left. He's lucky that they can't force him due to his contract.

Best of luck trying to push back and get a better balance.

Well I hope good news. A co worker told me his boss said that after the meeting we are getting "help". I don't know what that means but... hopefully it is what we asked for. We asked for a person who would just be for our group because they wouldn't get pulled away by anyone else. And I know they are hiring right now. So maybe they will hire one person for us.

In our case “help” meant that they hired more people. People are contractual recruited from who knows where and they know nothing. I ended up having to teach them and they still can’t learn. When I hear “we are getting you help” i have anxiety because it means more work

I cannot believe it... after about 90 meetings and 4 or 5 memos last week my boss met with the CEO of the place. And we assumed that would be it.

Instead... we (the little people) have to meet with the CEO in the large conference room so he can hear it from us. UGHHHH I cannot repeat it ONE MORE TIME. And because most of the people are on vacation and this meeting falls when I am on duty.... I will be one of the only people in person.

I swear I am just not going to say anything. I think they just want to stall.

I will add this-the other people need to speak for themselves. How did you get the job of talking on their behalf prior to this. What usually happens in that scenario is you are labeled by management as a troublesome person. What may end up happening at this next meeting is you’ll speak first and the rest of them won’t have a thing to say. When you do talk, speak for yourself only and only to your particular job. No “we” or “us” - and tell your coworkers they’ll have to speak up.

It started out with another co worker complaining and he got the ball rolling, because they like him better. I was asked to join putting together a memo, that would go to a manager. I did that. Then the original co worker left and went on to another position so now I seem to have inherited the fight. When, really, it isn't even my fight.

Several people have left. This is why we are having meetings in the first place. So many people have left due to work load.

So I don't know what that was about but we had the meeting yesterday. I was furious that only a few people showed up. The people who really needed the help didn't show, of course. (though it amazes me that people think it is ok to blow the big boss off) The good news though is that it really wasn't a meeting to justify anything. The big boss said that he agreed we needed help and there is a plan in place and he just wanted to keep the lines of communication open.

A co worker asked what time line was and we got a lot of blah blah blah. But that is fine. Until I actually get some help... I am just going to do the bare mimimum.

It sounds, like this could potentially be great. They are saying we would all get 1/2 a person to do the work.. 1/2 a person is amazing. They will also be new hires so we won't have to deal with attitude from the people who are already there. If my job could be made better I could stay longer and that would really help my life but we will see.

A month later and I haven't heard anything about assistance. I tell you. I am dying. I have been on vacation for 4 days and I already have 332 emails in my inbox. At this point, I am going to war a little with my boss because he still seems to be on the do everything immediately and I am trying to slow things down as a form of protest. It is just unsustainable.

Well good news.. I am excited to say that next week we will be getting help. I will be getting my very own person who I share with another. This is historic. I have been in the job for 20 years and always told we couldn't have help. My guess is that people who were blocking it have retired or are sidelined.

Here is the problem though... I don't know how to have an employee? I have been on my own for 20 years.

Because my boss is the Chief...I get to go first.

Also, at the moment things are slow because of the summer.

This week I am trying to save things up so I can give them to her.

OMG this is a nightmare. First, yesterday I got my helper and they gave me a severely limited list of what would be allowed. So one large thing that I need help with I gave the helper. I had told her that if she had any questions... she should just ask, and I was very nice. I told her what I gave her was NOT URGENT AT ALL.

To wit, this morning I have an early email from her boss telling me they were going to make a co worker of mine show her how to process them. What? FIrst, why is it even hard to know how to process them... just look at the others. (we have a system where these things are done) Second is this how it going to be? Everything I give them to do has to get stopped to make even MORE work me? What is the point of a helper if I have to spend HOURS training them? When I first started this is how things was... we would get "help" only for them to change the helper and I would have to spend hours training them.. and they would do nothing, because weren't trained... but I need help because I don't have the time in the first place.

And kind of mental midget goes to her BOSS first. Now I have to give a training session when I am in again. And this is not my niche'.

Sounds familiar. They hire people who need extensive training and instruction. Then they expect us to teach and train them, which is ultimately more work than if they didn’t hire these people at all. But administration pats themselves on the back that they hired us help. Ugh

It is just a game. A way to give you help but you will never use them because it is more trouble than it is worth. Today I gave her very little to do. I didn't want to have to have a meeting with her manager to "discuss it".

Later in the day I mentioned the person who was doing the work before would be available to answer questions as well.

They go to HER boss to get his permission do to this. OMG... to answer some questions?