It’s Thursday afternoon, and the world seems to be falling down around my ears. I am working alone on the upper floor of the company. There are presently four urgent helpdesk calls open, and I’m supposed to be working on a demo for Monday (on a ridiculously short timescale). I guess you could call this blog entry a drowning rant.
I did manage to get away at lunchtime (amazingly) to have dinner with W. We went to a pub called the Three Horseshoes on the other side of town - I had a pint of cider, and a double burger and chips. The cider has gone completely to my head.
I came back from lunch to a new “really urgent” help call, which I have just fielded and tried to put the flames out again. I’ll be glad when this week is over. I really will. My Project Manager’s idea of helping was to sit to one side of me, looking over my shoulder, watching me do what I would have been doing had he not been there anyway.
The thing that’s really annoying me today is just the fact that I am running helpdesk completely single handed all week. Today is worse though because I haven’t even got the helpdesk manager to field the calls. I am the whole upper floor of the company today… and I’m supposed to be doing development work for a demo.
I think they’re going to have to learn the hard way that you just can’t expect half the people to do twice the job. It’s just not going to happen. As much as I hate letting people down, I’m going to have to draw the line before this week is out.
Do I sound annoyed or what?
Perhaps I should spend the afternoon messing around with my own web projects and let the “far too busy” other people dig their own holes rather than find out (too late) that I have left them in a hole?