SINGAPORE: A Singaporean employee is feeling completely overwhelmed after his workload suddenly tripled the moment his probation ended.
Posting on the r/askSingapore subreddit on Tuesday (March 10), he explained that just after he was officially confirmed in his role, senior management decided to shake things up by changing how projects were classified.
Because of this, his workload skyrocketed, and he ended up with “three times” the tasks he used to handle. To make things worse, he was also assigned additional responsibilities that had nothing to do with his actual job scope.
“It’s extremely unmanageable now. Every day I’m one of the first in the office and one of the last to leave. Even so, the mountain of work keeps piling up and I’m really struggling,” he expressed.
“My manager herself thinks that our new scope is impossible and ridiculous, given that there are only two of us in the department, and she’s been complaining to her RO. However, she said that it’s a decision from upper management and there’s nothing she can do. I did mention that they should hire extra headcount if they’re going to continue with this amount of work, but their reply was that they have neither the budget nor the intention to do so,” he continued.
With deadlines stacking up and no help in sight, the employee felt stuck. His manager also started dropping hints that he should “take his laptop home and work over the weekend” to keep up.
But as a father to a toddler, he wasn’t willing to give up the only two days he had to spend with his child. Even if he did work on the weekend, it wouldn’t just be a couple of hours. He estimated that it would take almost a full day just to make a dent in his workload.
Feeling trapped, he reached out to the online community for advice. He asked, “Should I start looking for a job while continuing with the current one? Will it reflect badly on my resume for wanting to leave so soon after starting a new job? Or, should I tough it out for at least one year before looking?”
“Just do what you can within office hours”
Singaporean Redditors strongly advised the employee to stop overworking himself and let management deal with the consequences of its unrealistic demands. Some also suggested that he and his manager should purposely miss deadlines so the higher-ups would be forced to step in and fix the problem.
One Redditor said, “Just don’t fulfil. Really. Let your manager or the manager above start having to apologise to stakeholders that deadlines have been missed. Only then will they reconsider and either undo or change the re-organisation, or increase the headcount.
“Especially if there’s only you and your manager doing this function, the company will suffer even worse if they fire you.”
Another commented, “Don’t do everything too quickly or you’ll be rewarded with more work. You’ve already passed probation, no need to prove anything to yourself. And continue to keep an eye out for job applications.”
A third said, “Just do what you can within office hours. Don’t overwork yourself and don’t bring your work home. Just say there isn’t enough time.
“Letting assignments fail is the only way management can see the lack of manpower. If things still are finished on time, what incentive is there to do anything?”
In other news, a man took to social media to vent that though he has been slogging away at his company for about six years, his salary is still stuck at fresh grad levels, around S$4,500.
“I feel underpaid and undervalued,” he lamented. “I’m thinking about quitting, even though I don’t have another job lined up, but that idea makes me anxious too. I just can’t wrap my head around doing so much work while earning so little, especially when my colleagues earn way more and seem to do less.”
Featured image by Depositphotos (for illustration purposes only)