So, my boss is going on vacation for a week pretty soon so I'll be taking over his responsibilities as well as all of my own normal responsibilities during this time. I've been looking over my schedule today and, unsurprisingly, it's going to be an absolute fuck ton of work and I'm not sure that it'll be possible for me to complete it all without working until very late every night.
It feels like I'm in between a rock and a hard place because if I am unable to get everything done throughout the week then I'll get disciplined for “not working hard enough”, but if I work my ass off and get all of the work done they'll think, “oh look, Ready is more than capable of taking on the work of two people!” And tbh I don't think I can sanely take on much more work right now because I'm already busy af as is…
How do I tell the higher ups that I'm not okay with them piling on a shitload more work without getting punished for “not doing enough?”
Note: please save the “just quit” comments…I do like my job for the most part and this is unfortunately fairly common behavior from most employers so going elsewhere won't necessarily fix that.