I was recently hired by a company that has me perform scheduled maintenance and ad-hoc repairs on industrial equipment. Due to the unpredictability and varying degree of urgency when it comes to the repairs, my workload can vary each week from either extremely chaotic to fairly chill. This is something that I knew would happen when I accepted the position, but this is not the issue I have with my job.
The week before each upcoming month, I am given assigned work for facilities in my region for that given month. This allows me to schedule customers ahead of time, order necessary parts, and plan my trips. In the few months that I’ve been with this company I’ve learned that it’s best to get this assigned work completed as early into the month as possible, that way if tons of repairs come in I know I can prioritize the repairs.
For the month of July I was able to get all of my assigned work completed in the first week. It required a lot of after-hours visits and heavy travel but by Friday of that week I felt relieved because I knew that I wouldn’t have to worry about last minute repairs.
The following Monday, my boss gives me a call and asks me what my schedule was looking like that month. I told him I had actually powered through and finished all of my assigned work (it’s clear to me now he knew this) and that I was going to spend that week organizing my storage unit and traveling to any repairs that came in.
My boss instead decided that because I had an open schedule for the month, I could go cover for a technician on leave in a completely different state. I asked him what would happen if any repairs came in for my region while I was gone and he said “the region you’re covering for takes priority”.
So I end up going to another state for a week and a half, and sure enough repairs for my region start coming in. Because I’m the only tech in my region, I was the one who had to explain to my clients that I was busy in another state and that I would service their equipment as soon as I got back. So not only was I stuck in another state working at unfamiliar locations for longer hours than usual, I also knew in the back of my mind that as soon as I got back to my region it was going to be an absolute shitfest.
Well of course the inevitable happens. I travel back to my city on a Sunday and the entire next week was just me putting out fires, apologizing to customers, working late to get machines up and running, and working with my inventory team to get parts overnighted for early-morning repairs. By the end of the week I was completely drained, thus making my entire strategy of getting my assigned work done early pointless.
Now it’s August and I’ve learned my lesson. Instead of making my life easier and getting my assigned work done early, I’m spacing it out so that each week of the month I have at least one site I need to visit. My boss even asked me if I could get any of my assigned sites done earlier “to make the analytics for my region look better for upper management” but I didn’t budge. I told him my schedule would not be changing whatsoever.
This is what happens when you try to make life at your job easier. Instead of being rewarded for being ahead of schedule, you get saddled with more work and are then expected to clean up a mess that you actively tried to prevent.