Just a story about a previous job that I had. This was meant to be a short post but ended up being a long rant sorry
So I wasn't technically a supervisor, but I took on supervisory & support duties for many staff members (who only had monthly meetings with their line managers so they were much more comfortable asking me for help for everything every day instead) and was constantly bombarded with help requests the entire day – to the point where I barely took my breaks/ate lunch just because someone always needed me. I'd come in super early and stay super late outside normal hours, just to be able to get the rest of my work done when no-one was around. I was just always working and every body knew it. When I had mandatory training I absolutely had to pay attention to, I'd appear off-line to avoid being contacted for few hours of training, but I'd still get 2-3 messages because they were just used to me always being there
Because of that, I had built up a huge amount of time in lieu, so I could take time off instead of payment. This is despite seriously under-reporting how many hours I worked because I didn't want my supervisor to know that I was basically working up until midnight some nights, so I normally recorded I worked until 6pm the very latest.
I'm quite a workaholic and obsessive, so as terrible as this sounds a lot of my life revolves around work, and I didn't initially mind working crazy hours. But because there was never a quiet period where I could actually ever catch a break and my supervisor's reaction, it was all wearing me down.
My supervisor was a lovely person and super smart, but when it came to my workload things got weird, and tbh talking to him about it made me really stressed out. He had always given me constant praise and stellar performance reviews, and reassured me when I'm self-doubting, so it wasn't like he was thinking I was slacking off which was why I was building up so many hours. The problem was clearly the workload (which he openly admits is crazy) and not me, but whenever the issue of my time in lieu came up, he seemed almost disappointed in me?
When it came to talking to my supervisor about this:
1. He'd tell me to take time off because high time in lieu balances is recognised a management problem. But when I'd suggest days rather than just approving, he'd say stuff like “that's a busy time” or “maybe check with everyone else in the team first to see if they can cover you”, while fully knowing that despite multiple training attempts from myself and him, they couldn't do what I do. My supervisor could, but didn't offer to cover me, his workload was gigantic as well so that's understandable. So he was basically asking me to do something while preventing me from doing it. And I just wanted to scream “WTF DO YOU WANT FROM ME”
2. He'd then suggest things like “take a longer lunch” or “take parts of the day off, even just an extra 15 min or so during the day”. Which terribly annoyed me, because the thing is that's not proper rest. If I took a day off, I could actually relax. But taking part of a day off just means being unable to fully disconnect from work that day, and prolonging stress. So what you think I'm just going to sit there for 15 minutes and think about all the work I have to do and watch my messages blow up, but just not work? Taking those 15 minutes “off” during the day is a great way to let more work build up
3. Just to be less problematic, I did start fake recording that I was taking parts of the day off (e.g. 2 hour lunches, 1 hour breaks during the day), but still be working during that time. But turns out that barely made a dent in the hours I had accumulated
Eventually I was able to choose suitable days to take off. Finally. But of course that meant coming back to work that built up while I was gone, and of course, a bunch of off-line messages from people who just assumed I was still working despite showing as off-line.
Tl;dr crazy workload = built up a stack of hours, was asked to take time off but not really given the option to do so. Was advised to take 15 min breaks off work during the day, basically making my “time off” useless and annoying