Just kind of in need of some venting. Sorry for how long this will probably be.
I don't want to give too much personal information away, simply because who knows who looks up what, so I don't want to be too identifiable. But I should probably provide a bit of context.
I work for a company doing print production for them and their various locations (thankfully, this isn't a customer facing job, just printing for the business I work for). Our production department is actually pretty small, just a few people, and oddly disconnected from other notable parts of the company. I'm the assistant manager, and one of my coworkers is the manager. Our “supervisor” doesn't work out of our department, so we don't see them that frequently, but we do communicate regularly via phone and email, and they're sort of the go-between between our department and the “important people”. A majority of the actual work is done by me and one of our other full time employees.
Probably the biggest point of frustration is that nobody above us has any sense of turnaround times or reasonable deadlines, nor do they seem to have the willingness to consider those things. We get a project with an unreasonable due date, we push back, they go “We're so sorry! We'll try to be better next time, but we really need this one ASAP!”. But then, of course, they don't actually try to be better about it next time. Shocking, right?
This has been a semi-reoccurring thing for at least the last year or two, at this point. We haven't missed a deadline so far, but it's frustrating having to drop everything else we're working on and bend over backwards to rush whatever random project they throw at us.
For the last three or so months, it's been even worse, because there's been a pretty much non-stop barrage of projects with extremely narrow and unreasonable deadlines, and we keep pushing back and asserting that they need to be more realistic about how long things take to produce, and their response at this point basically just feels like “lol nope!”.
The problem, as I see it, is that the person who assigns us these projects does not communicate to us very well at all, and on top of that, they refuse to say “no” to one of the “important people”. If one of the “important people” asks them for something, they just blindly say yes without consulting our department at all. In a better organized setting, this person should be reaching out to us and saying “Hey, this is what they need, let's discuss a reasonable turn time that I can take back to them”. Instead, they just say yes to everything without consulting us, then throw it at us and basically say “We need xyz and we need it rushed ASAP, k thx bye!”. Not to mention, they can't even get us files needed for production on time to begin with.
One of our current major projects that's taking up a lot of our energy is mass producing something that's going to go right into the trash of 99.9% of people who receive it. We're bending over backwards and breaking our backs just to produce literal trash right now. Because the “important people” are obviously out of touch and hooked on their archaic ideas, and refuse to consider modern options, clearly. Not only is it a bit annoying to think about how much of a waste of our time and energy it is for us to be producing literal trash, but it's astoundingly stupid how the company as a whole is just fine with throwing money away on stuff like this, rather than, I dunno, maybe paying people better wages or something.
We're still meeting deadlines, even if we're having to overexert to do it, but at this point, who knows how long we'll be able to keep that up. Me, personally, I don't really “care”; meaning, I'm just here to do work and get my paycheck, and all things considered, the day to day working conditions are more tolerable than they'd be at a lot of other places. But what gets me is that, if we start missing deadlines, they'll inevitably use that as justification for not giving better raises when our annual appraisals come up. Even though our department is apparently the only department that has to bend over backwards and be accommodating to everyone else.
The funny thing is, if we get even more aggressive about pushing back against unreasonable deadlines, I'm almost positive that the solution our supervisor will offer is “I can get approved overtime for you guys to stay later/ come in on the weekends to get things done!”. Uh… No? My team doesn't want to work overtime just because the “important people” can't do their jobs correctly. That shouldn't be the solution, nor should it be the expectation.
I also feel compelled to mention, I don't think any of the involved people are “bad people”. All of the described people are perfectly pleasant people. They just all absolutely suck at doing their jobs, and having any sense of proper organization, sensibility, or reasonable expectations.
Anyway, I just needed to get all of that out of my system. 🤷️