It’s been a challenging week at the office. Interestingly enough, my headaches are all coming from the NY office.
Every morning I get to office between 7:30-8pmPDT. By the time I fire up my email, my inbox is flooded. The first 10+ or so are from our Hong Kong office that has emailed overnight while the rest of the
North America was asleep. The rest of the emails are from the East Coast (NY, Atlanta, etc).
Now, I worked some long hours in NY, and I’m not opposed to punching the clock hard when it’s needed, but the pace of my workday here on the West Coast is taxing.
I used to feel like getting into the office early helped me hit the ground running. Now I feel like I tripped at the starting line and have to sprint to catch up. I spend the majority of my morning firing emails back to NY and fielding the new requests from BC as the
Vancouver office rolls in for the day. By 4:30pm I’m exhausted. NY has finally gone home, and I take a few hours to settle up any outstanding Canadian business. Besides the general feeling of always being behind, I’m noticing the expectation that everything needs to happen on EST.
On a recent conf. call that was scheduled for 9am PDT, NoonEST, I received the last info update to form up the reports at 6pmPDT (9pmPDT). I go home, work late into the night and have everything set for the morning call. I get into the office at 7:20amPDT so I can catch up on those pesky emails before the call begins at 9. I was the first one in the office and didn’t know where the light switch for my floor was, but feeling rushed, decided not to worry (there is adequate security lighting). As I open my email, I see ANOTHER round of changes for the meeting info sent my way. It was sent at 7:05amPDT (10:05EST). Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to have the most accurate information, but what I heard loud and clear with that email, was that the expectation is that regardless of what time this info comes in, I need to get it done, which means the expectation is that I’m on my work email all the time to be able to see that people want these changes.
Tired and frustrated at 7:20am seeing this email come in, I loudly let out the F word at my desk. At the same time, the lights on the floor came on. Allison had arrived. She shouted over to me “It must be a really great morning if you’re sitting in the dark swearing”.
I was only able to make a few of the needed changes for the meeting, and it was OK in the end. Another thing of note about this conference call is that poor Hong Kong dialed in (it started at 12am midnight for them) and they stayed on until 2am.
