Work has been tough lately. Everything seems to be a challenge. No one is having an easy year. Two weeks ago i spent time with mid management staff and their stress level was such that people who normally are laid back and low key were bickering and clashing with people they have always worked well with for years. Much of the stress comes from being short staffed in classrooms and everyone trying to cover and ease the burdens of those on the frontlines.
Working with families and children who are experiencing extreme poverty pulls on your heart strings every day, and some days you deal so intimately with the hurts and pains of others that it makes it hard to let it go when you head home at night. Those are the things each of these people i am responsible for are dealing with. On top of the fact that there is never enough money to keep centers up, not enough staff to fill each open position, and everyone is being held accountable for every move they make...
At a management level, each day the demands and duties seem to increase, whether it's imposed by federal, state, program or just self identified, the responsibilities and expectations grow. Once a high quality program, innovative and considered leaders in our state, it feels like we are at this moment in time struggling to stay afloat. i know that other agencies are feeling the same pressures and challenges that we are, but sometimes i think instead of taking more and more on, we need to focus on what we have and spend more time, effort and what money there is on improving that. Over the years each time a member of management has left, our director saves money and asks all of us to absorb those duties into our current ones. Or we get funding to do a new (huge) project and while the grant includes money to hire more management, we absorb those duties and no new persons are hired. Yet we never have any money.
What happens is it results in people being spread too thin to do their job well. Right now no one but the director is resonsible for dealing with landlords and facility issues. This is ridiculous in that she has absolutely NO time to deal with things of this sort, and without her backing, there is nothing the rest of any of us can do. i can go to a landlord and ask for something to be done, but there are no teeth in the request. Without the director to say, unless something's done we will be finding a new location, landlords are quite content to let carpets become frayed and worn, ceiling tiles needing replaced due to roofs leaking have been replaced with slightly less used unsightly tiles, faucets with a steady streams leaking 24 hours a day, broken windows in other rooms of the building left unfixed. It's just ridiculous, and it leaves those of us who want to have a good program, and want to build on services, dealing constantly with those types of piddly things that take all of our time, energy and spirit. It's very hard to not become frustrated, angry and often just non caring.
i've worked for this program for going on 19 years. i love the people i work with, their hearts and passion and devotion, but there comes a time when you don't want to keep hitting your head against the wall any more, or you hate the feeling that you're competing with your team member when there's a little extra money and you both want/need to support your own service areas specific needs.
my heart hurt this morning when my boss said at a meeting, "we need to make fill in the blank a priority"...my god, that's what we do every day or we would never keep working there! That's what i and others were doing last week while she and several others were away at a training, struggling to support staff who are well aware that because of her absence; new staff can't start, jobs needing advertised are left unadvertised, and we are all left working over, taking up the slack while she is gone....Every day each of us feels the pain and frustration of not being able to meet the needs of children, families and staff... i so wanted to just say "f*ck you for insulting the rest of us like that! Everyone at this table has just as much heart for our jobs as you and to insinuate that any one of us is giving less than you is an insult and a slap in the face!" What kind of leadership is that? Who does that to the people one is supposed to be inspiring and leading?
Obviously i need to do some major breathing and attitude changing. i keep coming home with this every night and i dread the next day so much that i can't sleep...
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