Workload is causing me to feel I want to quit or I may have a breakdown.

Suzycoll

dekaspace1 said:

Shortest way of describing it, is pre this year there was always times I felt overwhelmed but something like a weeks holiday sorted it, but in past year not due to cutbacks but upper management just not replacing staff workload has hit extreme levels and already had a few staff quit due to this making workload even bigger.

For example i'd say it was the norm to have 10 staff on not including supervisors which we normally had 2 most days and 3 on certain days, now the norm is 5 staff and 1 supervisor, one person has been on sick for about 4 months, another person was on maternity leave but that finished October and for some reason is getting paid but not doing any call centre work, sometimes they do emails and don't even need to come into the office and can WFH, don't want to judge so assume they have other issues but it is annoying when I have seen them a few times come into the office and joke how they are doing no work when I am at point at times I feel like punching walls, and have to shout loudly between calls when I WFH and swear to help with the stress.

There has been times when there has been 2, yes 2 people taking calls as managers always want someone doing emails to clear the backlog so have 1 or 2 people doing them add to the managers emailing us telling us to do emails between calls.

The only reasons I haven't had time off or quit is I was injured last year and had 2 months off work as was housebound, was given even more time off by GP but work said upper management said if I took longer off I would likely be fired, but even that was stressful as instead of a 8 hour shift with 1 hour break and 25 minutes of smaller breaks during day I was expected to work at first 5 hours then 6 hours straight, and that included the lunch hours which are busiest of day so caused me high distress, Outside of the injury I had 3 sick days the entire year due to norovirus and was given a meeting to discuss my time off (they did exclude the time signed off just their policy) I haven't had any sick days this year but afraid to take any but since others are off often far more than me I find it upsetting I can't take any off but know if I do even less people will be able to do the calls.

I need time off, I'm not talking a few days I am talking about 2 or 3 weeks straight.

On the subject of staff, supervisors have said management have approved 3 new starts, but that still means we have less than before, it took them over 6 months to authorise this.

Point of this thread is to say what could or should I do? I cannot continue like this but I was unemployed around a decade previous so don't want to go back to doing that, have been there 7 years now.

EDIT - For information I used to do about 35-40 calls per day and could do 15 emails on average and 20 if it was a quiet day, now the average call amount I do is around 70, and there was one day I did 88 calls on top of 17 emails, and I was always a person who did more than the average calls, there was colleagues who used to do under 30 calls a day and maybe 1 or 2 other staff that equalled my amount of calls done, I was praised quite a few times due to the amount of calls taken.

First of all can I say how sorry I am that you are feeling this way 

I guess no one can tell you what to do. If I may suggest some things to think about 

1 Do you have a trade union that you can contact ?
2 Does your company HR have an occupational health dept you can be referred to?
3 Is there any 'good' managers you can reach out to to explain how you are feeling and how the workload is impacting you?
4 Your health board should have a mental health service helpline (or even a health company such as Benenden if you are a member) 

Me, personally - I would get a doctors sick paper to give you some breathing space (at least a month) . I get your point about previously being unemployed . However , you sound like a really good employee BUT you are not a robot.

Take time off as soon as you are able - I guarantee your future self will thank your present self 

take care and reach out when you need too 

dekaspace1

We do have a Union but I never joined as was never given guidance on how to, we do have an employee mental health support line.

My supervisors/managers are great just not sure on how to approach it as when I said I was struggling with coming to the office I was told people have to come in and I'm part time so already only in 2 days a week max.

But when I broke my leg almost 2 years ago now they visited me a few times, organised a collection to buy me a dressing gown, pyjamas, underwear, sweets and drink etc and checked my flat to make sure it was secure.

Savvy_Sue

dekaspace1 said:

We do have a Union but I never joined as was never given guidance on how to, we do have an employee mental health support line.

There are several things you could do about that ...

If you know which union is most present in your workplace, ASK people. Look out for posters / information on the intranet, just talk to people. Or, just join - you don't want your subs deducted from payroll, but tell them who you work for and your details will be passed on to the local reps. 

Or I'd expect HR to be able to tell you who the reps are. 

Or, if you have no idea which union is active in your company, use the Union finder: https://www.tuc.org.uk/join-a-union 

It's generally easy to work out which one to join: if in doubt then you can phone and ASK them if they have a presence in your company. 

dekaspace1

Hi, I was sick last week so had that week off work, it did help but I felt guilty as it was one of the busiest weeks of the year, since it's a call centre people assumed we were closed for 2 weeks so phone up on the 1st main weekday after New Year, and of course can be quite rude and demanding.

I am glad I didn't work last week, I still feel I need 1-2 weeks off to clear my head, as despite being sick I managed to do some stuff around house and hired someone to deep clean my flat so it's tidy now.