DescentBB

So I work for a small manufacturing company. They've had about a 200% sales increase in the 4 years I've been working here, so business is fairly good for a less than 20 employee company.

Here's a problem I'm facing. For the first couple years, the boss I had, although a friendly boss, wasn't a terrific businessmen. He'd say, work on Task X, then a day later, work on Task Y. So we'd have several big projects going on, and none of them would ever get completed because he'd switch projects so often. It honestly got to the point I no longer took him seriously - I'd only do a half ass job because I knew it wouldn't get completed anyway (not good I know, but being honest here)

Over the course of the last year, we've gotten busier, and I have a new boss. This guy knows waaay more about business, but he just throws a massive amount of tasks at us, all of them high priority. On top of it, I handle a lot of customer product support, and internal IT support, so I am constantly getting pulled a million directions.

Here's how a typical day looks:

• Come into work, see sticky notes with various customers that called while I was gone.
  Check email, respond to customers questions that are quick
  Start working on more involved customer projects (in addition to retail products, we do a lot of custom build products)
  Get a call from customer having a problem, get derailed.
  after helping customer, shop has problem with materials, go and photograph and document the problem.
  Another customer had a box shipped to the wrong address, have to call FedEx and reroute
  Where was I again? Not sure, I'll check my email
  Old boss (still the owner) sends an email with parts to buy for one of his R&D projects
  New boss comes in, says we have a show coming up, needs 5-6 posters designed.
  Oh looks like someone is sick, I need to pallet up the portable displays, takes me a few hours
  Come back in, customer upset I didn't take care of them.
  Start taking care of customer, another customer calls with a rush order.
  Finish that customer, someone's printer is broken.
  Boss comes in, reminds me to work on finishing the code for the blog.

And then I go home, my task list is larger than it was when I left. People in general are understanding, but I hate working in a place where I can't get everything done. I have another employee I delegate some stuff to, but she's super busy too.

I'm seriously considering looking for another job. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that I have a job that pays the bills, but it's just something I'm not liking anymore. And $14/hr, although better than flippin' burgers, isn't much for being married with 2 kids.

/rantoff

Reminds me of my last job and Dwarf Fortress game play.

In my experience:

Don't burn any bridges or haul off and quit, but start looking around for something better. ("Better" = workwise, not paywise.) It's still a rough economy, but tech jobs are out there for the finding.

Personally, I've switched to better jobs four times in the last 10 years (three of them at a pay cut at first), and I can say without qualification that it's been worth it.

If anyone knows a job, I'd be interested. I haven't finished my degree (currently enrolled at WGU), but I have a pretty wide skillset in web development/ graphic design, and tech support (both internal and external).

Thanks for the advice Foil - I watched an employee do that here about a 6 months ago, they just up and quit with no notice. When you live in a small town, you pretty much just screwed yourself out of most jobs. I'm looking around, but moneys tight and I'm hoping to not take a cut in pay....

I used to have a job where I was expected to both program and take support calls. Right when I was getting back into the zone, the phone would ring again. It was very damaging to my productivity. Whenever possible, you want someone doing full time support and someone doing full time programming, not a bunch of people struggling to do both.

For the bigger picture I'm w/ Foil.

For the problem at hand -- start task checklists, ie. make a short note of a task to be done and check them off as you go. Helps not dropping tasks because of switching around, also helps to show what you work on and what's in the queue if people ask why you can't do something sooner or ask for your workload.

Your boss may be looking for some help. Go to him and tell him everything you just listed above and ask for a raise.