Tackle the extra as a team

“My boss is a kind man who has been in the organisation for ages. He's also past retirement age.

"It has got to the point where he's forgetting things, making mistakes and having judgment lapses. A lot of work is being dumped on me, because I used to be a supervisor.

“I took a pay cut to get away from the stress of supervision, to do more interesting work.

"Now I'm immersed in budget and answering everyone's questions or asking the boss for answers. My boss's boss is busy or absent.

"How do I disengage from all the boss stuff and get back to the interesting work I was hired to do? Is it possible to do that without putting everyone off?''

Everyone gets asked to do something outside their job description now and then. It may be due to a spike in work or, in your case, helping a struggling co-worker.

It is bad form to refuse the occasional call for help. But it is not unreasonable for you to open a dialogue about how to balance these supervisory duties with the job that you were hired to do.

My guess is that, with all the administrative tasks you have taken on, you are having difficulty completing your regular assignments on time or with your customary attention to detail.

It also sounds like your new duties have sprouted up in a somewhat organic fashion, with little forethought and long-range planning.

Those are the two critical points for you to make in a discussion with your supervisor.


Stress that you are very willing to help but that your regular work is suffering. Propose ways in which your assistant-supervisor duties could be circumscribed.

For example, someone else on the staff may be equally capable of assisting with the budget function and you could suggest that this person assume some or all of those responsibilities.

You could also define a rotation system whereby a different person is “on call'' to answer questions on certain days of the week.

In essence, ask that the work be spread across the team so that you can still find the time to do your job.

The wisdom of this approach is that it creates redundancy across the department so that no one person is the sole authority on a particular matter.

Then your organisation can count upon a back-up system to get things done rather than relying on people such as you to drop everything.

What you are doing is noble and, for the moment at least, necessary. But it is not efficient and you should point that out.