All, doing a 5 minute freewrite. Thank you for reading.
Never ever believe if your boss tells you to temporarily help to cover your colleagues whom are on overseas assignment or on extended leave. During their absence, your workload will significantly increase because you will need to handle not just your work but theirs as well. You will feel like there is just too many things to do but your boss will tell you, "Just for a short duration, don't worry."
But more often than not, this temporal coverage is not truly temporal. Even when these colleagues whom you are covering return, the workload doesn't change and your supervisor will say, "There will no reduction for you as you have demonstrated the capability to handle all your work and others."
So it becomes a case whereby someone whom can handle it temporarily will be able to handle it on long run basis, and suddenly the expectation increases.
So whenever this happens, document this workload increase and make sure to also put down the final date of completion and ensure that your supervisor acknowledge and will not block the subsequent return of work to the people whom originally own the work.
