Fear-Go-Round

OK, well, I found out today that my job description won't be having as much added onto it as had been initially threatened. I still have to take on all the ad tracking for two magazines, plus place all the ads in one magazine's layout, plus design the classified-style directory for that magazine, all of which used to be the advertising department's responsibilities. But at least the powers that be are going to buy an expensive piece of software that forces advertising clients to preflight their own ads, meaning that they won't get through to me unless everything is hunky dory for printing, meaning I won't be having to troubleshoot and contact the clients whenever something is wrong.

Still... All these new roles are going to take up about a quarter of my working hours. That's a pretty significant redefinition of my job, a mere five months after I accepted it. I really wish someone had acknowledged that these are not exactly kosher demands, either asking my permission or at least apologizing about it. The whole thing was handed to me very straightforwardly and out of the blue, with a sort of defensive attitude that I should be expected to do all the production work, since the word 'production' is in my job title (having been added in after I took the job), and, besides, another person who once did my job used to do all this stuff (it drove her crazy and caused an incredibly expensive error to happen).

But what I wish most is that I had the courage to express these bad feelings to the people who have saddled me with them, instead of just saying OK and quietly moping around. Why does someone else's cowardice bring out my own? Why can't I see the angry look in someone's eye defying me to bring up the subject they really, really don't want me to bring up, and bring it up regardless? Being a chicken about emotional expression is very frustrating. And exhausting!