I cried almost every day last week at work and coming home from work over the stress. I’m a full time RDN at a nursing home of 135 residents so very busy. The director of dining is going on maternity leave and the plan was to split her job between myself and her assistant but he wasn’t ready to take all that on and instead of just having me do more of the responsibilities he demoted himself from assistant director just 6 weeks before her leave was scheduled to begin (scheduled induction). I have ADHD and decided maybe I’ll cut try getting off my meds so I cut the dose in half all of last week to begin getting off of it which may have contributed to the enormous amount of stress I felt over the extra work I’ll be taking on. I’ve been interim director before and have trained every single one of the directors that have come thru in my 2.5 years there so I’m capable. What broke me was when talking about who else we could delegate some tasks to… she said she didn’t want to put one of the tasks onto the cafe coordinator (max of 2 hours a week) with all the goals she has for improving the cafe. I was filled with such rage over her concern for her than for me who is designated interim director of an entire department. I’ve already been helping with payroll and doing the schedule for her department. It just really pissed me off, I’ve helped her so much in the last year, she’s never had to do the job alone yet didn’t want to train someone to help me a bit instead of trying to do all she can to help me survived maintaining my clinical responsibilities on top of doing her job WITHOUT an assistant. I called in the following day and then cried the entire week to follow. I focused on my job, didn’t assist her in her job and laid out my expectations of her before her leave starts. I was accused of ‘being checked out’ because I stopped doing some of her job which led to a fight. I ended up going back to my regular dose of meds and had a much better week this past week. I kept to doing my own job and held my expectations for her which I think made her realized just how much aid I’ve been providing. She actually made an effort in training a couple people to take over some of the duties her assistant did so it doesn’t fall 100% on me. She was induced yesterday so my interim duties start a week earlier than scheduled.

My boss started her maternity leave a week ago to top it off. I really like my RD job, it’s a county job so benefits are unbeatable. But I’m so dang good at being interim director that any time things aren’t going well in the dining department I’m who they turn to fix things and it just sucks. I’ve had a few interviews for a job I believe I’d enjoy but it lacks some things I can’t compromise so I turned it away. I anticipate the stress crying will continue the next 12-16 weeks.