I've been at my current job for a little over 3 years now. All jobs are ebb and flow with workload and demand from your clientele, but when working at a corporation whose growth (both with physical space and employee population) is always on the rise, the work load just flows, flows, flows. I look around at our department: I know I'm always busy--my weeks are scheduled with appointments to the extent where I end up with about 2 total hours of free time spread all throughout the week. By "free time," I mean unscheduled time to work on other things that have been neglected. The health fitness specialist (HFS) position, who reports directly to me, has had two staffing turnovers this year, and each of those brand new employees starts immediately with a full-plate, as they take over the prior HFS's client list and group fitness classes. Those poor girls would probably never believe that when I first started in this role, our team had plenty of down time. Oh, how times have changed. Our nurses are overworked, either constantly seeing patients for extensive new hire exams that our company requires or working on injury/illness cases. From there, the work spills over into our admin and support team. Truthfully, we all need a duplicate of ourselves to split our workload with.
Being a healthcare professional doesn't make us any less prone to job stress. It's true that we may have better outlets of dealing with that tension, but we fall suspect to it, regardless. The concern is when the job stress comes out, inadvertently, in our interactions with customers. Speaking for myself, I've had to be really careful with my responses when I get requests for new personal training appointments or new member orientations. Practically every time I sit back down at my desk, I see a membership application that a new member has dropped off. So, the thought running through my head is "oh geez...another one." I do new member orientations so often that I'm beginning to sound like a broken record (again, since we have an ever-growing employee population, the gym does too). I have to remember that this is (usually) a brand new employee who is excited about a new chapter in life: new job, new fitness routine, new goals, and I need to be there as a welcoming face and show my interest in getting them started and introducing them to all the fantastic programs we offer (those genuine feelings are within me, I promise!).
Same with personal training...when someone contacts me about setting up personal training session, the choices of reactions inside my head would be either screaming, rolling my eyes, or telling them to wait a year until I'm more free. But then I instantly remember that sending even slight messages of not being able to make time for a potential client or neglecting to come across like a motivated personal trainer is dampening the excitement they have of the goals they come to me with. Asking for help from a trainer is the first step from them--sometimes a courageous step, depending on the individual, and the worst thing we can do as a healthcare professional is come across as anything less than enthusiastic to work with them...honored that they are seeking out OUR expertise and sometimes taking a leap of faith to trust our judgement calls. In the larger picture, they are giving us all job security, after all!
I know I'm beyond blessed to say that I enjoy my job and that on most days it truly is fun. I have an awesome team of co-workers that make the best of our crazy schedules and are all team players. But, when I'm practically running out of the gym at the end of the day, avoiding making eye contact with anyone so they can't stop me with questions, paperwork, a lost locker key, etc. and then go home only to think about my to-do list as I'm falling asleep...that's the problem. And guess what: this is our supposed slow time of year.
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