I've been feeling pretty burned out in my job lately. It's tough to go in every day and face the problems that just keep getting piled up. It just seems that every day, it gets worse. My team has reached a record high in number of CSRs reporting to me, we have more tasks than ever assigned to us, summer vacations (for everyone else) have made us even more short-staffed than ever, and it just seems that I have one nightmare after another. One day, an agent wants to tell me about which orifice they're bleeding out of and how they can't afford surgery; another, I have to explain to a earnestly confused individual that screaming at a customer is never okay.

I feel like a hypocrite because, truth be told, I could be working harder. It's just hard to really care. I just can't look at another sighing, eye-rolling little twit who is nodding to anything that will get them through their terrible performance evaluation as quickly as possible. Why am I wasting my time?

Instead, I've been blissfully faking doing what I am supposed to be doing (coachings for individuals that don't care) and spending more time doing career planning and assistance for people who are actually not bleeding sores on the ass of humanity. There are some people for whom working for my corporation is a wonderful thing, compared to the seething chaos in their personal lives. Besides which, I try to shield my agents from the worst of it. As long as someone is legitimately trying to do a good job, I am very supportive and friendly, and I try to make each day pleasant for them.

Interestingly enough, while I don't think the brass would think so, I feel that this has been one of my most productive periods. I'm doing less running around, but I see the faces of my best agents and I know they're happier than before. I guess I really don't care if the management likes it or not; all of my futile tilting-at-windmills didn't achieve anything anyway, and this way I'm at least keeping the good ones. The ones that don't care -- well, it's just my mission to get rid of them. If you don't care to do even the bare minimum, then I don't care to have you on my team, and I don't care to help you get paid for sucking.

I feel a strange lassitude about the situation. My anger and rage has started to even out to general depression and despair about management, but genuine pleasure as well in dealing with my core group. I guess, now that I think about it, I really don't feel bad at all. I've gotten hugged this week, I've been told that I was the best boss someone ever had, I've been told that I've made this job better than anything else in their life for someone, and I'm happy about that. I guess I've found that little spark that made me like being a supervisor to begin with.

So, you know what? I'll always get mad about the stupid corporate policies, ridiculous management types who can't walk the talk, useless employees that I can never seem to get permission to fire, and endless turnover. I may move to another job. But, in a moment of extreme anger, I took a step back and realized that I need to find happiness in what I'm doing -- the "zen of supervising", if you will.

That's what I try to tell myself, anyway. Stress, it'll kill you.