When Good Managers Go Bad... or at least get punchy

Ever had one of those days at work where everything just sort of blows up and you end up totally overwhelmed?  No? It's just me and my stressful job, isn't it?  No one else understands this, right?  Okay fine!  We've all had those days.  I'm still special people!  You can't take this from me!!!  Ahem, anyway... It was definitely one of those days today.  Work seemed to fall down on one colleague and me in a torrent all day.  And I don't mean those cool torrents that you use to watch movies on the computer, either.  No this was just a continuous wave of work.

Do you know what I've found?  I know you're waiting with baited breath, so I'll tell you.  I've found that when the work builds up a little too high, I get punchy.  Yes, I've said it.  I know it's a shock to your system but I feel confident that you will somehow survive.  So here's the deal for today.  There are four of us who manage four separate teams at work.  Two of our team leaders were out today.  That left my colleague and friend Syed and me on our own with a LOT of work to do for four teams total.  Now toss in an urgent unplanned situation with one of Syed's clients, multiple brand new people that we're supervising, and just an overabundance of the work that normally gets done.  Trust me.  This was a recipe for disaster!  But there's one other thing. Syed is one of the nicest people you will ever meet and even though he's swamped, he will try his best not to let YOU get swamped... to the point of insanity!  I love him dearly but what I found out was that if I wanted to do my share of the work, I had to swipe it out from under  Syed or he'd try to do it all because he's just weirdly nice like that.  I was having to fight the man to help out!  How strange is that?!  All I wanted was to sit back, hide under my desk, have a cupcake and maybe a nice glass of wine.  But no!  There I sat trying to jump on work before he could because apparently being ridiculously nice is contagious!  And let me just say that this is one of those things I was pretty sure I was immune to.  Apparently... not.

So here's how the email chain ended up going:

First we are BOTH sent an email with details of a case that needs review
Syed:  I'll get this one.
(About this time I realize that he's currently working on every other case that's been sent in in the last 30 minutes but he hasn't actually grabbed this case yet... so I do.)
Queen:  Too late!  It's mine mine all mine!
Syed:  Oh goody.  The grown ups are in charge.

Yeah, turns out he's nice but sarcastic!  At this point the person who sent us the original email and who has gotten copies of the subsequent emails sends out a new email telling us that we have made her day and that she's going to nominate us for super cool awards and then they gave us a promotion for improving morale... and a raise!!!  Okay not really.  Well she did say we made her day but the rest of that was just stuff that SHOULD have happened.  It's not my fault that I'm the only one who realized it.  Oh and they should give us each a unicorn too because unicorns make everything better!  Yeah, now that I think about it, they should really put me in charge of more stuff.  Oh!  But they should let Syed do all the work because he's super nice like that.  I think I'll write this up as an official proposal.  Wonder who I should submit it to.