How to name the roles you've absorbed, and give two of them back
You're not worn out because you're fragile. Exhaustion makes sense when you're covering three roles while only one of them shows up on your paycheck. Start counting. Your offer letter spells out the position you were hired for in Baltimore. There's the role that quietly stayed vacant after a colleague moved on. And there's the role no one has bothered to name, where people in your Baltimore office, or on your team in Towson or Columbia, come to you first because they assume you'll know. Three roles, a single paycheck, and one annual review, all under one roof.
The standard advice is to pace yourself, set boundaries, and book some time off. That approach tends to backfire, because it treats a staffing gap as a personal wellness issue. According to Deloitte's 2025 study of 7,500 women in 15 countries, 36% report that their stress has risen over the last twelve months. Research cited in The No Club shows women are asked to take on non-promotable work about 50% more often than men, and they agree to it more often too. Carrying extra work isn't a flaw in your character. It's a recurring pattern, and patterns can be named out loud.
1. The role that walked out when a colleague did
Risky to say: "I'll manage it somehow."
Try saying something like, "Since March I've been handling the analyst role alongside my own." I can keep it going until the hire closes, if we agree today on which of my own deliverables will slip."
Why: "covered" makes the work invisible. Attaching a month and a title to the extra work makes it visible and priced, and it pushes your manager to decide where your strongest hours should go. Whether that call gets made is up to your manager, so don't let it cut into your personal time.
2. The project nobody claims
Tempting: keep quietly running it, since it would fall apart otherwise.
Another option: "On top of my own role, I've taken on running the vendor transition." Either we add it to my scope, with the title and compensation to match, or we find it an owner whose responsibilities fit."
Why: the thing you're holding together only counts as yours once someone says so. Until then it's free labor with your name on any failure and nobody's name on the success.
3. The unofficial chief of staff
The pull is to keep fielding every request that really ought to land on your boss's desk.
Phrase it like this: "Plenty of colleagues bring me questions that properly belong with you." "I'm going to begin passing those along, and I wanted you to know that directly from me."
Why: being the person who always knows is flattering, and it is also a job. Redirecting isn't unhelpful. Doing so steers the requests back to where they belong.
Shared Then comes the review, the moment someone asks how things are going.
Risky phrase: "Swamped, yet fine."
You might answer, "Right now I'm carrying three roles at once." Here they are on one page. "Which of them would you like me to excel at?"
Why: "swamped" describes a feeling, not a plan. A page listing three jobs is evidence. The question at the end is the one your manager should have asked you already.
5. The compliment that keeps you where you are
The easy reply is, "Thanks, I'm pretty good at juggling."
Stronger: "I can do this." I'd much rather be outstanding at one thing that could earn me a promotion. Which of these should I hand off?"
Why: "good at juggling" praises the exact habit that is wearing you down. Take the praise gracefully, and in that same reply put a price on it.
The rule guiding all five of these moves
Burnout describes a condition of the individual. Holding three jobs simply reflects how the organization is structured. Write down the roles along with their dates, and the focus moves from your personal limits to the structure itself, the one thing that can truly be changed. If your employer is a Baltimore-area firm, a hospital or university, or a local government office, the same logic applies: the work has to be assigned to someone.
Send this to the friend who said "I'm fine" last week and wasn't.