I am several months in to a new position and replaced a person that was promoted. I’m ringing in 10 years in my field and find a lot of value in how my role makes other employees work better for them and safer.
I QUICKLY found out that the person I replaced was doing very little to even keep us in legal compliance and that is exacerbated by the fact that the recordable injuries are in the teens. All eyes are on me to fix it. In the process of fixing it I have exposed a lot of things the former occupant never did, knows nothing about, or blatantly lies about but everyone bubble protects them and thinks their incompetent “LOL” moments are valid.
From an anti work perspective I’m like hell yeah, this place accepts apathy, mistakes and, incompetence. I’m also getting the biggest ass pats from doing the bare minimum, which I know is rare in today’s capitalism.
My problem is, asking this person anything is useless because they never did anything for the 4 years they held my position. They don’t know how to manage the intricate parts of my job, don’t know who is managing compliance items, can’t tell you where records are. The conversations are fruitless and frustrating. They have even gone so far as to remove a chunk of my responsibilities because they were too dumb to understand it or ever do it but now they are trying to learn all about it and regularly stepping on me in the process—not to mention completely fucking it up due to original lack of know how.
Anyhow, all the feedback I get is fix my face, don’t get a reputation. This level of incompetence drips down on me daily. I spend 30% of my active effort at work trying not to embarrass this person while other employees who also know the truth of this from personal run-ins.
I don’t know how to not take my job seriously. Im the intercession for the people and it means something to me. I also very much care about my own well-being and happiness at work. How do you navigate situations like this and still give coworkers a right to be poor at their jobs next to you? How do you gently remind people that the reason they are just now hearing xyz is because the predecessor knew nothing of it?