[Incoming vent]
TLDR: I was passed over on a promotion that I deserved because of corporate bullshit and I overworked myself in the process, scamming myself once again and letting them win.
I started work at my current job a few months ago. I'm an admin assistant for my branch of the company. I've made this role into what it is now because no one in my dept (boss included) seemed to know what all was involved in it. 97% of the things I do every day are things I that intuited how to do on my own or found instructions for buried away in old files. I've made it very efficient and I'm usually out of things to do for the day before lunch. Super boring, but it was a nice change of pace compared to what I was doing before.
A few weeks after I started, someone in my branch moved into a new role in another part of the company. Because of the way our corporate red tape BS works, we were expecting it to take at least 4-6 months to find a replacement. So of course during that time we as a team were gonna have to pick up the slack. At first, I was happy to just have more things to do so that I could stop pretending to be busy. At first, I was willing to learn and help.
We discovered I'm actually a pretty good fit for this role because I've caught on quickly and had more time to help than others on the team during the day-to-day. I am now essentially doing the job by myself. Unfortunately, our line of work is very cyclical throughout the year, and we are starting to get busy again so I am now stuck with too much to do between both jobs and feeling just as overwhelmed and burnt out as I did at my last place of work.
There's been no word on the replacement, and looking to lighten my load again, I asked if I could be officially considered for the role so that I could have a credible reason to offload my admin responsibilities (painfully aware that I'd have to still juggle both jobs until they find my replacement, tho). It essentially just means a promotion for me because it comes with more money and has WFH privileges. I presented my case: I do the majority of the work for this role already, I came into it prepared because I was already helping the previous employee daily because they don't speak both official languages and I was translating a lot of their work for them, I've learned well and been told I excel at it (directly from my boss), and since they're offering the replacement a 1-year contract (because this position is held for that long at minimum for the previous employee because they're filling in on someone's leave of absence) and we've already wasted 3.5 months of that time, it would make more sense to just let me officially take over for the remainder of the time and talk extensions of the contract as necessary. I was told I presented my case well, but that ultimately “we would see what upper management thought”.
Cut to this morning when I asked about it again after weeks of silence, and was told it was a no. Basically, because I've been here for less than 6 months and I'm still on probation. And they've interviewed a candidate that they like. And that I “need more time to prove that I'm a good fit”.
Translation:
•they can pay the new employee less than what they'd have to give me for a raise because they would be on the starting salary;
•they already got more work out of me for less money, why change that system now;
•the probation period doesn't actually state that I'm not allowed be considered (per hr, anyone in the company can apply for internal postings at any time), but upper management is trying to use it as an irrefutable argument;
•they already had someone in mind for the role months ago and just didn't want to tell me that outright.
So now I'm exhausted and angry once again and have achieved absolutely nothing. Because I was never going to. Because they don't want me to. I'll never be any further ahead because there will always be some horseshit reasoning used to tell me no. I gave them so much of my time and energy and it cost only me in the end.
And since I know the position so well, I'll be helping with training the new employee. 🙂
Don't be like me. Don't get caught up in trying to be a good employee and help out. They give you the bare minimum, you give them the same. Remember that they don't care. If they want to see you succeed, it's because they want to see how they can keep exploiting you. They want to see how much you can take without complaint. You mean nothing more to them than how much you can prove you're worth the cost it takes to bring you on. You will not be rewarded for going above and beyond. Your life is worth so much more than your job.
And if you're here right now while grinding those extra hours in the name of getting ahead, just go enjoy your weekend.