I work with animals (side note: anyone who works with animals gets paid next to nothing). We have pretty high turn over rate because of this. A salaried position opened in another department that would be a life-changing amount of money for me at this stage in my life.
The supervisor for that position came to me one day and asked if I would be interested in applying for that job. I told him yes and quickly applied online.
A month passes and they do rounds of interviews for that job, and I am never asked to interview. I figured they had their reasons for not interviewing me and thought nothing of it. The supervisor who asked me to apply is a cool guy, so I don't hold it against him. They wind up hiring a guy who has the same position I do for the higher paying position in the other department. (And I'm glad for him, I like him and everyone should get paid a living wage).
A few days go by and the supervisor who asked me to apply comes up to me and wants to talk about the position. I tell him I'm happy for who they hired and it's no big deal. But then he tells me that HR and the higher ups at the company wouldn't let him even interview me.
I talked it over with coworkers and apparently that's something a company can do. If you're “too important” to lose, they can blacklist you from applying anywhere else in the company without telling you. I have no proof this is what happened other than he said/she said, but I'm furious. My boss gets to just keep me in abject poverty because she doesn't want to teach anyone else how to do my job?
Note: I would've gone from $13/hour to $40k-$48k. Literally a life changing amount of money. Gone because my boss wanted me to be part of her team. And no significant raise on the horizon. I just feel like there's nothing I can do and I'm furious.