My co-worker is being overly selfless and it cost her a better job with better pay.
So background about our organization/ team and everything. We are an association management and services organization; we primarily service 3 small local professional associations with professional services, but primarily we help put on their events. These events are anything from a 2-hour presentation with a networking cocktail reception afterward, formal galas, happy hours, small 1 to 3-day conferences, etc. We probably handle about 2 events a month.
We are a team of 3-5 people which is composed of our boss/CEO alias John, our events coordinator alias Kelly, our events and operations manager alias Fred, me (marketing and communications manager), and our sponsorship sales coordinator alias Zelda who is part-time. We've been down our events manager since shortly before Christmas, and things have rapidly gone downhill since his departure. As our education and ops manager was doing his job + our boss / Ceo's job and then some. Things have gotten so bad so fast that I'm to the point that I'm unsure if the company will be on survivable footing at the end of this year.
I haven't told anyone, but I plan on leaving at the end of the month and going back to school for something else (a future post for another time), but I know my coworkers are actively looking elsewhere as well. Our events coordinator Kelly shared with me that she had turned down a job offer recently.
She was offered a similar role to what she does now, but with a nice little 7k pay bump and she'd only have to go into the office once a week instead of our bullshit three days a week (most of our job can be done remotely except for the actual onsite event management part)+ better health benefits + Metro/ Bus fair covered.
She is turning the position down because she “wants to have integrity.” So one of our biggest and most expensive events is coming up on March 13th. Kelly is fairly critical to the operation in general, especially for this event given that we don't have an Event and Ops Manager. She's the only one that knows the software we use for registration and payments+ is crucial for a lot of other things as well both leading up to and on the day of the event. She was offered this job, and they specifically wanted her to start by March 6th to help staff for an event or something. She told them she couldn't in good conscience leave our organization before our event on March 13th.
They, as predicted and unfortunate for Kelly, went their next choice candidate who was able to start with less than a month's notice. They offered her the job earlier this week and I just found out this morning.
I told Kelly that she should have taken the offer and said she should try and see if they'll give her the role still. I keep trying to hint to her this organization nor our boss deserves this level of loyalty. I'm beyond stunned at all of it.
It gets worse though. She explained to me that she wouldn't feel comfortable leaving more than 4-6 weeks before any of our major events if we don't have an education and ops manager (our boss is in no hurry to backfill the role/ is incapable of recruiting for the role). We have other similar major events coming up in May and another in July + October
I'm beyond stunned at her misplaced loyalty and selflessness. She is only in her late 30s, so it's not some sort of boomer or gen x brain rot.