I (35M) joined the current company I work with five years ago, after leaving a toxic work environment.
The first four years at this new company were great; a pleasant and supportive work environment. A little over a year ago, there was a mass retirement, and we lost a lot of staff. Being suddenly short-staffed, I immediately took on the work of 3-4 employees alone and successfully completed all tasks/assignments, as well as training FIVE trainees, which was not my job, but I did it anyway.
As a result of this, my managers promoted me to the supervisory level, joining four other supervisors who were formerly my superiors, and were not my colleagues. It feels as though ever since this promotion, everything has changed.
The methods I use to complete my work were suddenly brought into question by other supervisors. They’ve seen me use these methods for four years prior and never had an issue, but now I was forced into conforming to methods that were “more efficient” but were difficult for my personal organizational methods. Regardless, I relented on most of these methods, but kept some of my old methods (this is important for later).
Additionally, one of the trainees I trained the precious year is apparently having performance/productivity issues, and making mistakes. Because I trained him (even though it wasn’t my job, and I trained four others who are doing fine) this appears to have put a target on my back.
A month ago, my two managers called a meeting between them and the five supervisors (including me), to discuss “how people are being trained and what work is given to the employees under each supervisor.”
But the meeting didn’t go this way. The two managers and four other supervisors just spent an hour asking me how I was training people, what work I was assigning the employees under me, asking me for estimates of when my work will be completed (which apparently had to be even before the deadline for that work??), and NO OTHER supervisor was asked anything. I was very clearly singled out the whole time.
There’s been a LOT more over the past year; it feels like they’re all turning on me. This was a great place to work until last year.
Coming back to the point about the change in my work methods that were previously acceptable before the promotion, the most recent incident was yesterday. One of the other supervisors approached one of the employees I supervise and asked him what he was doing.
He explained what he was doing, using the methods that remain of how I originally did things, and the supervisor approached me to question why he was doing it this way. I told her straight out, I changed a lot about how I did things, and I’m not changing anything else.
She left me alone after that but I feel like I’m going to get spoken to by a manager about this. I can’t go to them for anything because these four supervisors are people they’ve been working with for 20+ years (among the two managers and four supervisors, I’m the only one under 50, and they were all promoted over the age of 40…I’m the youngest supervisor the company has ever had).
Am I reading too much into things, in thinking that I’m being singled out?