I have worked in the banking industry for a long time. I relocated to help look after my dad after my mother passed away. I got hired as supervisor in a very large bank, working the second shift operations. This aspect of banking was new to me but it was somewhat related to my previous experience and within a few months I had instituted some changes and things were going well despite the daylight supervisors disappearing like cockroaches when the light was turned on the moment I arrived. Then the management team took a strong dislike to me, for reasons unknown to me. After 6.5 soul crushing years, I finally got another job as an analyst that was related to my previous experience.
All of these departments were heavy production departments.
After a month on my new job, I had to contact my previous supervisor as work coming to us from her department had problems that were affecting the department I was supporting. After explaining the problem she said she would take steps to correct it. Cool!
Then she asked how I liked my new job. I told her how much I liked it and how happy I was to be in an area that was so close to my experience at previous jobs.
She then said she was happy for me as it was clear that “production wasn’t your forte”. I took a deep breath and then listed of the very long list of functions I did to keep production flowing on a daily basis. Followed that up by saying that the previous 2 banks I had worked for as a supervisor were both overseeing production departments and that for both of those jobs I always received glowing performance reviews. When I asked if it was me or the management of the previous department, the call went silent.
She also transferred out of the department we had both worked in. Sadly this department was very related to my department and sadly my manager asked me to help her get things organized, set up and running smoothly. She then got a promotion because her new managers thought she was so great.
I had little to no experience or knowledge of her new department so I couldn’t help, even when asked. A little over a year later she was fired while I had gotten 2 promotions. Karma made me smile.