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The original was posted on /r/twoxchromosomes by /u/5T6Rf6ut on 2023-10-04 08:27:08.

I recently got promoted at work. Unfortunately some of the higher ups assumed I would keep doing certain unpaid labor that was never in my job description and doesn’t fall neatly into anyone’s role. My new position is a lot busier and more stressful. In the old position, those extra tasks were things that gave me a reason to get away from my desk, broke up my day, etc. I found some of the extra work interesting. In order words, while it’s unpaid labor, it had personal benefits - one of the biggest being that I got to know some of my closest work friends through various roles I took on (committees and such).

As I’ve transitioned into my new job, those pieces don’t fit the same way they used to, and my new role is different enough that I no longer need the personal satisfaction or distraction that the extra stuff was giving me. So I have drastically scaled back my involvement.

Here’s the problem: no one has stepped up to take my place, because it’s not in anyone’s job description. So one woman in particular, an incredibly gifted admin who could run circles around most of our colleagues if that’s what she wanted from her career, had picked up 90-95% of the slack. She’s someone who I became friends with through this extra work, and she was already involved with a lot of it, but now she’s doing twice as much (and it’s still not reflected in her pay or position description). I had pushed in the past to get these things documented or institutionalized and was told it could lead to a pay decrease for people because it’s not seen as substantive - yet they insist it needs to happen and pressure lower level employees to volunteer to take it on.

My new supervisor mentioned in passing that he’s fine with me continuing to “volunteer” but I declined, as it no longer fits into my schedule. Since then I’ve had to draw the boundary with a lot of people who are nowhere in my supervisory chain but just expect me to do unpaid work on their behalf. Many are not as understanding as my supervisor fortunately was.

But the point of this post is my admin friend, the one who got stuck with all the slack. She is angry with me for stepping back. And I understand, because it’s really not fair to her that she’s stuck with everything now. We had a conversation early on and I tried to explain my perspective and encouraged her to draw her own boundaries, to say no, to let things that aren’t in her job description fail. She’s refused to speak to me since then. It makes me so sad, because I really valued our friendship, and I see our employer taking advantage of her, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m not in her chain of command (totally different department and would never have gotten to know her outside these committees), and the company is totally clear that this isn’t work that belongs tied to someone’s position. It’s BS.

I feel like I haven’t been very articulate, but I needed to vent.