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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Careless_Tie_566 on 2024-02-02 16:55:22.

Several months ago, my boss started basically waving a promotion in front of my face. He was constantly having me do tasks above my title because “you have to already be doing the job before you can get promoted into it to prove you can do it” and “you doing this will make it easier for me to argue in favor of your promotion” and it was that kind of stuff constantly.

A little bit of background to my job. There’s 2 main components to what my department is. Lets call them A work and B work. People tend to specialize in one or the other. My whole career has been in A work. I love A work, its where my experience is, and its what I’m good at. While I have an understanding of B work, I’m not great at it and I don’t at all enjoy it.

We have a vendor we work with, and while the company does do A work, we hire them for their B work. We had mostly been using them for ad hoc projects but my boss decided we were hiring them to consult for us full-time, and I was going to manage that team. He had more of a spiel about how me “managing” this team from this vendor is really going to look good when they promote me into an actual management position.

I agreed under the condition that this vendor’s work does not become my entire job since I don’t enjoy B work and don’t think that’s where I excel, but I understand you often have to do things in your job you don’t love. It just can’t be my whole job. He swore up and down it wouldn’t be like that.

So I start managing this team (without a manager title) and I hate it, and close to immediately I started not being assigned A work projects I typically would “so that my entire focus can be on Vendor”. Any potential project he would give to someone else so I can spend more time with Vendor. I had to keep reminding my boss our agreement and he would act like we’re on the same page but wouldn’t stop doing it. So yes, about 80% of my job was B work and the other 20% was the least interesting type of A work. I started dreading coming into work. Hours drag by. I’m bored and burned out and don’t feel like I’m making any kind of impact because again, this isn’t the area I’m good at. The only reason I was putting up with it is because I thought there was a light at the end of the tunnel.

Anyway, one day I’m in my boss’s office and he waves this hypothetical promotion in front of my face again and I decide to ask him ok what’s the plan there. He acts stunned, like this question was out of left field, and has no answer. There was never a plan. He hadn’t once put any actual thought into a promotion for me. He actually started telling me it was impossible to promote me because right now our team only has 2 titles on it, mine and his, and I obviously can’t be the same level as him. I remind him every other team has about 2-3 titles in between, and people constantly get promoted up that hierarchy. I had assumed that’s what he kept implying was happening with me.

He ended up at least telling me he tried to argue it with HR and they told him they won’t create a new position. I don’t know that I believe him, but regardless, I couldn’t get past the thought of him basically intentionally lying to me for close to a year in order to trick me into doing work above my pay grade that really he should be doing but I assume just doesn’t want to. Even though the jig was up, he still kept pushing me to only be doing projects with Vendor.

So, since there was no more light at the end of the tunnel, I decided, you know what, you’re right. I’m going to spend all of my time with Vendor. I’m not spending ENOUGH time with Vendor. Turns out Vendor, a massive company, has a couple positions open for A work Manager. And I had been spending so much time every day with a team of them, I had several good recommendations. And since I was using their platform all day every day, no other candidate is going to be coming in with as much specific Vendor experience as me.

Haven’t told him yet, but I think he’s starting to get suspicious.