I want to stop and take a little detour here. I mentioned that Janet’s promotion was a result of her being a favourite of the HOD, John. I mentioned a coworker who had an easier time because he also “networked” with the HOD. But let’s take a look at what happens when you don’t get along with the person who is in charge of your career.

Caitlyn was a smart girl who handled a chunk of irate customers. I can’t remember what her actual title was but she was always busy. She was also always ready to help others if necessary. Somehow word got out that Caitlyn wasn’t doing her job. So she was dismissed.

It was the kind of environment where news spread fast. So by the end of the week, everyone knew Caitlyn was being let go because she was wasting away time at work. She was regarded as an example to others to remind them what could happen to them.

Caitlyn was replaced by another worker from another team. A highly effective worker. Who struggled with the workload. When this worker had to go on maternity leave, she was replaced by 3 other employees…one of which was Caitlyn.

Yep, Caitlyn was invited back. It was never stated but at this point it was made clear that the reason why Caitlyn wasn’t “doing her work” was because there was too much work for just one person. Once there was a team of 3 people handling her responsibilities, things got easier.

When John moved to a different department, a few years later, he took Caitlyn with him as one of his senior staff.

Caitlyn’s story lives in a small corner of my mind as proof of what happens when management decides they want you out. Except she isn’t the only one.

A few years later, the business needed to cut costs and decided to remove one of their older staff, a skilled project manager. I was horrified. She had been with the company longer than I had. What was she going to do? (She started her own business and she is doing AMAZING!)

Again, I thought it was a one-time thing. But when the cycle repeated itself two years later resulting in retrenchments throughout the Customer Care space, I had to face facts. This was just business. I needed to remember that. But it is also something that you should remember as an employee the next time you want to make your job your everything.

Moral of the story: 1) Get on friendly terms with your manager but 2) NEVER depend on your day job. NEVER EVER EVER!

This next part of the story is something I have told a million times. But never so publicly and never to anyone who mattered. But it needs to be said. Welcome to the cracks in my perfect corporate world.

They said that the company was growing and because of that there would be “opportunities for growth.” Basically they would be hiring new managers. I was thrilled. I didn’t want to be a manager- I knew I was too early in my career for that but I loved the idea of people moving forward in their career (something that still excites me to this day). My friends warned me about my excitement. They were more experienced and explained that the new managers could be awful. I refused to believe that. Everyone was so nice.

In any case I knew who was going to manage us. It was going to be my friend, Aarti. Aarti had been with the company for over 5 years and she had worked on a variety of campaigns. It was a no-brainer. The other option would have been Samantha, someone who worked in the role of 2IC but had recently gotten pregnant. Samantha was 2IC for our team but she was eventually moved out to replace a less efficient coworker in another team. But that’s a story for another day.

Anyway it was time to announce managers and Aarti was meeting with our current manager. I waited impatiently for her to return with the good news. She returned. She had not been picked. No one from our team had been picked. This meant that whoever was going to manage us was going to be from another team.

They picked a lady named Janet. I was very confused. Janet was just sort of there. She wasn’t even a 2IC. How was she picked? But the decision was made and Janet’s trial run was in September. I felt bad for her. She was removed from the team that she had worked in for years and she was expected to run a team of strangers. And of this team of strangers, five of them had already applied for her job. In September they laid out the plans. Janet would run the smaller of the team. Namely me, my best friend and another girl who worked on the smaller campaigns. Two campaigns, three staff, one manager. No biggie right?

I spent the first month being helpful and friendly. Or so I thought. It quickly became clear that Janet did not expect to do work. She delegated everything to us- even the reports that she sent to the HOD. Previously I had managed the campaign pretty much by myself with minimal assistance. Janet wanted to oversee everything. Without doing any actual work. It didn’t take me long to figure out what was happening. Janet was another favourite of our HOD. It didn’t matter that she had zero experience. Corporate was a chess game and she played it correctly. As a coworker put it to me, Janet was now our problem whether we liked it or not.

There’s a saying I see posted pretty often on LinkedIn. It’s “In your job you should either learn or earn”.

That next year was going to teach me ALOT!

I was picked to run a new campaign. I say picked but basically the girl who was originally supposed to do it was moved to another team while the back-up girl that the HOD chose couldn’t do it because of some sort of red tape. The next choice was me. Honestly for someone who had been with the company for less than a year, it was a pretty big deal. All this just because I was the second fastest capturer.

If I was a little more cynical (the way I am now), I would have wondered if the role would have gone to the other capturer who was smart enough to befriend management (looking back, that is probably exactly how things would have went). Nonetheless, I was sent for training to be Sales Support for a loan campaign.

But I was young and naive and I didn’t expect my co-workers to turn on me. They were really discreet about the way they did it.

From the girl who was supposed to be the second choice for this campaign to the lady who working in the department for the longest time, everyone made snarky comments to me about how I couldn’t do the job because I was not used to speaking on the phone.

Eventually the pressure got to be too much for me and then I admitted to my manager that I thought that I wouldn’t be able to do the job. I felt like she didn’t hear me. She didn’t acknowledge what I said.

And then she spoke to someone from another team and asked them to make me do “Call-outs”.

“Call-outs” were simply calling customers to confirm their delivery address and availability. Key word being “call”.

I still remember the girl who sat with me and explained what I needed to do. She looked at me like I was stupid. Nothing against her. But the second she explained that I would need to dial out, my brain stopped working. I could only stare at her in horror.

For the next hour, I called strangers, willing them not to pick up the phone. Only 4 people answered the call. The rest went to voicemail. But it was terrifying for me to listen to the ringing and wait, hoping it would go to voicemail.

Fast forward a little while later, I was still in awe of Customer Care. So my manager moved me to them to learn how to answer emails, social media queries, Live Chat queries and eventually she had me assist with answering calls.

All this in the span of a single month (May).

The new campaign started at the end of July. But when I made my first call (with my manager and her manager standing behind me), I was perfectly comfortable.

It’s interesting that one of my greatest moments of growth stemmed from a bunch of people telling me that I couldn’t do something.

Lesson Learnt- DO NOT listen to others. Do what YOU feel is right. You know yourself best.