Still frame for contextual reference only.
A frustrated employee puts her head in her hands at her desk
Practical advice for surviving a month of training my replacement after being denied the job?
Tl;dr: I was denied the long-term version of the temporary position I have been doing for months, and now I am expected to train my replacement. It is humiliating.
Longer version: I was contacted by a distant acquaintance to urgently take a part-time temporary position under her in the fundraising department of a large-ish nonprofit ($20 million in annual revenue). I agreed, especially because she said she would consider me for the long-term role. (Four people had quit abruptly and she needed to staff up. 🚩) She (Big boss) had just made an offer to a guy who would be my direct boss, and this position would be under him. I had wanted to work at this org for years—I even made it to the final round for a VP position in 2023–so I was excited to get my toe in the door (even though it was several rungs down on the ladder).
-u/housereno
Nobody wants to feel like they're easily replaceable. We all bring something unique to the table, and we want those skills and assets to be appreciated, especially in the workplace. But unfortunately, the boss doesn't always see it that way, and sometimes you end up on the chopping block. This is a part of employment, but it should be handled with dignity and respect. There are right ways to leave a job and they are the wrong ways to leave a job. You don't want anybody to leave feeling like they've burned a bridge with you. If you have some control over that, you should try to do the right thing.
Stock photo unrelated.
A female employee trains her male replacement at her desk
Big boss emphasized to me that I should really consider formally applying for the long-term position because I am getting divorced and I have a young child at home, and she knows how hard it is to be in that situation. I was convinced by her saying that—I just need things to be easy in my life right now, with so much else being painfully hard.
Fast forward three months, two interviews later and I realize that my direct boss has basically ghosted me while his desk is three feet away from mine. He is conducting third-round interviews with other candidates and hasn’t informed me that I didn’t make it past the second round. My other colleagues in the department are involved in the hiring process for this person, too, so they all know.
I message the big boss (the one that originally hired me and insisted I apply for the long-term job) and tell her I found out in a roundabout manner, and I’d like to set an end date for my time at the org. (She correctly infers that I’m angry.) We eventually talk and she apologizes for how badly it went down. She asks if I will document my processes—processes that I had to learn or develop from scratch because the existing materials were useless. I say that, in the three days/week I am scheduled to work, that I can’t possibly do my current tasks and also write a manual on them. She says, she will have the new hire shadow me and take their own notes.
The new person started yesterday and I’m in a personal ***l. I thought, “I have 15 years in this field (though not this skill area of the industry)—but maybe they chose someone who is an expert in this software.” No. They didn’t. She had no experience in it and less work experience overall and no experience in this field. And they revamped the job description and reassigned the duties from what had previously been under my title to be under a lower title person (not yet hired), so I have to wait even longer to be laid off.
Models for explanatory purposes only.
A group of people review documents in their workspace
When you're replaced by somebody who has less experience than you, this can be a huge blow to the ego. You wonder why they would choose somebody who has less under their belt than you do. It can make your head spin and think about all the things that could have gone wrong. That's exactly the place that this employee was in, a place that no employee wants to end up in. She had accepted her fate already, but wondered what she could do to make herself feel better about the whole situation. That's where the Internet came in. Sometimes telling your story can make you feel a little bit better about something no matter what it is.
Today they finally made an offer to the next new person who will take over my duties (in theory). They want me to stay on for four more weeks at the very least. If I quit voluntarily, I don’t get unemployment.
The thing they are very short-sighted about: I am currently the ONLY person in this nonprofit who knows how to do the data entry and communication to the finance department about the $10 million in donations that comes through our department. (Remember, there was massive turnover before I started—no one has any institutional knowledge.) It took me fully one month to figure out how to do ONE entry to satisfy finance (and now I am completely up to speed on the entries). If I quit abruptly, it will take them at least six weeks to have that new person start and then figure out from there, with no one to train them.
Scene is illustrative and does not depict actual individuals or events.
A woman looks frustrated at her laptop in front of her
I don’t want to burn bridges with the big boss, exactly, but we weren’t close before and I don’t think that I will ever voluntarily talk to her again. How can I get through this???
Apologies for length. I’m so frazzled.
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