In the past couple of years, more and more people are realizing that they have worth and bring expertise to the table at their jobs, regardless of how their bosses might treat them.
That said, not everyone has the luxury of being able to walk away if they need to.
OP joined an accounting firm after school and quickly went from being important to the company to being downright indispensable.
In 2019 I started working for a big accounting firm right after college, I already had a bit of experience because of a few internships and I always worked part-time since I was 16, but I was mainly hired because I spoke 4 languages and they had business with a lot of foreign clients.
I was hired as a consultant but I did a lot of things, I really enjoyed organizing big files and I had a lot of experience with excel, since I had payed for a professional course during college, so besides my usual work of handling some clients and doing my reports, I was also doing a lot of things like sales reports, clients reports, basically most of the excel files and a lot of computer based tasks.
He devised ways to automate certain reports that turned out a superior product in a fraction amount of the time it took to do them by hand.
When COVID hit and we started to work from home I was able to automate most of my tasks during 2 or 3 months, I was able to program a code that would basically do the sales reports (most important file) and a few more automatically and I could updated it if needed.
My boss was over the moon with the update part but I did not told him that it was being done automatically, I did not told anyone for a matter of fact.
This gave me a lot of extra time to talk to clients and pick up a few extra new ones which gave me a considerable pay rise, since I was highly appraised during the meetings with my direct boss and a few higher ups.
Because of this, his boss was really reluctant to let OP take his vacation time – and when he wanted to be gone the same time as his second in command, the boss really didn’t want to let it happen at all.
Whenever I did take time off I had to delegate all of my tasks and clients meetings to anyone I trusted which was mostly Jimmy (fake name), Jimmy was a good personal friend of mine and was married to my cousin, so we would occasionally take time off at the same time for a vacation or family gathering.
I was saving my vacation days for summer and winter, and in the only days I took during 2020, I let my tasks running automatically and I told Jimmy that he didn’t need to do that, and he really didn’t ask questions since it was less work for him.
However me and Jimmy took a few days off at the same time to go to a wedding in another country and I was told by my boss that he would let it happen but to not make it a habit to take our vacation at the same time and that I would have to work a bit harder to thank him for his good deed and that my sales weren’t getting any bigger in the last few months.
I reminded him that I had the higher number of sales in all the department and I was the only one with the extra tasks, but he just told me that it wasn’t a big deal, and that anyone could have done that.
When he did, things went to crap pretty quickly. OP was offered a promotion, but it came with strings he wasn’t keen on pulling, no matter how good the money.
So when I went of vacation I turned off all of my automated tasks, and this was a big deal since it was the end of the month and my boss would need all my reports completely updated.
Apparently they had to put 5 people to do my tasks so that they could finish the reports, which delayed the work of that team, and the reports were late and lacked a few things that mine had.
This was huge since all the higher ups weren’t happy with my boss since he showed them the reports late, and they were clearly a downgrade from mine, and they also commented that there was a team failing a lot of deadlines that month (which was the team assigned to do my tasks).
As soon as I got back to work I got a call from my boss apologizing for not appreciating my work with the tasks, offering me a bonus and asking me to not take time off at the end of the month never again.
I told him that it was a unreasonable request and I reminded him that he already approved of my week off in 2 months which he apparently was still under approval and he straight up told me that it wasn’t going to be approved.
I am not an angry person per usual but I got really upset about that, and the told me that as long as it wasn’t at the end of the month, I could take time off whenever I wanted.
Ok fine.
So, when he found himself (and his second) presented with a better offer, he took it.
As soon as I got out of the call I started looking for other jobs and I scheduled all of my time off (about 3 weeks) to the next month (busiest month for us). This was a big deal since most of the big clients didn’t speak English or our native tongue and they only wanted to talk to me, but nevertheless my boss approved.
Subsequently Jimmy also scheduled time off at the same time so despite not being end of the month, someone had to do my tasks since I would once again turned them off.
Apparently they weren’t able to handle neither my clients or my tasks and they just ignored the tasks until I got back, but some of the clients or really angry since no one could really assist them as good as I could, and I actually got a call in my personal phone from one of them asking him to assist him in my personal time and that he would be really appreciative of my time.
This was a huge client and he was actually a great person that had huge respect for me, so I said it was fine as long as he came to my location (I was in vacation with my family).
So long story short they came with a yacht and invited all of my family to go there and to the villa he rented, I spent a whole day helping him and setting all of is orders and request and he was more than happy to offer me a job offer once he knew I was looking for other jobs, since apparently I sent my curriculum to one of his buddies company.
It was a huge offer with lots of benefits, and the offer would also extend to Jimmy, who was actually going to work for me, with a great salary also.
His boss didn’t like it, but that wasn’t OP’s problem anymore.
In my country you don’t have to give 2 weeks notice to your boss so I just quit when I returned and told him that I wouldn’t to any of the sales reports, he was mad but here was nothing he could do.
I am still in the same company, but with a higher position now, I actually manage a huge team and I don’t really have a schedule, I just have to travel a lot which is fine by me.
Last I checked with a few friends that still work in my old company they had to hire a whole team to handle my tasks and a few of the clients quit because they weren’t satisfied with how they being handled.
Next time you should also value your employees more.
Was it a mic drop? Reddit’s weighing in!
The top commenter has a corporate pro-tip.
That goes double when it takes an entire team to replace them.
This is exactly the sort of trick it helps to have up your sleeve.
Then again, there are a lot of dumb managers out there.
It’s a lot trickier to be a good manager than people seem to think.
I applaud this guy for knowing his worth.
There’s no way he should have settled for less.