Imagine working at a company and switching to a different department in the same company. If your coworker in the department you used to work in talked to human resources and made a change to permanently switch your job back to that department, would you be happy or upset?

In this story, one person is in this situation, and they’re not the one who is upset. It’s actually another coworker whose job is impacted by the switch who is upset.

Let’s read all about it.

AITA for not telling my co-worker her supervisor was thinking of permanently switching her role at our company?

So, I have been working at this company for 5 years. For the first 3 years, I was working at a certain department, but then I was moved to a different one.

A couple of months ago, I was approached by HR to see if I would be okay with temporarily switching positions with a co-worker from my old department (let’s call her Bea) who was in her first trimester of pregnancy and was hypersensitive to smells (my old department dealt with a lot of smells; my new one does not).

They considered me because I’d already been at that department and Bea had already been at mine, so it made sense.

I said it was fine by me and started there the next day.

Her coworkers at the old department seemed to like having her back.

Bea wasn’t at the department when I worked there, so I didn’t know her before this, but we ended up having to communicate quite a lot to help the other with the job so we became friendly.

Not friendly to the point of hanging out outside of work, but, for instance, she’d come see me when I took my smoke break outside and I’d go talk to her if I saw her hanging out at the coffee machine.

During the two months I was at that other department, I received quite a lot of praise from co-workers and supervisors alike about how I did my job.

Those I was closest to from before I switched departments would even make jokes about how I should stay permanently and stuff, but I never saw it as anything more than nice praise and jokes, specially because most of them did not have the power to actually do anything about that.

It’s no longer a temporary switch.

Now, shortly before Bea’s first trimester was up, I got called to HR to say that I would be moving back to this department permanently. They explained they were making the switch permanent and were surprised I didn’t know about this because they had been told the people at my department had told them I was “aware of their interest in me staying permanently”.

I wasn’t.

Bea met up with them right after I did and was very annoyed at the fact that I hadn’t given her an heads-up about that “interest they had in me saying permanently” because, if I had, she could have tried to handle it before they actually requested the switch.

However, I had legitimately thought my co-workers were kidding and never thought they’d actually get to the point of requesting a permanent switch.

Now, Bea is really angry with me and spreading her side of the story all over the company, which is making me look bad. So… AITA here?

She didn’t do anything wrong. In fact, all it sounds like she did was a great job. She didn’t request to make the switch permanent. She was just as blindsided as Bea.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

One person points blame at Bea.

The change may have had to do with Bea’s attitude.

They’re not really friends.

Bea is definitely jealous.

There’s no reason to feel bad about something you had no control over.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.