When you have worked at a company for many years – especially if you’ve spent the whole time in one role – there’s no doubt that you know the place very well. Your colleagues? You know everything from how they take their coffee to their kid’s favourite sandwich filling. The office? You know where to find even the weirdest office supplies – after all, you probably put them there. Your boss? You know how to put a smile on their face, and when to leave them well alone.

As for the job itself? You can do it like clockwork, on autopilot, while doing three other things (you wouldn’t of course, but that doesn’t mean to say you couldn’t). So when something could be done better, you’ve probably already figured out three or four ways to fix it, so you can take it in your stride. Other folk though? They wouldn’t have a clue.

So when the airport operations employee in this story foresaw a potential problem, she was sure to raise it with her supervisor right away. However, unfortunately for everyone involved, her supervisor refused to take her seriously. And when she took a day off work, the problems really began.

Read on to find out what happened.

A newer employee got blamed for a problem I’ve been warning about for months

I (22, female) have been working with my company for five years.

Recently, the past two months I’ve been complaining about a recurring issue at work and got the most validating phone call I’ve ever received from a supervisor.

For context, I work in an airport operations role that involves coordinating with multiple people and completing time-sensitive tasks before departures. My work takes place near the end of the process, so when delays, mistakes, or scheduling issues happen earlier on, the pressure often gets passed down to the people handling the final stages.

My company has a contract with another company, and we work in their building. We have an office but it’s in the airport and this company we have a contract with, their location is near the airport, not directly inside.

Let’s see what the problem she identified was.

For the last two months, I’ve been saying that one particular flight/process has unrealistic timelines.

The issue isn’t the work itself. The problem is that delays keep happening almost every day, which leaves the people at the end scrambling to make up for lost time. They also tend to schedule their people to come to work an hour before the flight arrives, which is the main issue I have brought up multiple times.

I’ve repeatedly pointed out that when this flight arrives early, equipment isn’t ready, items are missing, and I’m usually rushed as paperwork isn’t complete, or people from the other company will start later than their schedule. Because of that, the timeline becomes almost impossible.

I also do a lot of physical work as well, and this is very important because these equipments go inside the aircraft, and if not checked or handled correctly, it will put my job at risk and I could even end up with a criminal record.

But when she raised the issue, nothing really changed.

Every time I brought it up, it felt like nobody really took it seriously.

My supervisor told me that he would handle it, or said that maybe I’m not able to handle stress – even though I have been doing this particular work for three years and have trained other people as well!

Yesterday I took a day off. A newer employee – let’s call her Mia (30, female) – who I didn’t train and was trained by someone else, ended up handling that same flight/process and apparently everything exploded.

Multiple people complained. The new employee got accused of being too slow and not handling the pressure well. One of my colleagues, let’s call him John (44, male) from the other company criticised her performance.

However, all was not as John made it sound.

Meanwhile another supervisor, let’s call him Paul (59, male), from that said company later said that John had started late in the first place, which contributed to the situation but he basically threw Mia under the bus and said she was extremely disorganised unlike me where I finish everything perfectly.

But the other story was what John told me today when I came to work. I know how John works, and he’s known to be extremely lazy as well. We have become closer over the years and he sees me like a kid because I’m the youngest in both the companies, but I still keep my guard up since he can throw me under the bus anytime even though he claims he would never do that.

My supervisor called me last night and basically said: “Everything you’ve been saying for months is happening. Other people are finally complaining about it too.”

Honestly I’m irritated about this whole situation and hopefully steps are finally being taken.

Poor Mia. This situation never should have happened this way, since this woman had been raising the issue for a while now.

It must be so frustrating for this woman too, to be repeatedly ignored.

Really, this company needs to learn to take their employees seriously.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman whose HR department advised her to quit if she was that unhappy, so she did and found herself in a role reversal years later.

Let’s see what the Reddit community made of this.

Others felt sorry for Mia too.

While others came up with suggestions for how to handle situations like this in the future.

Meanwhile, this Redditor gave her advice for handling things now.

Sure it must be validating to see that the things that she said were going to go wrong did actually go wrong, but on the whole it’s just annoying that her supervisors didn’t listen to her. Instead, a poor newer employee got scapegoated for the problem, meaning that she was – for most people at least – taking the blame when she was one of the only blameless people involved.

The supervisor who disregarded an employee’s concerns – and even questioned her ability to handle stress? He’s at fault, majorly so. John, who turned up late and worked lazily, only to turn on Mia when things went wrong? He’s a bad character, and that has been proven by this. But Mia? She was just doing her job and is new to it, so no one should expect her to work as fast as this established employee. The woman who called out the issue in the first place? She was doing her best for the company, and all that got her was ignored and belittled.

One tip for managers? Take your employee’s concerns seriously. After all, they’re the ones actually doing the job – so they surely know it better than you do.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who works fast and helps her coworkers, but is met with disapproval from her supervisor because of this practice