It is never fun to be fired from a project at work that you enjoy.

What would you do if you were doing a task at work, but then you were fired from it and told that they wanted someone with more experience to handle it?

That is what happened to the woman in this story, so when the new person they were having do that task asked her for assistance, she turned her down flat. This resulted in the new worker, plus the scientist who fired her, having to stay late at work.

I think she handled this situation perfectly. Read through the full story and see if you agree.

You want me to do the job you fired me from? I don’t think so.

I do lab management for a lab.

Hard work can take you places.

My background is not in the subject studied in this lab but I know the bare minimum and it doesn’t get in the way of my job.

I worked very hard to get where I am and have become integral to the lab.

What could have happened?

A few months ago I was put in a documentation role that also involved dealing with cryogenic storage. Last Friday, a meeting was held with everyone but me, which was strange.

After the fact, a friend on my team told me that during the meeting everyone was told that I would be taken off this role and it would be given to someone more “knowledgeable on the subject”.

This was a terrible way to handle the situation.

Obviously this is hurtful, and unprofessional of my manager to not speak to me before this (there is more to this story in that someone blamed me for ruining their experiment and doing something I did not do, so instead of talking to me at all my manager punished me for it and undermined me to the entire team).

My manager has still not spoken to me to officially remove me from this role.

Wow, they really wanted her to do the tasks she was fired for?

Towards the end of the day, I received a message from the new, untrained person in this role, asking me to do it for them. (Again, at this point no one had officially told me it was no longer my role).

And oh, they needed it done soon so another scientist (ironically, the one that accused me) wouldn’t have to stay past 6pm. “I’ll get back to you.” I said.

Who could blame her?

I did not. The scientist had to stay several hours longer.

Didn’t fix the situation, but it felt nice.

The scientist who started the problem finally had to pay the price. You love to see it.

Read through the comments below to see what other people have to say about it.

This is why you should always stand up for yourself.

Always document these types of things.

Something similar happened to this commenter.

Here is someone with a story like this one.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a manager who wonders why productivity dropped after he banned overtime with no exceptions.

His wife went through the same thing.

Why do companies think they can fire someone from a specific task and then ask them to do it anyway? They should really think through what they are doing first.

At least this woman knew to stand up for herself and refuse to do the work.