He Was Dragged In at the 11th Hour to Save a Failing Project—Only to Realize He Was Being Set Up as the Fall Guy
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There’s nothing quite like being good at your job and discovering that your reward is suddenly becoming responsible for someone else’s emergency.
One employee has only been working in logistics at a small company for a few months, but he’s already established himself as the office’s resident data expert. Early on, he even built an Excel tool designed to automate part of a notoriously tedious client tender process.
That automation became especially useful when a client requested an unusually massive tender requiring thousands of rows of information.
There was just one slight problem.
The employee originally assigned to complete it apparently waited until shortly before the deadline to reveal just how much work remained. And suddenly, the new data guy found himself helping rescue a project that had never actually been his responsibility.
He’s since been scrambling to build scripts, clean messy data and create business rules for information the company never previously established.
Now the deadline is looming, everyone is stressed and the office atmosphere has shifted.
And despite being the person helping get the project back on track, he’s starting to worry he’ll be blamed if anything goes wrong.
Set Up to Take the Blame for Work I Wasn’t Responsible For
I work in logistics for a small company, and I’m the main data guy in the office. I’ve only been working there for a few months.
Apparently a client asked for a ridiculously large tender, and only one person was supposed to complete it because historically that’s all it took.
This person isn’t tech-savvy, so they usually copy + paste data to finish their tender instead of using scripts to automate the process.
Sounds…irresponsible.
One of my first tasks in the company was to create something that would allow us to fill out a tender quickly.
I created an Excel workbook where you could fill out the Leg 1, Leg 2, and Leg 3 info and power query would do a series of joins to produce the tender in the format that the client wanted in another workbook.
While that saved us from filling out thousands of rows, the workload still couldn’t be accomplished by one person just copy + pasting the info because the client is asking for a lot of data for stuff that the company has never decided on in the past.
Fair enough.
Also, the data that we do have that the client wants is messy so we have to clean it before transferring.
This whole thing is due next week, and the person who was supposed to do it all themselves never told me until the Friday before labor day and basically made it my job to finish it as well.
Ever since then, I’ve been frantically working with this person on developing business rules to fill in data gaps and creating scripts to import and clean data.
That sounds like…a LOT.
The vibe in the office is starting to change now that I’ve taken on the responsibility of bailing this person out.
With the deadline due soon, my boss has been giving me angry looks and this person has been guilt tripping me about not being able to see their family because they’ve been staying late to finish the tender.
I get how this whole situation is making me look.
That’s not fair.
But I wasn’t told the due date until late and it wasn’t my job to begin with.
I know that this will get done on time because it’s not that much work if you have automation experience…
But I’m worried about getting disciplinary action for this whole situation.
The biggest problem here isn’t whether the tender ultimately gets finished. It’s that responsibility for how it reached this point seems to be getting increasingly blurry.
This employee didn’t own the project, choose its original staffing or know about the looming deadline until relatively late. In fact, he created automation that reduced what otherwise would have been an even larger manual workload. Being brought in to help rescue the tender shouldn’t retroactively make him accountable for everything that happened before his involvement.
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The coworker’s comments about missing family time are especially misplaced. Staying late may be frustrating, but guilt-tripping the person currently helping solve the problem doesn’t change who originally owned it.
Rather than hoping management understands the timeline, though, the employee would be smart to make his contributions and responsibilities clear. A straightforward status update documenting when he became involved, what challenges existed at that point, what he has automated and what remains would establish the facts without openly blaming his coworker.
If disciplinary action does come up, that timeline becomes particularly important.
Being capable of putting out a fire doesn’t mean you’re responsible for whoever let it start burning.
This person has some good advice.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a tech support worker who told a manager a computer needed replaced, only to be told no thanks.
This person also suggests using words.
And this person agrees wholeheartedly.
He was brought in to rescue the tender, but somehow he’s starting to look like the one who left it until the last minute.
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