Imagine working at a company where you’re so good at your job that people who are at a higher level in the company than you often come to you for help with their clients. If you were denied a promotion and told to stick to your job, would you still help the other employees, or would you only do what’s in your job description?

In this story, one employee was in this situation, and he decided to stick to his job description. In the end, it turned out that the right manager made all the difference.

Keep reading for all the details.

Working at my level

Few years ago I had recently been promoted. I was expecting a higher promotion given the fact that I was working at that higher level.

How do I know that I was operating at a higher level?

Because I was covering for the individuals that couldn’t get through their daily work. These individuals were getting paid $20k more to not do their job.

My manager knew this at the time because I had set up multiple meetings letting them know the work that I was doing.

He wanted at least a small raise.

I was “promised” a promotion at this higher level by said manager.

To be clear, I wasn’t expecting $20k more, the new level minimum was only $5k over what I was making.

Cue meeting with HR and manager…in which I am told that I was not completing the functions that I said I was completing and I should only be doing the functions within my new “job profile”. If I was doing any of these functions I should stop.

You don’t want to make mistakes when it comes to clients’ money.

Background here, this is financial operations, so we are talking about peoples/clients money.

This isn’t something that you mess around with and making errors or delaying a process could cost a client money that they would then push to my employer.

Additionally, this is a huge reputational risk with clients to just not complete a processing function for them and could impact future contracts.

Time to comply.

I did exactly as they stated.

I pulled only my clients work. I processed only the functions that were assigned to me, for the most part.

I still went above and beyond with assisting others within my same level, but not the higher level processing and clients.

I don’t mean to gloat here, but I was great at this job. Some of those upper level clients started reaching out directly to me asking why I wasn’t working on their account anymore and the complaints started rolling in.

It didn’t work out well.

I know you all are hoping that the manager came around and promoted me, but you would be wrong.

They eventually “restructured” the processing so these client would fall within my job profile.

As part of the overall restructuring we were to be merged within another team.

This manager also assumed that they would be given a promotion. But due to the overall client satisfaction, senior management decided to hire another individual to that role.

But the new manager changed everything!

That new manager really knew how to run her teams and has been a great mentor to me ever since then.

My direct manager eventually quit and went to a competitor.

I have now had 4 promotions in 5 years and am well above my old managers role.

There’s an important lesson in this story.

The company overall is a great place, but it only takes that one crappy person to negatively impact your career.

I think back on that interaction often as that manager leaving the company ultimately sky rocketed my overall career.

Hopefully this story inspires other to stand up for themselves. You might not see the impact immediately, but if you can wait it out your time might come!

I love how the new manager really helped OP get the promotions he deserved. Sometimes being patient really does pay off.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person liked the story.

The right manager really can make a huge difference.

Here’s another lesson to learn from the story.

This is a good question.

Thank goodness he got a new manager!

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.