Imagine being hired for one job with the promise that as soon as you’re trained and ready you’ll be promoted to another job. What would you do if you felt like you were being set up to fail so that you’d never get the promotion?

In this story, one engineer-in-training feels exactly that way. She wants to be promoted to engineer and thinks she deserves to be promoted, but her boss keeps finding reasons not to promote her, such as pointing out how she’s not taking on the full responsibility of an engineer.

She doesn’t think that’s fair since engineers are on salary and she’s an hourly employee who isn’t allowed to work overtime.

Keep reading for all the details.

AITA for telling my supervisor that my employer is setting me up to fail

I (28F) work as a civil engineer-in-training for a city and although I hold the certification (Professional Engineer cert) for a promotion. My public works director has been delaying the promotion to Engineer and keeps telling me that I’m not quite ready.

Today an issue occured with two similar sets of plans that I produced and signed as the Engineer. I essentially copied and pasted the plans between the two (pretty normal for us) and made site specific changes so an issue with one was likely to be an issue with the second set.

It wasn’t a major issue and it involved a missing item for something small. We will likely have to pay extra for the item but it is probably only a couple of hundred dollars for each project.

I approached my supervisor with frustration that it was missed in our review process and that our review process at times doesn’t feel like it exists for internal projects.

The boss seems to blame OP, but OP blames the lack of promotion.

Here is where I might be the AH.

My boss said ultimately it’s the Engineer who signs the plans who’s responsible for making sure nothing is missed and as much as we want our review process to work that sometimes it misses stuff.

I told him that I felt like I was being set up to fail to some extent because I’m not getting paid to be the Engineer who signs the plans but am being expected to have the time to review the plans extensively as if I were. (My job is hourly and I’m not allowed to work OT, the Engineer positions are salaried)

That the point of delaying the promotion was to make sure I was ready to sign my own plans. And if I’m not ready and not being paid to then I don’t understand the expectation to sign my own plans. That if feels like I’m being set up to fail so that they can continue to deny the promotion.

It has to be awful to feel like you’re set up to fail.

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.

The comments on Reddit were split.

This person is on her side.

Another person points out reasons why this isn’t fair.

But this person is on the boss’s side.

And this person thinks they both messed up.

It does sound like an almost impossible task. She’s expected to do the work of an engineer without as much time to do the job. I’d be frustrated too!

At least she knows the expectations now. While they may seem impossible, if she wants that promotion, she knows what the boss expects.

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