Regardless of how smart or hard working you were in school, there’s no doubt that moving into the workplace is a big learning curve. It’s everything from the long hours that most folk work to the intensity that some workplaces expect you to work at. It’s learning all the names and how best to interact with everyone in your workplace, to understanding what to wear and all those unspoken little idiosyncrasies of the place you’ve been hired to work at. It’s knowing where to go for lunch – and when – as well as understanding all the systems and protocols and jargon that are vital to your role. And it’s understanding what to do and who to speak to if and when things do go wrong.

Let’s be real – in amongst all this, you’re going to make mistakes. Hopefully we’re not talking about mistakes that cost your company billions of dollars, but sometimes even the embarrassment of a tiny workplace faux pas can feel just as mortifying when you’re starting out (even though the chances are no one around you will even remember). But it’s something we all go through as we’re learning our trade, and it’s something you’ll see as new workers follow you into the company too.

The guy in this story, which happened back during the pandemic work from home era, is clearly still learning some of these things. But lessons can only be learned through mistakes, and this was clearly a mistake he hadn’t made before.

Read on to find out what happened here.

AITA in all of this?

I’m about to lose my job due to COVID.

Despite this and despite having the flu I chose to work (from home) a couple of days ago.

I chose to work as my supervisor (“Cathy”) usually doesn’t work that day of the week and there was something urgent due.

I had known my boss (“Bob”) for five years now so decided to help.

Let’s see what happened when he worked from home while he was sick.

Anyways, Cathy did ended up working that day. As I was scrolling through Linkedin, I noticed Bob was hiring for a role that I was seemingly suited for.

I grew resentful and, thinking of Cathy as a mentor, I confided in her via work Skype that I felt my experience at the firm was disappointing.

I told her I had barely gotten any training, had not been given any responsibility or any quality work, and that Bob had spent next to no time with me (not even ten minutes over the last six months).

I lamented that perhaps the team should focus on training their staff rather than hiring external people.

Read on to find out how Cathy responded to these comments.

Cathy got angry upon hearing this. She told me Bob was a very busy person and that I wasn’t getting the work I wanted because I wasn’t very good.

She said she cared about me and was doing me a favor by giving me honest feedback (i.e. that I wasn’t very good). That being said, beyond “listen more”, she didn’t actually give me any constructive advice as to how to improve.

When I asked her if that’s what my other supervisors felt as well, she said she didn’t know. At this point, I panicked – as this was not the official feedback I had received (not even from her) – so I tried to ring several of my other supervisors.

Unfortunately, they were too busy to take my calls. In regards to the ad, I later found out that they were looking for someone much more senior than I was.

And this situation continued to escalate.

Later that night, I got an angry SMS message from Bob telling me to stop disturbing everyone, that it was difficult for them to talk about this, and that I should be more grateful about the support I had (allegedly) received.

It turned out after the conversation Cathy felt that she “had” to report my reaction to HR – who told Bob.

Bob said he had tried his best to keep me on, and that he felt disappointed about my tone and the message I had relayed.

Bob’s reply made me feel deeply insulted (as Bob had previously ignored all my conversation requests), so I told him that the ad might be the trigger to my outburst but it wasn’t the cause.

Let’s get some more information about this worker’s perspective.

From my point of view, I have tried my best and, even though I know I wouldn’t be working there for much longer, I still chose to help out.

Since they clearly didn’t appreciate my efforts (I told Bob I was sick and still chose to work in one of the SMS texts but he didn’t reply), I am now taking sick leave for the rest of the week.

Currently, I am sick but I am not sick sick – I do genuinely have the flu but its not terrible and I can still think straight. I am on medication.

AITA?

Honestly, this guy isn’t the bad guy here, but he is a little naive and definitely didn’t go about this in the right way.

These conversations, while important, should ideally be had face to face, because messages lack the real ability to convey tone or any of the body language cues that might soften what you – or the other person – are saying.

And while it’s clear his workplace has issues, these weren’t all going to be solved in this way – and especially not with Bob being HR too.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit said about this.

This person thought that his messages were unprofessional.

While others agreed that he should have scheduled a meeting about his grievences.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who was denied a raise for “not being dedicated enough,” but then went on to discover what was really going on behind the scenes.

Meanwhile, this Redditor encouraged him to learn some lessons from this situation.

This guy made his first mistake in talking to his supervisor like she was a buddy, rather than his boss. Given the weight of his complaints it was important that HR were informed, as much to protect her own position as to make them aware – especially when he started calling round other staff members too. It’s just inconvenient that HR was Bob, the guy that a lot of his complaints were about.

This wasn’t necessarily someone being deliberately unpleasant, he was simply naive and didn’t seem to understand the elements of professional conduct that would have prevented him from getting into this sticky situation. Perhaps he’s young, perhaps he doesn’t have a lot of experience when it comes to performance management and professional grievances, but most importantly he will likely have learned some vital lessons in this that will help him in his working life going forward.

It really does sound like he wasn’t given the level of professional development opportunities that he might have wanted or expected from this job, and it’s okay to take issue with that. But this wasn’t the way to deal with things.