u/Educational_Ebb_7367

My director hired someone with no experience or background in our industry and he comes to me with every question he gets asked. It’s been since the beginning of February and he never saved the quote template I gave him months ago when he first started or has a grasp on how the organization and our process and policies work. This is a sales role so quoting is part of the job. Yesterday we had a call with a customer who was asking some questions about our business and he literally said I have no clue I am new and passed it over to me. I lead the whole meeting until it came time for him to write in an email with the things I need to follow up on.

I have had to correct him on numerous occasions. The last one being he said he confirmed something with a customer and that was a lie. He has missed deadlines that I had to cover for him and barely even acknowledged his cancellation of a customer visit out of state that I ended up going solo on. My director did acknowledge the extra work I have been putting in & I got a one time bonus for $10k which is nice but it is only $5k after taxes. So I get a one time bonus all while this guy is still making a higher salary than me while I am doing my job and his job so that bonus is a nice thought but it’s a one time payment.

I have mentioned to my director the unreliability and how I have never been put in this awkward position before . I laid out my concerns without going on a tangent and I was just met with “Oh, I have not heard about that .” Of course not, he is busy in the C-Suite and I am doing a role that I was not offered because my director wanted someone who lives closer to the territory. Now it’s over 16 weeks into the role and he would not be functioning without me.

I am not sure what else at this point I can do. When I finally got the courage to talk to my director about it, it didn’t seem like he listened at all and my concerns were not valid . I want to stand up for myself but also want to be a team player and don’t want to ruin my reputation. I feel like I am being walked all over and it’s effecting me in my personal life too. How do I address this without being a scorned woman? I am in a very male dominated industry and want to move up in my organization but seeing myself as less valued more and more as the days go by.

I have been at my role for 7 years now and it’s been a rough 4 months after my boss of 32 years retired. His replacement was hired and has been not been reliable at all . This is a sales role and I am supposed to support his role as he is a higher level than me. He has not followed through on communication with our customers and asking me to cover for him when he does not complete something. He has not once tried to have a conversation with me to discuss our customers, past history or how we can build the business together.

There has been periods where he has cancelled meetings, not shown up to scheduled meetings and been unresponsive. Our policy is to let the team know if we will be out of office and he simply has not. All the work falls onto me and I am stuck doing his role as well as mine. I also support another manager so this extra workload has impacted my support to him simply because I don’t have enough hours in the day.

I was upfront with my director about the lack of communication and reliability so far. I detailed some examples of situations that were not completed and fell on me. Then 4 hours before we were heading to a customer visit , he said he had to cancel. I immediately messaged my director and he had no clue he had canceled. Come to find out director said he has been having health issues and has been in and out of the hospital. It is not my business what his health issues are but what is my business is the impact this has on me. Leaving me to visit with nothing prepared, I jumped into action & traveled to a different state by myself. I did my own presentation so I didn’t have to cancel on our customer. After this visit a glowing review was sent to my boss. When I summoned up the courage to fully be honest about what has been going on my director said he has not been aware and has not heard of other issues going on but the absence because of medical issues. Of course he isn’t aware because I value my job and I carried it all. I was finally spilling the details about what has been going on but after our conversation I was left feeling unheard and disregarded.

So there is an open role in my company that I would be a good fit for and I called my HR lady to see if I could find out more . She had asked if I wanted to share why I was looking for a new role and I spilled the beans. Not in a crying scorned woman way but in a professional, this is what is going on. She had no clue about his health issues or hospital stays. It’s been over a week now that he has been out for his second hospital stay.

Am I not being sympathetic? He has been at this role for over 12+ weeks and his role still is not functioning. Was spilling the beans the wrong call? My poor husband and friends have been hearing about my work issues. It has been consuming me and I just want to feel less anxious every M-F when I am working.