Well, what do you know

You might remember about a year and a half ago, I was pursuing being promoted to manager at work. Here's where I wrote about it. Then a few months later I found out that they had too many expectations for managers that just don't mesh with a good family life. In my head at least, I withdrew my intentions of being promoted ever. And was pretty much told by them that I couldn't fulfill the duties as they expected them. I couldn't find a post about the rejection part, I might not have blogged about it. I was pretty disgruntled at the time.

And in the last few months I've been trying really hard to take a slacker approach to work. Get my job done, do it well, but not let it interfere with home life as much. (Yeah, I know that isn't really slacker, but it is as slacker as my type A personality will allow.) I've been slower to respond to e-mail, not letting myself be on call 24-7, speaking up when I am at my limits and asking for assistance.

Well, guess what phone call I got last night. My boss calling to tell me they've decided to promote me to manager. The job I didn't think I could ever get and didn't think I really wanted. At least not on their terms. It gets announced on June 30th and I think becomes effective July 1st.

I did tell her I hope I can meet their expectations. She assured me, I just have to keep doing what I've been doing. (I didn't ask if she meant the slacking off part or the part before that.) She said in the HR meeting the realized I've really been doing the work of a manager for a long time now and it is about time they give me the title and the authority. Well, duh, that's what I told them a year and a half ago.

I'm not sure what I think about this yet. If it is true that I've been doing the job for a while now and nothing will change except my title, then great. I'm happy about that. If however, what they told me before is true, then I'm not. One example they gave me of expectations for managers was that they could get a call at 6 am and be told someone was sick and they'd have to fill in at a client meeting or something else, that day, 2 hours away. Yeah, that isn't going to happen. I'd be happy to call the client and reschedule or help over the phone, but same day travel two hours on no notice doesn't work. We'll see.

Hopefully, if this doesn't work out they'll just demote me back to my current position. I'm going to be pretty pissed if I get fired because I couldn't handle I job I was promoted to that I no longer wanted.

I don't think this is the reaction you are supposed to have to a promotion.

Who knew, quit trying, do your mediocre instead of your best, slack off, quit caring and get rewarded. Now I know what I've been doing wrong this whole time.