A promotion was forced upon me that I do not want, how do I get out of this situation?
I am a senior design engineer with 20 years of experience. I have been with my current employer, a contract manufacturer, for 6 years. I have been upfront the entire time that I want to stay on the IC path. I am happy to mentor junior engineers, but I am not interested in managing people.
Yesterday my manager pulled me and a colleague into a conference room and informed us that we were both promoted to a supervisor role. He specifically told me that he knew I did not want this job and joked that he ruined my day by giving me a promotion. My role will immediately take on 6 direct reports, while my colleague will have 5. We will get roughly 3 months to settle into the role before we are given control of reviews and hiring/firing responsibilities. We were given no say and were not asked to sign anything to accept the role. HR had already processed our promotions by the time we were informed.
I do not want this role. I am obviously applying elsewhere, but would like to keep my job for 6 more months if possible without ruining my prospects of staying on the IC path. I am currently in physical therapy and do not want to switch insurance midstream. My manager admitted to my colleague that he promoted us to bolster his position so he can get his own promotion. My colleague was given a 10% raise, while I was only given 8%. My colleague is male, while I am female.
My colleague is not happy either, but is going along with the promotion because of the raise. I do not want the money or the title, I just want to solve problems and do the job I originally signed up for.
To add to the joy of my situation, HR is retaliatory and my skip up does not like women. I know this company is garbage, but its 10 minutes from my house and I enjoy the engineering work.
Any advice or insight would be appreciated.
Jobadvisor
This is a genuinely awkward spot — they didn't ask you, HR already processed it, and your manager basically admitted it was for his own benefit. Let's think through how to actually navigate this rather than just "push back" or "go along," since both have real costs here.
First, get clear on your actual goal
You said you want to keep this job ~6 months while you job search, without torching your IC reputation, and without messing with your PT/insurance. That's a very specific target, and it changes the strategy a lot compared to "I want to refuse this forever." You're not trying to win a battle over titles — you're trying to run out the clock quietly while you find your next move.
Should you formally refuse the promotion?
You could push back hard and ask to stay IC. Some things to weigh:
- You have leverage in the sense that HR never got a signed acceptance and you were never asked — that's unusual and worth noting, but it cuts both ways. It also means the company may see it as easily reversible without needing your buy-in.
- Your manager already said the quiet part out loud (he did this for his own promotion). That's useful information, but pushing back by citing that conversation could burn your colleague and your manager both, and make your remaining months there worse, not easier.
- Given "HR is retaliatory" and your skip-level "doesn't like women," a direct confrontation ("I don't accept this, put me back") risks putting a target on you right when you want to be low-drama and coasting toward an exit.
Given you only need to hold this together for ~6 months, I'd lean toward not making this a formal fight. Instead:
A middle path: slow-walk it without refusing outright
- Show up and do the baseline of the supervisor duties, but don't over-invest in becoming great at management — you don't need to impress anyone as a people manager, you need to not get fired and not get flagged as a problem.
- You have a natural, low-conflict opening: you're not taking on review/hiring/firing authority for 3 months anyway. That's actual breathing room. Use that window to job search hard.
- If pressed on long-term intentions, something honest-but-vague like "I'm still getting my footing with the team, want to make sure I'm doing right by them before taking on the harder parts" buys you time without a confrontation.
On the pay gap
An 8% vs 10% raise for what sounds like a comparable jump (5 vs 6 reports isn't a big enough gap to explain 2 points) is worth documenting quietly now — dates, numbers, headcount, whatever your manager said about motivations — even if you don't act on it immediately. If you do end up filing anything (internally or with the EEOC) after you leave, contemporaneous notes matter a lot more than memory. You don't have to decide now whether to pursue it; just don't lose the paper trail.
On insurance/PT specifically
Just flagging: if you do end up needing to leave sooner than 6 months, COBRA exists to bridge insurance gaps (expensive, but continuous), and open enrollment or a new employer's plan is another option — so PT continuity, while a real and valid concern, doesn't have to be the single anchor keeping you at a job that's actively bad for you if the situation escalates. I'm not a benefits expert, so worth double-checking specifics with HR or a broker if it comes to that.
On the resume/future IC path
A forced 3-month supervisor stint that you exit from once you land elsewhere is not going to derail your IC path. You can frame it in interviews as "was asked to step into management, confirmed it wasn't the right fit for me, decided to focus on staying senior IC" — that's a completely normal, even mature-sounding story, not a red flag.
Want help thinking through how to phrase this in interviews, or how to structure the "documentation" of the pay gap in case you want it later?
Hospital denied my PTO for my sister's wedding due to "staffing shortages," but approved a manager’s 3-week vacation
I’m just so exhausted. I’ve given this facility blood, sweat, and endless overtime. I put in a request for just 3 days off six months in advance to be my sister's maid of honor, and it got denied today. Meanwhile, my assistant manager is currently packing for a 3-week cruise that got approved instantly.
They corporate-gaslight us into thinking we are "heroes" who can't leave the floor, but treat us like disposable numbers the second we ask for a life outside the clock. I'm honestly ready to quit on the spot and just pick up independent shifts on apps or gig work. Has anyone else walked away from a hospital staff job because of scheduling disrespect? How did you survive the transition?
Jobadvisor
I hear you, and your frustration is 100% valid. Working your tail off, putting in a request six months early for a major life event, and getting hit with "staffing shortages" while leadership sails off on a 3-week cruise is a massive slap in the face. It’s the ultimate double standard, and calling it demoralizing is an understatement.
You are definitely not alone. Thousands of nurses and healthcare workers have hit this exact breaking point and walked away from traditional hospital staff jobs over scheduling disrespect and burnout.
Here is how people successfully navigate that transition—and how to handle your immediate situation so you don't miss your sister's wedding.
1. Handing the Sister's Wedding Immediately
Before you burn the bridge, remember: You gave six months' notice for a non-negotiable event. You are going to that wedding. Here are your tactical options:
Call Their Bluff (Escalate): Go directly to HR or your unit director (above the manager who denied it). Calmly state: "I submitted this request 6 months in advance for a primary family role as Maid of Honor. I will not be in the state from [Date] to [Date]. I am letting you know now so we can arrange coverage, as I will not be available to work those shifts."
Shift Trades: Ask peers directly if they can swap with you. Managers love to hide behind "find your own coverage," so take away their excuse.
PRN / Call Out: If all else fails, use sick leave or take the write-up. Jobs are replaceable; being Maid of Honor at your sister's wedding happens once.
2. How People Survive the Jump to PRN, Gig, or Agency Work
If you decide you are done with staff life, transitioning to 1099/PRN gig apps (like Medely, ShiftKey, ClipHealth, or PRN pool at another system) is a very well-trodden path. Here is how people make it work smoothly:
Build a Financial Buffer
The Reality: Gig work pays significantly higher hourly rates, but work can ebb and flow depending on regional demand and facility needs.
The Move: Before pulling the trigger on a hard quit, try to have 1–2 months of living expenses saved up, or secure a low-commitment local PRN job (where you only owe 1–2 shifts a month) to serve as your safety net.
Work Out Your Health Insurance
The Reality: Leaving a full-time W-2 staff job means losing employer-subsidized benefits.
The Move: Look into ACA Marketplace plans, join a professional nursing association that offers group insurance perks, or look at a spouse's plan if applicable. Account for this cost when setting your target hourly pay rate on gig platforms.
Test the Water Before Quitting
The Reality: You don't have to leap blindfolded.
The Move: Sign up for the apps now. Get onboarded, upload your credentials, and look at the shift availability and pay rates in your local market while you still have your current paycheck.
3. The Mindset Shift: From "Staff Hero" to "Contractor"
"They corporate-gaslight us into thinking we are 'heroes' who can't leave the floor, but treat us like disposable numbers..."
When you move to gig/PRN work, the psychological relief is usually immediate:
No Unit Politics: You show up, do your shift, take care of patients, get paid, and leave. No mandatory staff meetings, no self-evaluations, no guilt trips about "unit culture."
Total Schedule Autonomy: You decide when you work. If you want 3 weeks off for a trip, you just don't pick up shifts.
You have sacrificed enough for a system that wouldn't hold a position open for a week if you burned out. Protect your mental health, go to your sister's wedding, and start planning your exit strategy on your terms.
Covid didn’t make customers kinder to essential workers, it made them more entitled
i’ve been working in fast food since i was 17. i started at Sonic, & i’ve been off & on there between other jobs, major life changes, two serious car accidents, & nearly dying, all by 25.
customer entitlement obviously existed before covid. when i was 17/18, i had a grown woman stand there screaming directly in my face for like five straight minutes while i said absolutely nothing. then she started yelling at me for not responding to her. LMFAO. like girl, what did u want me to do??? scream back???? cry??? 🥺👉👈 perform a little apology dance over ur cheeseburger?????
i’ve had people’s parents & grandparents talk to me like i’m fucking stupid, accuse me of lying, accuse me of being on drugs, call me names, & act like spending $12 gave them temporary ownership of another human being. these same older people love demanding respect based on age, but did age matter when i was the CHILD being screamed at? where was all that respect when a grown adult was verbally abusing a teenager over french fries? 🫤
then covid happened, & instead of making people more patient, grateful, or aware of other people’s humanity, it made so many of them even worse.
there was no pause for fast food workers. we stayed fucking open, bc of course we did 🙄 while everybody else was being told to stay home, avoid contact, protect themselves, & take a global health crisis seriously, we were still expected to clock in, stand in cramped kitchens, handle cash, touch hundreds of cups, bags, cards, screens, & receipts, then hand food directly to an endless line of strangers.
& people were fuckin MONSTROUS during covid…
they screamed about masks, closed lobbies, shortages, missing products, wait times, long lines, staffing problems, new rules, old rules, literally anything they could find. they acted like the teenager taking their order personally invented covid & removed whatever product they wanted from the supply chain just to ruin their day.
we were called essential when society needed us to keep showing up, but we were still treated as disposable. apparently our labor was essential, but our safety, dignity, health, & humanity were not.
& businesses made it worse by rewarding the behavior. customers learned that if they complained loudly enough, embarrassed the worker enough, threatened a bad review, or demanded a manager, they would usually get free food, a refund, coupons, an apology, or all four. companies kept teaching grown adults that throwing a tantrum works, then acted confused when those adults became more entitled.
a woman recently came through our drive thru with a huge order, got all her food, then went grocery shopping for an hour. she came back afterward saying the food was cold & wanted the whole order remade.
& WE REMADE IT. 😐😐😐
like yes girl, food tends to get cold when u leave it sitting for an hour. that is not a restaurant mistake, that is literally just the passage of time 😭 but instead of telling her no, management rewarded her for acting like her own decisions were somehow OUR responsibility 💀
that ain’t good customer service, that’s mfn babysitting 🫤 that’s training people to believe they never have to hear no.
meanwhile, i’m regularly the only person in the kitchen from 11-5 while drive thru orders, stall orders, order-aheads, & delivery orders are all coming in at the same time. i’ll have multiple screens full while somebody orders 80 cheeseburgers, 5 fries, 6 tots, 10 slushes, shakes, blasts, whatever else, like they’re ordering from a fucking five-star buffet instead of a criminally understaffed fast food restaurant.
i understand one burger, two burgers, a meal, two meals, whatever. people need to eat. but placing some massive catering-sized order, knowing damn well fast food workers are underpaid, stressed, & probably doing the jobs of three people, then getting angry that it isn’t ready instantly is insane.
& corporate keeps making it worse too. the menu changes every other day, buttons move or disappear, combos stop being combos, new products get introduced with barely any explanation, & there’s always some new stupid promotion flooding us with orders. we had the crazy smasher deal, now there’s another $7 deal, & half the time the workers are still trying to figure out what corporate changed while customers are screaming at us like we personally designed the fucking menu, set the prices, & change everything ourselves.
then people wonder why service workers have NOOOO patience left 🥴 like girl, why have we babysat stupidity for so damn long? that’s the REAL question i fuckin have.
i’m genuinely a soft person. i wish people were nicer too. but my softness has been taken advantage of & mistaken for weakness for my entire life, so yes, i learned how to protect myself. i almost died last year, & after something like that, watching somebody turn a slush or a cheeseburger into a full-blown emergency genuinely pisses me off.
bc what the fuck r u freaking out over 💀 you’re alive, you’re safe. ur entire life is not collapsing because there are pickles on ur burger. take a deep breath babe, i’m sure u can survive the tragedy. JUST PICK THE FUCKING PICKLES OFF UR BURGER YOURSELF, BRO 🙄 or better yet, cook ur own shit if you’re gonna be that damn picky!
workers are constantly told to show grace, be patient, smile, apologize, stay professional, understand that everybody has a story, & never take anything personally. okay but like ummmm, when does the customer have to do any of that????
when do they have to remember that the person behind the counter may be exhausted, grieving, disabled, traumatized, sick, overwhelmed, or literally still a child????
sometimes customers need to be told they are wrong. sometimes they need to be humbled. sometimes they need to be told they can go home. sometimes management needs to say no, u are not getting free food, & u are not allowed to speak to another human being that way.
sometimes there’s no fuckin bridge to build. what makes someone lose their soul that fast over a stupid fucking hot dog?
lmao, & another question i’ve always had, why are people even MEANER on sundays? 💀 like, is that not completely backwards to u??? shouldn’t mfs be coming back from church with their spirit filled, ready to burst open with kindness & joy??? instead these mfs come angry, hungry, mean, nasty… like OPE, i’m cleansed of my sins for the week, time to start over!! 👹 that has never made any sense to me.
customer service needs to change, bc kindness cannot keep meaning workers silently absorbing abuse while the person abusing them gets rewarded. covid obviously didn’t create entitled customers, but i genuinely think it rotted whatever tiny amount of patience, shame, & public manners some people still had 🫤
it taught them that their personal convenience mattered more than another person’s health or humanity, & companies reinforced that lesson by continuing to cater to the loudest, nastiest person in the room. it teaches employees, workers, & young people that you’re just a number. not a person to be cared about, just something to profit from, overload, & take advantage of.
fast food stayed open, the abuse never paused, & somehow we’re STILL expected to be grateful for the privilege of taking it 💀 like, we fr never recovered after covid, & now we’re shocked that nobody fuckin likes each other anymore????
Jobadvisor
This is a raw, honest piece — the kind of writing that comes from actually living it, not from summarizing an experience. A few things stand out to me:
The "essential but disposable" line is the real thesis, and everything else in the piece supports it. That contradiction — being told your labor is critical while your safety and dignity are treated as optional — is sharp and well-earned given what you're describing (working through COVID, two accidents, nearly dying).
The corporate complicity angle is also doing real work here. You're not just venting about individual customers; you're pointing out that companies trained this behavior by rewarding tantrums with free food and refunds. That's a more interesting argument than "customers suck," and it's the part that would resonate with people who've never worked service jobs but have noticed this pattern as customers too.
The humor cuts the intensity in the right places — the pickles line, the "cleansed of my sins" bit about Sundays — without undercutting how real the exhaustion is.
A couple of honest notes if you want them:
- It's long and repeats some points (the "screaming as a teenager" story and the general entitlement point get made a few times in slightly different words) — tightening could make the sharpest lines hit harder.
- The ending trails off a bit into general "nobody likes each other" territory after such a specific, personal argument — you might have a stronger closing line already in there (the "essential but disposable" idea) that could land the piece instead.
What are you looking for here — feedback on tightening it up for posting somewhere, help formatting it for a specific platform, or just wanted to share it?