The Reliable Wheel Gets The Grease

I’m good at my job. I never make mistakes, I’m never late or sick, and I get on well with everyone including my manager, who has been coaching me to move up in the company. So, when I get passed over for promotion, which instead went to [Coworker], who has been here for a shorter time than I have and appears to do no work, I am annoyed. But when she tries to force me to do work that she is supposed to be doing now, I am angry.

I refuse all the extra work and stop all the extra jobs I am doing around my own job. She tries to discipline me, but I am doing all my actual work, I am never late, I keep a clean record, etc. It doesn’t work.

Now she has to do all her own work and has nowhere to hide. Things start to fall apart a little; mistakes are being made and things keep getting missed. She keeps making excuses and blaming everyone apart from herself.

It isn’t long before she goes off “sick,” and I am asked if I can “fill in”. I decline at first but am convinced into it. I run things well for a month before she comes back.

Coworker: “What’s this?”

Me: “Monthly report, something that was put in place while you were off. I can show you how to fill it in, if you like?”

Coworker: “Well, seeing as you already know how to do it, you may as well keep it.”

She tried to do this for everything I tried to show her, basically how to do her own job! She again tried to get me in trouble, and yet again she was told that she had to do her own work. Cue another bout of “sickness,” at which point she was told that she could step down from the role at any point. She refused and told them that it was my fault! I had messed everything up while she was off and it was such a mess she couldn’t cope.

Of course, no one believed her. Eventually, when she came back to work, they sacked her for her performance. As I was pretty much already doing the job, I was offered the promotion.