I covered for my manager while he was going through a messy divorce and now he’s trying to get me fired.
By @danalol · Work
He was completely falling apart and our team's work was suffering, so I stepped in to quietly fix his mistakes. Now a huge project has blown up, and he's telling upper management and HR that I'm the incompetent one who went rogue.
The full story
My manager has been a mentor to me for years, so when he started going through a really nasty divorce about six months ago, I felt for the guy. He was a wreck. He started coming in late, missing meetings, and his work quality plummeted. We're talking major, client-facing errors in reports and presentations. Initially, the rest of the team would just kind of 'absorb' the impact. I took it a step further. I have access to his files for project continuity, so I started going in after hours or early in the morning to review his work and fix the mistakes before they went out. I was re-running calculations, rewriting sloppy slides, basically doing two jobs. I never said a word to him or anyone else. I just figured I was being a good team player and helping a friend who was drowning, and that he'd eventually bounce back. He never bounced back. It got worse. Last month, a massive, multi-million dollar proposal that he was supposed to personally finalize went to a client with a fundamental error in the budget—a mistake so big it made us look like amateurs. The client pulled out. The fallout has been nuclear. Our entire division is under a microscope. When the investigation started, I assumed he'd just own up to being distracted and we'd all figure out a path forward. Instead, in a meeting with our director and HR, he completely threw me under the bus. they said he'd been concerned about my performance for months, that I was 'overstepping my role,' and that he suspects I logged into the server and 'maliciously altered the final numbers to make him look bad.' I have no proof I was helping him. I have no emails, no texts, nothing. I did the work so seamlessly that it just looks like he was doing his job and I was the one screwing things up in the background. My 'help' has completely erased his incompetence and made me the scapegoat. I'm currently on formal warning and it feels like they're just building a case to fire me. I thought I was doing the right thing for a human being in crisis, but I might lose my career over it.
How people voted
- On their side — 33% (37 votes)
- Both sides — 38% (43 votes)
- Other side — 29% (32 votes)
Readers are split: “Both sides” leads with 38% — 112 votes and 5 comments so far.
What people are saying
@gabeforsure — My sister's boss did this to her over a budget mistake too, HR will almost always side with the manager.
@midconversation — find the proof and burn it all down
@reesekay — No good deed goes unpunished is the first lesson of the workplace.
@vinceee — He just used your loyalty as a safety net and you became the scapegoat when his own incompetence finally caught up to him.
@finnkindof — You have a good heart. Don't let this awful man make you hard and cynical. You tried to do something kind and he took advantage.
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