AIBU to find this frustrating?
Name-changed for this.
Long story but I’ll try to keep it as short as possible.
I work in the Civil Service and have been in my role (fairly junior role) for just over a year. I work in a small and very close-knit team and most of us get on really well inside and outside of work.
However, one of my colleagues has been a bit harder to get on with. He started a couple of months after I did, and seemed very friendly and easygoing at first.
After some time, he then started to behave aggressively and would react disproportionately when in stressful situations.
Our job is pretty stressful and intense, and he wouldn’t manage the stress well - he would often swear under his breath or say things like, ‘oh this is quite a job, isn’t it!!’ to different team members in a sarcastic way to show his frustration.
He has also frequently refused to help colleagues in the team with their work even though we all pitch in and help each other daily, and are expected to do so. In short, he wasn’t behaving like a team player.
He was aggressive and rude to me on different occasions. (When it was just me, him and a manager in the office on the same shift working to a strict deadline, he left abruptly after shouting that he couldn’t handle the stress of the job, and he also told me, ‘I’m not even going to listen to what you’re saying’ when I asked him about a piece of work he was doing that I was asked by management as part of a team task to follow up).
I told my line manager about this and they have a written record of different occasions. He’s also been aggressive to his line managers and other colleagues in the team, and is constantly late for his job, even though we have regular warnings about punctuality and how important it is from our managers.
The latest development in this is that he is leaving our team for a role in a similar team in our department.
Management in our area of the department have a rule where they don’t allow people in our team to accept new jobs at their grade (to move jobs on a level transfer, I think it’s called) unless they’ve worked in our team for a certain amount of time.
However, this colleague has been given this new role in that other team at his current grade even though he hasn’t been in his current role for long enough to meet management’s rule (this is his first role in the CS).
I find this pretty hypocritical and frustrating. It suggests that they’re ‘rewarding’ him, in a way, even though he’s behaved quite badly and unprofessionally.
I’ve asked to apply for a temporary promotion to another team in my department. I really like the look of the role, it would give me more responsibility and the other team have encouraged me to apply.
There are no rules or policies set by management to prevent us from applying for temporary promotions, but I’m not allowed to apply by management in my current team because they need all hands on deck.
They say I can’t apply because of ‘business need’. I think this is unfair and double standards, especially given that my colleague has been allowed a level transfer from my team to that other team. Also, another colleague who’s been in my team for a few months has also had a level transfer approved to another team.
One of my other colleagues was also interested in a temporary promotion opportunity but was also prevented from applying by management.
I’m looking into applying for permanent roles on promotion but have found it challenging to fully demonstrate my ability in the applications I’ve done so far, and really felt a temporary promotion would be a helpful way of developing my skills and interests and giving me examples that I could use for future applications.
WWYD? Should I just put my head down and focus on applying for permanent promotion opportunities or should I see if there’s any way management will let me apply for that temporary promotion?