Job appraisal & explaining conflict

[Imnicetoo]

Hello everyone, I need some perspective please. I started a job in July 2019 in a senior position. I was told that I would be assisted by Anne (not her real name). Anne is the office manager and does work for everyone who needs it - scanning, photocopying, post etc. She has a lot of free time where she has nothing to do.

Most employees there have inflated job titles "Director of" even if the responsibilities and salaries do not match to the title. Anne asked me if I had been taken on as a director. My job title does not say director so I told her no.

I took the job and delegated some work to Anne. She was reluctant to do work I gave her, putting it at the bottom of her list, delayed but she still got it done.

In early October, Anne stormed into my office and shouted that she was not "paid to do (my) filing". There was a build up to it. True, I should have seen it coming because she clearly was not happy that I was delegating work to her.

Mid-October I was told that they were extending my probation. DUring the meeting, they did not bring up all the good work that I did over the past 3 months. I was not happy with this and told them I was quitting.

Management then came back to me saying it was a misunderstanding and they are not extending my probation. Anyway... Anne got a 10% payrise!

Anne later spoke with me and told me about the payrise that even she was surprised about. She also said that she had never been informed that I was senior to her. My pay is double hers but she could not tell from the job titles.

Anyway, I have a job appraisal coming up in a few weeks. I've always had good appraisals before in my other jobs with only minor things that need working on. This appraisal is making feel sick. I don't trust that management will be fair.

I don't even know what to do, what to bring up. What shoudl I do?

It's interesting she couldn't tell from your job title that you are senior to her. That must make it quite difficult to know who is who in your organisation.

Sounds like Anne has made a complaint about you and someone has told her you are more senior and by the way, here's an extra 10% to compensate for looking after another senior person.

It sounds like the structure of the organisation is unclear to people. They don't know who does what and who is senior to whom.

If your probation wasn't extended in the end then I don't think you need worry about the appraisal too much. Go in with a list of all of the good work you have done since you have been there.

To be honest though - I'd be looking for a new job anyway because they sound very disorganised.

Where I’ve just left we had the same sort of thing of “everyone is Head of Something....”, so it wasn’t possible to know who was where in the hierarchy just by looking at their job title.

However I don’t think that excuses Anne’s behaviour. It isn’t hard to be courteous with people. It wasn’t acceptable for her to go off at you like she did, but the moment has passed and they seem to have dealt with it by giving her with a pay rise! If she’s been there a long time there will be lots of history and frankly I wouldn’t try and take it on.

She should be able to easily know who is who and where they are in the hierarchy.
You shouldn’t have to say “I’m senior now do my photocopying”
They should have made it clear to Anne that you were able to delegate your donkey work to her
All they need to do is an organogram so everyone knows what’s what.

I’d explain that there had been some misunderstandings between you as to what your role was, now resolved and you look forward to building a productive relationship with Anne, and you’d suggest that having a organogram or similar would help prevent the same situation from arising again. Nice and neutral, doesn’t point any fingers anywhere and suggests a practical solution.

And delegate the task of drawing up the organogram to Anne 😜

Thank you to everyone who has commented.

There is a bit of background to this. The business started a few years ago. To get people to join them, they were given inflated titles. E.g. an electrician would be “director of electrical engineering”. So EVERYONE who joined at the start is a director.

My job title is a true reflection of my work as is my salary.

Personally I don’t hold a grudge against Anne. She genuinely had no idea that I was senior to her. I am quite friendly anyway and she saw us at the same level.

I know it sounds disorganised. My background was the professional/corporate world. Having this experience on my CV will be something positive in the long term... just need to get through it.

get them to issue an official orga-chart and job descriptions, roles & responsibilities for everyone.

For the appraisal: you can prepare already. Make a list of what you have achieved, what successes you have etc etc.

Did anyone tell Anne that you would be assisting her? As quite honestly it sounds like they didn’t and so no wonder she has felt resentful of you asking her to do so much for you

*she would be assisting you!

Management told me to “use” Anne as a resource to assist me as she has a lot of free time. (She really does.)

However no one informed Anne to expect work from me.

When I queried it with management, he said Anne knows that she should help everyone so they never actually told her as such to expect work from me.

I know management is quite poor so I can expect anything from them.