So, bit of a long story but I’ll try and summarise.
I started a new job as an assistant manager in a retail outlet about a year ago. Unbeknownst to me, the manager was planning on winding down as they have been a manager in the company for 20+ years and are looking to retire soon so they began ‘grooming’ me to be their replacement. It started slowly with me gradually taking on more responsibilities and them making little comments here and there about me taking over but eventually about a month before they left I was officially asked to step up to manager.
To be honest this wasn’t really on my radar at the time and I was fine being the assistant as I have no previous managerial experience but I thought I may as well give it a go but the expectation seemed very much (from them and head office) that I would say yes.
I wasn’t given much additional training once it became ‘official’ as I was being gradually given more tasks in the months beforehand but eventually they left and I took over. Once they did I found a number of things that hadn’t been completed that I had no knowledge about and had to learn it all on my own, plus I added a number of organisational tools and documents that I complied in my own time to make everything run smoothly.
For the last 6 months I have been running the store and everything seemed ok, both in store staff and upper management seemed happy and there were no major issues (as far as I knew). I had a review at 3 months and it was said that, although I was doing a good job it was the quietest time of the year as so they didn’t feel it was long enough for me to really demonstrate my skills. Fair enough, as I have no previous experience I accepted this and felt a few more months would sufficiently demonstrate that I knew what I was doing.
Fast forward to last month, and the store started a promotion that entailed giving out free products, only the website and all the supporting infrastructure that was supposed to be in place didn’t work and it was absolute bedlam. I also only had a week’s notice that this was happening and I had previously booked annual leave during this time. We were short staffed, overwhelmed, and unsupported by upper management as the relevant people I should have been able to reach out to for help were all on holiday or unavailable. By some miracle I managed to pull everything off and we worked it out, I even had a member of head office in store one day who commended me on how well I handled it.
I had another review the other day, earlier than I was told (with zero notice) and basically I am being demoted back to assistant and the previous manager is coming back to take over and get things running as upper management feel they should be. Essentially it came down to we weren’t taking enough money and somehow I am being blamed. I should add at this point the store is in a very seasonal/touristy location and so sales are always lower over the winter. Some places actually close completely over Jan/Feb as it isn’t worth the cost of staff hours for them to stay open.
Aibu to feel so incredibly hurt and angry about this? Being completely honest, even though I never wanted or expected this promotion I am heartbroken that I took it really seriously, put 100% effort in and it still wasn’t enough. I genuinely went above and beyond and now I feel like a huge failure. How do I continue to work there when I feel so humiliated at having to be ‘bailed out’ and when I feel that the complaints they had weren’t even anything I actually have control over? Do I just need to accept that actually I’m a crappy manager or are they being unfair and expecting too much from me?
Apologies in advance if I’m not the most coherent, I had 4hrs of sleep last night wondering about how to tell all my staff and wondering what my future might look like.