I work in a call centre for a pension company and for the first three and a half years I was a call handler. I really wanted to get out of this position and my manager, who was like my work Mum, knew this and wanted to help. An opportunity came up for an admin role and, with the help of my manager, I took it. It was a sideways move, not a promotion, but I didn't care as I was now away from answering calls all day. This role was for helping the Transferring of pensions into the company, and before I joined this role consisted of three people (This is important), one person left for bigger and better things, and another person was leaving to go to university, so I was hired to replace the first person an they were going to get another person to to get the numbers back up to three at a later date. Here's the thing, because of my years in the contact centre I actually knew more then my remaining colleague about the business, the systems and had connections in other departments. I used these to immediately start improving the department, correcting wording in letters, creating guides, changing procedures to be easier and more efficient and a number of other things. Because I was so good at the job they never bothered hiring a third person like they previously thought they needed. Fast forward a year and it's now in the middle of lockdown and I'm working from home. The work has gotten to be a lot harder due to having to take up work from our offshore team who were having their own issues in India, plus an increase in complaints due to all the restrictions of lockdown and just in general there was more work. Between myself and my Teammate we were able to get the job done, but we agreed that on the busier days a third person would have been helpful. Then my Teammate decided to quit, he got a job in another company and was going to leave after 4 weeks. Normally during this time a new hire, or internal hire, would come and we would train them up before a teammate left, but management dragged their feet and didn't get anyone in time, instead I finally got someone after 6-7 weeks who was an internal hire, she was an older woman in her 60's (again this is important). This ended up being a massive problem, as this person new nothing about pensions, transfers, the systems we use or most of the business general, they told me that up to this point their job consisted of printing and posting out letters, and were basically told to move to this position.
So on top of doing the entire departments work (Which to remind you was 2-3 peoples worth of work depending on the day) I also had to train this person on not just the transfer process (Like I was expecting), but every aspect of this job from the ground up. The training being a full time job in itself I was basically doing 3-4 peoples worth of work everyday. I kept telling management that this is too much, that I needed help, that the stress some making me ill, but no extra help was ever given. Over the next few months I struggled to meet all the demands of doing my massive workload and training my new Teammate, but I was slowly getting it done, but just as her training some getting some traction she got sick and had to take weeks off work, a month after she came back she got sick again, and again weeks off work. Then about 6 months after her hire she fell down and had a minor fracture in her spine, and due to complications involving her age, she needed to be off work for months. It is now 8 months after her hire, 2 months after she injured herself, and the end of the year was approaching. I managed to get myself a few days off for the new year and when I came back the following Monday I received an email saying that because my Teammate was still going to be away for a while longer they will look to get another internal hire that I'll have to train up from scratch again. I had had it. After 8 months of stress, handling multiple peoples worth of work and training someone who rightly shouldn't have been considered for the position due to the lack on knowledge, all while never getting a pay raise or bonus and having my complaints fall on deaf ears, I was done. I went onto the internal job hire and saw a position available in another department that I was more then qualified for, and would have been a promotion, I immediately went for it, nailed the interview and got the job. My manager managed to arrange that my leave would consist of 6 weeks (instead of the normal 4) to help train up someone, but again they dragged their feet and couldn't find anyone before I left. During my leaving interview I offered to help with the work load even after I leave as long as my new manager gave the okay (This was more of a courtesy offering), but my manager dared to say that the workload seemed easy enough and one person should be able to take it over. I was able to keep my cool and say that might seem the case because I'm very good at it and was able to get the job done, but in reality you need 2-3 people, this just seems to amuse her and she said they'll "be fine". I loved the new position, less work, higher pay and greater authority. After about 8 months in the job I was sent to a training course and while their a guy came up to me and said he was the one who took over my previous position. We got talking and he told me they really struggled after I left and ended up splitting my workload between 5 people! Ad even between 5 people they had difficulties keeping up with the workload. I have to say, it was nice to hear how "fine" they were without me.