Worker Refuses to Take on Ex-employee’s Duties When Management Tries Making Her Work Two Jobs at Once

A "lifelong bartender" who transitioned to working in an office shared how management tried dumping "80 percent" of another person's job on her lap despite the fact that she's already overworked.

Lunchtime Learns (@lunchtime.learns) often uses her work lunch breaks to upload content to her TikTok account.

The subject of this particular clip focuses on her outright refusal to higher-ups who thought it would be OK to make her take on a ton of new job responsibilities that are well out of her description. And that she wasn't afraid of potentially losing her job as a result of refusing management's request.

The TikToker begins her video by stating that their workplace buddy finally revealed to management that they were going to leave their position with the company.

She says that she knew of their impending departure for quite some time but that management was caught off guard by the news.

After her work buddy made the news of their departure known, Lunchtime Learns says that she was called into the office by management for a meeting.

Here's the kicker, though: Because her co-worker was now leaving the job, 80 percent of her responsibilities were going to fall on her shoulders.

The TikToker says when she looked at the new write-up of all the things she's expected to take care of her at her position, she was immediately overwhelmed. "I'm like looking at this list ... I'm like when am I going to do this? I have literally already zero seconds in the day to do anything," she explained.

She went on to explain that it's not as if she isn't already expected to do the work of multiple people at her place of employment. She says that before these additional responsibilities were placed in her lap, she was already doing the job of two people.

After the announcement, the TikToker said that her co-workers were "hovering around" her desk to see if she was going to "flip out" in response to the news.

She said that this included a lot of people who would rarely come to check on her, and she said she saw right through their intentions — it was obvious that they were gathering reconnaissance on behalf of management.

She decided to respond, stating that she wouldn't be taking on these new job responsibilities. "So I wrote up this manifesto that said I will not be doing any of these things. Because one, I'm not the office manager. Two, I wasn't hired as the office manager. Three, office manager roles and responsibilities are not my job description."

The TikToker went on to highlight what else she included in her manifesto: "Four, you didn't ask me at all, and Five, I'm not the office manager. Also, me and this other admin, who are supposed to be getting like, there were just going to throw, dump half of this chick's job on each one of us. One of the responsibilities I was given was ordering all of the supplies."

This included making sure that the entirety of the office supplies were fully stocked. "All of the kitchen things and all of the food, and all of the drinks from all these different vendors for the office. And doing inventory on them," she said.

The TikToker stated that performing this task would require a sizable time investment. "Which I don't even know how to do. I don't know who to order them from. I don't know what they're called. I don't know what anything. I've literally never done this. And then her thing was when we have a lunch meeting which is like once every six weeks, she orders the pizza," she said.

The TikToker says that listing these tasks is ultimately kind of pointless as she doesn't plan on doing any of these job tasks anyway. Throughout the video, however, more and more office manager job responsibilities kept popping up.

"But, regardless, if you were separating like well, we each got 10 ... one of her things is to keep the shredded bin keys at her desk for when people need them. Just in case someone else might need them," she continued.

She said that she would also need to "learn the entire phone system [and] set up every new employee on the phone system, ensure that it's going from person to person correctly."

She'd also have to check all of the voicemails of each new employee, and this is on top of the job responsibilities she already has.

This is all because their employer doesn't seem keen on hiring a new office manager. After sending her response to management, she said that she not only may not be taking on these new job responsibilities but that her original ones may be gone forever as well.

What do you think of the move the TikToker's bosses pulled? Do you feel like management is always trying to squeeze as much efficiency as possible out of their workers even if it means that the quality of their work is going to dip or if there's physically not enough time to do a good enough job with it?