Have you ever had to assume a role you weren't suited for and never wanted?

I was thrust into doing discharges at the behavioral health hospital I worked at and I hated it. I did it, but I hated it. After a while I started to decline the job, I was part time and filled in for people, but then it started to seem like they wanted to see if I would work out in the spot permanently, which I did not want at all. That was the beginning of the end at that job. Prior to that I had worked in rehab and even where patients were quite severely ill with schizophrenia, and also medical records, I liked all of those. The problem was I wound up with a manager who didn’t like me, she didn’t get along with a lot of people.

Not a permanent role, but if you mean temporary then I guess so. I’ve had the shit luck in my life, to always be at the wrong place at the wrong time when female friends have a death in the family. I was present at a hospital on two occasions, once when a friends teen son passed from brain cancer, once when another friends daddy passed. They held me and hugged me and I did my beast to reciprocate and try to calm them, but they were inconsolable. Another occasion at the funeral of a female friends baby who succumbed to crib death, at the funeral she would not part herself from me, even though her hubby was there. I do what I can but that’s not my forte and I never know what the hell to do. I just muddle thru the best I can, but I resent family members or spouses who are right there and leave me to do what should be their job. Hope nothing like that ever happens to me again. I’m just not good at consoling people.

I was offered a job managing 3 women in an office based solely on the fact that I had completed a throwaway 3 credit “management” course in college. At first it was icy going, because the 4 of us were fully aware that I neither deserved nor was qualified for the position. Worse, the woman who deserved and wanted the job was tasked with teaching me the workings of our organization. It was an icy beginning. I looked like a well dressed underweight 15 year old, but within a week I assembled my “girls” (the standard reference words from my superiors) in a restaurant to explain my understanding of our situation and seek out theirs. One of the best and lucky moves of my life.

Yes. Thanks for dredging up this memory. The job as a facilitator of a hotel computer program was eliminated when a new program was designed with built-in training. My job was eliminated.

To be fair, it was a wise move on the company’s part. I applied for another position and was hired. Unfortunately, it didn’t start for three months.

The training dept. kept me on to design, develop, and deploy a sales trading class of which I was unfamiliar with at that time. It was a disaster in every aspect. It’s an example of intent vs. effect: Someone from the training dept. could whip out a new program, while that person doesn’t have the training in the skills to develop one effectively.

90 days long may not seem like much, but, gee, it rolled on what seemed like forever.