Have you ever been involuntarily transferred to a different area at work?

Being adaptable is the best job security. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. You’ll get the hang of it in a week.

It’s normal, I was doing cashiering for a dealership, then I got transfered into the parts department. It was a huge change, but now I know how the system works, and I can add it on to my resume. Just ask a lot of questions, and you will be fine.

My husband had to take on additional responsibilities (managing another whole department than his own) and had to take a huge pay reduction in order to be re-hired after a layoff. It sucks, but at least he is employed. In the meantime, he continues to look for another job, but no luck. He’s been looking since December ‘08.

The most difficult part, I think, is to continue to do your best work in the face of resentment. Not letting the work suffer is the right thing to do, but it’s hard.

I wish you the best of luck in your new position.

Edited to add: Oh my goodness, I totally forgot about my own experience with this! I had been promoted and sent to work at a brand new regional office. It was one of the hardest jobs I ever had, but I loved it. We’d been in the new office about 6 months when we got the news that our office in Maryland was being consolidated into the office in Rhode Island (if I’m remembering correctly). As a result, I was ‘demoted’ and went back to work at the branch office. I didn’t lose any of my higher salary, but I was miserable. As soon as I found another job, I was out of there.

I was transferred once to a job I never expected or wanted to have. The company had gone through a major reorganization and we all had to basically take what was handed to us. It may sound cliche, but it was one of the best things that happened to me at work. I did need to be trained to do the job, but luckily the new person I was reporting to was happy to spend time with me and get me up-to-speed. Turned out my skill set matched the job very well, something I had not anticipated, and the transistion was not difficult in the end. Being in that position has some of my fondest memories in my entire career. You have to give it a chance, if it doesn’t work out you can try for another change.

My husband also was thrust into a job during his career that he had not asked for and never thought about pursuing. He too had a very positive result.

For both my husband and I the only time we had very negative experiences at work was when we had a boss change who sucked. That can make your life miserable.

@JLeslie, thanks! I need to hear that.

I have been in a problem-solving role with “business side” implications. My value has been in having a good grasp on upstream and downstream implications of decisions, identifying those implications, creating a first-round solution, escalating awareness to the appropriate area, and creating consensus. New role appears to be an IT PM role, and is very process driven.

I’ve worked with the area I’m being transferred to, but as a client. I love the leadership and the people, but am apprehensive about my ability to do the work, as I’m highly ADD and don’t do well with repetitive work.

@PandoraBoxx Given what I know of you from here, I know you can do this! You are very intelligent and, more importantly, very strong. Think of it as a new adventure. :)

It’s becoming a lot more common. This also happened to me once, and I hated it.

I was working in a high-level position and been hired in under a job description that inaccurately had the word Assistant in it. This was never an issue because it was clear that I wasn’t doing ‘Admin Assistant’ work, but things got messy when we hired a new Director.

The woman was from an extremely conservative background and seriously had it out for me. She didn’t really like that I had aspirations that extended far beyond my position or that I had more education that she did. When she reviewed my job description she decided that she needed an admin asst and that per my job title, that was the work I should have been doing. She became very assertive about enforcing it.

She temporarily demoted me from complex analyst-level work to scheduling her travel, taking dictation, typing up her letters and handling her phone calls. This was a power move done to prove something. I was miserable, I fought back and it was a battle every day. She didn’t get away with it though, and it turns out her personality wasn’t a good match for our culture. She left only a few months after that.

I did learn something from it though, and looking back wish I hadn’t kicked and screamed about it and had presented myself as more flexible and adaptable. In the big picture I think I would have looked like the better person.

In your situation I’d say roll with it, be cool about it at first and really see what the position has to offer. Process-driven roles like IT PM can be tedious, but you also have a little bit of flexibility in how you manage those projects. In the short -term, get a few small projects under your belt that you can list on your resume as successes, and then start marketing yourself somewhere else as your previous role, who now has successful PM skills. It could potentially take you further.

Good luck, PB. I know this may be a frustrating time but ride it out and just keep collecting paychecks until things settle. Then make some decisions from there. As someone who was recently very, very unemployed, I wish I had your opportunity as opposed to the one I was dealt.

@PandoraBoxx Sounds like you have to have as much confidence in your ability to do the job as the people at work have in you. They must feel you will be good at the job, maybe from your experience interfacing with that department. Both examples I gave about my husband and I our bosses believed we would be great in those positions and they were right. They had a better grasp of what the new position entailed than we could predict ourselves. I hope your situations works out as well as mine did.

Sorry for my poor grammar, should be about my husband and me.

Nearly 20 years ago, my husband was transferred from our home in San diego, where our whole family lives, to Northern California. I was worried about the climate change, but the offer was financially very lucrative. We have a much bigger house than we could have ever had before, and the company continues to make it worth our while to stay here. Our youngest son has grown up here and is now married with two children.

We just completed a two week trip to visit folks, and we are able to make the trip at least twice a year, and sometimes three times.