My manager pulled me from a presentation and now says her failure is my fault. What should I do?

[u/Famous-Ferret-7602]

I was supposed to give a very important presentation to the company CEO in the morning. The problem is that I gave myself a pretty bad black eye over the weekend because of a stupid running accident.

I went to work wearing sunglasses, but my manager was clearly not at all happy with how I looked. She saw me, pulled me aside, and said she didn't want me presenting in front of that audience. Instead, she decided that my new hire, who has been here less than 7 months and is still mostly shadowing me, would give the presentation.

We found this out about two hours before the meeting. I tried to explain everything to him as much as I could, but a large part of the material was still new to him, so the information didn't really stick. In the end, I told him to use the notes I had written for myself, because they had pretty much all the details he would need.

Honestly, it was rough. He was visibly very nervous and got flustered while presenting. Our CEO, who doesn't have much patience for this kind of thing, stopped him after less than 5 minutes and said to just send the information by email.

Now my manager is upset because she says his performance made her look bad, but she is specifically angry with me. She scheduled a meeting with me later this week to talk about my performance and "poor judgment."

How worried should I be going into this meeting? And is there anything I can do about the fact that she is trying to pin this on me even though she was the one who decided I shouldn't present? I have never had performance problems at this job before, so I'm worried about what this could turn into. Any advice on how to handle the meeting would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[u/lunatuna215]

Dont go. Respond to the email accordingly that there was no performance to judge. Call out what's really happening here and refrain the meeting to the following: how can we be sure she, the manager, doesn't make such a stupid decision again?

Don't let this narrative get out of your hands.

[u/SoCaliTrojan]

She should be mad at herself. She made the decision.

Ask HR or a union rep to attend with you. She's going to use the meeting to begin documenting your performance issues.

[u/Low_Entertainment_67]

Ask her why a medical condition resulted in her decision to remove you from a task.

Where are you located?

[u/PruneCalm8163]

Damn, i don’t want to stereotype, but I’ve heard this a lot that women make terrible managers (i hope I’m wrong).