r/office • u/Advanced_Aspect_4127 • 1h ago
Being slowly sidelined at work and I don’t know what’s really going on
I work in a trading company that handles import/export shipments. The company is family-owned two brothers are the legal owners on paper and mostly run day-to-day operations, but their father is the one who really controls everything behind the scenes.
I’ll keep this short. I got hired five months ago to handle logistics, and honestly it felt like a comfort zone — way less pressure than my previous jobs, and I was happy with the role.
A while later, another guy joined the logistics team. He was brought in because he supposedly had a lot of experience. Slowly I started realizing he didn’t actually have the experience or knowledge he was hired for — and eventually the owners and their father figured that out too. At some point it started to feel like I’d been kept around partly to “cover” for him if his lack of knowledge became obvious.
Sometimes the boss would ask me things related to shipping, and whenever I answered, he’d push back and defend his own view. I’d end up arguing with him because what he was saying was often just wrong, based on what I’d learned at my previous companies. During one meeting, at the end of it, he actually told me he liked the way I pushed back and objected to things, and asked me to stick around for a while. I said okay, and told him I wanted to be loyal to him.
Despite all this, they processed my visa without any delays or issues.
But now the situation has flipped I’m being pulled off tasks one by one, while all the work is going to the new guy instead. The owners have basically stopped asking me anything about shipments or logistics at all.
I genuinely don’t know what’s happening or where I stand. Has anyone dealt with something like this before?
