"I'm queen for a day, and I ruin everything. We're being invaded, everyone wants to kill us, and my crown doesn't even fit."
— Queen Tiabeanie, Disenchantment, "Bean Falls Down"
Imagine striving for a promotion for a long time, and expecting it to be a big deal. Day in and day out, you bust your butt, all while dreaming about the day it happens. You expect to be recognized for your hard work, to get respect and admiration from your peers, a higher degree of autonomy, as well as a significant bump in pay. When that promotion does finally happen though, it turns out all that anticipation was all for nothing, as yes, you do get the promotion, but somehow it rings hollow.
There are a variety of reasons that a promotion may prove to be bad, such as not having the public pomp and circumstance that the character wanted, less of a pay raise than they expected, or a larger increase in drudge work than they anticipated. (A combination of the latter two is sometimes called a "nomotion," though this word has also been applied to an increase in workload with no official promotion.) In some cases, the promotion happens during a time of crisis so that the character is essentially a Fall Guy.
This trope takes effect when a character is promoted, but the promotion comes with certain trade-offs that leave the character dissatisfied.
A variation involves the character switching professions or taking on a new position at a different company.
Related to Be Careful What You Wish For and Pyrrhic Victory. A job-specific version of Wanting Is Better Than Having. Compare Kicked Upstairs when a character is promoted with the intent of reducing their authority. Contrast Passed-Over Promotion, where another character is promoted in our character's place, and Declining Promotion, where our character refuses to be promoted at all.
No Real Life Examples, Please! This is not a sounding board to complain about work.
Examples:
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Comic Books
- In the aftermath of The Transformers: All Hail Megatron, Starscream takes over the Decepticons after Megatron is left comatose following a combined Autobot/human counterattack. As can be expected of the Trope Namer for The Starscream, he'd been aiming for the top spot for a good, long time. And yet he's painfully aware he only became leader because Megatron was struck down by Optimus Prime and he managed to retrieve the Matrix of Leadership as the Decepticons retreated with Megatron's unconscious body. Instead of leading a powerful conquering army, he's stuck trying to lead a demoralised and defeated one, and by the time Megatron is revived three years later, the Decepticons have effectively disintegrated.
Films — Live-Action
- Dune (2021): Leto Atreides accepts Emperor Shaddam IV's assignment to oversee spice production on Arrakis which was recently vacated by House Harkonnen, under the belief that making peace with the native Fremen is worth uprooting House Atreides and relocating there. Within the first couple of days, Leto encounters the state of disarray that Baron Vladimir left the place - broken equipment subject to being devoured by the Sandworms, a spice quota that is already woefully behind which if not met potentially jeopardizes the interstellar economy and also human life, an assassination attempt on his son, Paul, and, if that's not bad enough, a plotted coup by the original occupiers of the planet House Harkonnen, aided and abetted by the Emperor and his personal army, the Sardukar, and - to a lesser extent, the Bene Gesserit. For his trouble, Leto is captured, Arrakis is taken over, and although he nearly assassinates Baron Vladimir, he dies not knowing if his wife and son survived the coup.
- In The Sharktank Redemption (a short-film parody of The Shawshank Redemption) Fred finally gets promoted to agent after Randy gets fired, but it doesn't make him happy; it's just a different grind than being an assistant.
- The Star Trek films, beginning with Star Trek: The Motion Picture, show that James Kirk hates being promoted to a desk job as an admiral. Fortunately for him, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home solves that problem: after violating about a dozen laws and saving Earth, his Unishment is being Gracefully Demoted back to captain.
Literature
- A Desolation Called Peace: After being promoted at the end of the first book, Three Seagrass finds that her new position is incredibly boring, mostly because Mahit isn't there. She ends up assigning herself to a job that will let her reunite with Mahit as soon as possible.
- Dragonlance: Sturm Brightblade has been masquerading as a Knight of the Rose (the highest level of a Knights of Solamnia) since his first appearance, wearing his father's armour to sell the illusion. note He's finally knighted for real by a member of the order shortly before a major battle against the forces of Takhsis, but it's an extremely unpopular decision amongst the other members and is done with the bare minimum of ceremony. note
- In Wings of Fire, spoiled Princess Snowfall always thought that her coronation would be some glorious, ego-stroking affair, earned by the culturally-mandated battle to the death with her mother. But while Snowfall was still a child, a messy and unexpected plague kills her mother, and a lot of their subjects, so that Snowfall ascends the throne during the most weak, hopeless period of IceWing history shown. (She makes it work.)
Live-Action TV
- Babylon 5: In "Z'ha'dum", Londo gets a "promotion". He's been offered a position as advisor to the emperor on planetary security, but Londo doesn't think it's because he's actually earned it. He's gotten to be too dangerous, so they're bringing him back home where he'll be easier to watch. Worse, when he arrives on Centauri Prime he finds that the emperor he is advising is utterly insane.
- A non-self variation in Breaking Bad: After Jesse is forced into hiding as a result of Walt killing two of Gus's street dealers, Walt sees that his new lab assistant is Gale Boetticher. Walt knows that Gale is the only other person who has an understanding of the process behind Walt's recipe, and realizes that unless Gale is removed from the picture, he's a dead man if Gale figures it out himself, as Gus will have no reason to keep him on payroll.
- CSI: NY: At the end of season 7, Danny Messer secures a promotion to sergeant, which takes him out of the crime lab and down to the ground floor commanding beat cops. He's initially okay with it until one of his subordinates screws up and tries to pin it on him, leading him to request a "demotion" back to the crime lab in "Officer Involved".
- Fargo Season 2: After claiming credit for destroying the Gerhardt crime family, Mike Milligan returns to the Kansas City Syndicate expecting his star to rise in the organization (even proclaiming himself a king and with ideas to form his own crew). The Syndicate indeed believes he should be rewarded for his efforts... with a promotion to a paltry middle management position, complete with a tiny office. Milligan is completely crestfallen to see how little his war has gotten him.
- The Good Wife: When Alicia is promoted to partner at Lockhart & Gardner, it comes with a requirement to buy equity in the firm. Diane is unusually insistent on it, which turns out to be because they're going through some financial problems. Diane later explains to Alicia that she herself got promoted to partner at her first firm because the head of the firm at the time had been accused of sexual harassment and needed to get some women up to partner level quickly for optics reasons.
- Homicide: Life on the Street: When Howard is promoted to Sergeant, Giardello simply informs her of the promotion without much fanfare. Giardello apologizes for the lack of a celebration, as the detectives have been forced to work out of an abandoned bank due to a gas leak in the precinct and the move has proved incredibly stressful. Howard's subsequent efforts to use her authority to help her colleagues result in them resenting her, due to them viewing her well-meaning attempts to help as condescending. She eventually winds up drowning her sorrows at the Waterfront to cope with how much of a bitter disappointment her promotion has been.
- How I Met Your Mother: Inverted by Barney Stinson. Throughout the series, his actual job remains a mystery until the final season when under the influence of alcohol, he finally admits that his dismissive chuckle and "Please" actually means "Provide Legal Exculpation And Sign Everything", essentially making him a Fall Guy for Goliath National Bank. Basically Barney goes from being a minimum-wage barista to enjoying a generous compensation package in exchange for signing legally dubious documents which could implicate him in GNB's corporate malfeasance. As it turns out, this was an elaborate revenge plot against a GNB executive who stole his girlfriend, as Barney turned FBI informant and had the executive arrested and his division shut down after the events of the series.
Barney: Best job ever!
- Kaamelott: Inverted in "L'Adoubement" (The Knighting), which starts with a formal dubbing ceremony of another knight. After it turns out Perceval was never officially made a knight (and therefore can't even be at the Round Table), an exasperated Arthur ends up just grabbing his sword, taps Perceval twice on the shoulders, and declares him a knight. Perceval declares himself moved by such an emotional moment.
- The Season 8 finale of Law & Order: Criminal Intent has Eames being offered a promotion to Captain and command of the Major Case Squad. But in order to get it, she has to fire Goren. She accepts just long enough to give Goren a softer exit than anyone else, then immediately calls her superiors and resigns.
- John Munch gets promoted to Sergeant in the Season 9 premiere of Law & Order: SVU and is made acting squad commander. But he doesn't like either promotion: the former because he took the Sergeant's exam on a bar bet; and the latter because he's only in charge because the brass wants Captain Cragen somewhere where they can keep an eye on him. He then ends up making a royal mess of the case SVU is working, which forces Cragen to come back and Munch happily goes back to the squad room.
- Power Rangers:
- Power Rangers Lost Galaxy: In "Turn Up the Volume", Damon is encouraged by Karone to apply for a prestigious engineering position. Despite a competitor stealing one of his designs, Damon succeeds... only to turn it down once he learns the position involves supervising other engineers rather than doing any actual work.
- A similar situation happens in the Power Rangers S.P.D. episode "Katastrophe". Dr. Kat Manx, head scientist of the SPD Earth branch, is promoted to a research and development position at SPD headquarters. She quickly becomes dissatisfied with the position, as it revolves around instructing others rather than working on projects of her own. Kat ultimately steps down and returns to Earth.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, in the episode You Are Cordially Invited..., General Martok is annoyed to find out that he was recommended by Captain Sisko for Supreme Commander of the Ninth Fleet. "Do you have any idea how much paperwork a supreme commander has to do?"
- Star Trek: Discovery: Cadet Sylvia Tilly is very vocal about her desire to be a starship Captain. She readily befriends Michael Burnham to receive mentorship from the disgraced, former First Officer. She introduces herself to Captain Pike as "Discovery's newest addition to Starfleet's Command Training program". But after Discovery's transport to the distant future, serving as temporary First Officer, and being promoted to lieutenant, she grows disillusioned. She realizes she only ever wanted to be Captain to prove to her mother that joining Starfleet had been a good decision. As her mother is now dead and will never know of her accomplishments, Tilly requests a transfer to a Starfleet Academy teaching position.
- Ted Lasso: The first half of Season Two deals with Roy Kent looking for a new career post-retirement from football. He initially takes a job as a pundit on Sky Sports at Keeley's insistence. While popular with viewers because of his profane and straightforward nature, Roy finds he's miserable because he prefers to have his head in the game, not looking at it as a spectator. Roy ultimately leaves the pundit gig after realizing he has a better opportunity as an assistant coach for Richmond.
Video Games
- In Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Zack gets promoted to SOLDIER First Class early in the game. Given that this has come off the hands of his mentor and friend Angeal Hewley going MIA and seemingly turning traitor to Shinra, Zack isn't really all that emotional about his promotion.
Zack: Huh... I thought I'd be happier.
Lazard: Understandable. Too much happened too fast.
Web Animation
- RWBY: In Volume 7, Ironwood promotes Teams RWBY and JNPR to full Huntsmen, years before they're due to graduate. The heroes are initially underwhelmed because they've been so busy trying to save the world that getting the licence they originally wanted, as Weiss puts it, "almost feels trivial now". They're also struggling with the fact they're keeping vital secrets from Ironwood, and they very quickly discover that graduating doesn't make them feel any more capable of handing the scale of the threat the Big Bad poses.
Western Animation
- Avatar: The Last Airbender: At the start of the series' climax, Ozai crowns Azula as the new Fire Lord... and himself as Phoenix King, making Azula's title worthless.
- Crossing Swords: Throughout the show's run, Patrick dreamed about becoming a knight, complete with fantasies of splendor. At the conclusion of the final season, because the kingdom had fallen to the mole people, Patrick is hastily promoted to knight. Instead of the pageantry he thought he'd get, the knighting consists of Princess Blossom tapping Patrick with a sword and saying "Boop, boop, you're a knight", which she repeats on Broth and herself, to his disappointment. When the kingdom is faced with the prospect of war, King Merryman has to repeat the motions as Blossom never had the authority to knight anyone, even as Patrick angrily attempts to resign due to his frustration over the kingdom's greed and incompetence.
- Disenchantment: in "Bean Falls Down", Princess Tiabeanie is named the new queen of Dreamland after King Zøg is deemed unfit to rule. Her first day as queen is essentially a baptism by fire, as she has to deal with the impending threat of Steamland, plus an army of ogres sent to capture her friend Elfo. At the end of the episode, she loses both her friends as Elfo allows himself to be captured and Luci is decapitated trying to save Bean. Bean is also dragged into hell by her mother Dagmar who is marrying her off to Satan to fulfill a royal debt.
- Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: After finally having enough of Mr. Herriman's unreasonable demands, Frankie runs against him in an election for "president" of the house and beats him handily. She gives Mr. Herriman back his job, partly because he was miserable after losing, but also because finds out that she's paid less for it than her old job, with her bonus being paid in carrots.
- Futurama: Inverted and discussed in "Law And Oracle", After the events of the episode, Professor Farnsworth decides to promote Fry to Executive Delivery Boy. Fry ponders the term "executive"; meanwhile, Hermes whispers to Leela, "It's a meaningless title, but it helps insecure people feel better about themselves" as the executive producer credits for Matt Groening and David X. Cohen flash in between them. Fry then exclaims, "I feel better about myself!"
- My Gym Partner's a Monkey: In "Pride and Pixiefrog", Principal Pixiefrog learns he's won the "Principal of the Year" award, and he goes all out to prepare for the ceremony, including making the students build a coliseum to hold it in. However, when the committee comes to give him the award, he learns that there's no real ceremony and that the award it's merely a plaque and a coupon for a steakhouse. Not that it matters, since he immediately gets disqualified for cancelling classes and keeping students after-hours.
- In one episode of The Penguins of Madagascar, Private wants a promotion so he can get clearance to a classified document that supposedly has a very funny joke in it. After proving himself by the end of the episode, Private gets promoted to... Private, First Class (though they'll still call him Private for short). At least he gets to read the joke, but after he does...
Private: I don't get it.
- Rugrats (1991): In "Mommy's Little Assets", Charlotte is forced to take Tommy and Angelica to work with her during a planned acquisition of Famous Ethel's Cookie Company, since all the adults are busy and no babysitter is willing to look after Angelica a second time. Since Merge Corp. doesn't have a daycare center, she has Jonathan, her assistant, look after Tommy and Angelica. Despite his best attempts to do so and make sure the acquisition proceeds as planned, Angelica sneaks away from him and destroys a scale model needed for the meeting, having mistaken it for a toy. After scolding Angelica for disobeying her when she told her not to play with the model, Charlotte fires Jonathan for not keeping a close eye on Tommy and Angelica. However, Ethel, who witnessed the incident, is so impressed with Charlotte's maternal instincts that she calls Jonathan to take her to Charlotte's house so she can tell Charlotte that she's interested in selling her company to her. Charlotte re-hires Jonathan and gives him a promotion. Jonathan hopes it's vice-president, but to his dismay, it's the supervisor of her new daycare center, starting with looking after Tommy and Angelica while she and Drew go out to dinner with Ethel.
- The Simpsons: In "Homer the Great", Homer goes from being the lowest man on the run of the Stonecutters to being The Chosen One. He eventually finds the fawning adulation and lack of competition boring.
- South Park: In "Taming Strange", Mr. Mackey informs the faculty that in order to deal with the constant technical failures of South Park Elementary's new Intellilink system, he's hired Pat Conners to ensure the system is working properly. Immediately after she sits down, Mackey eviscerates her for the system's problems, despite the fact that she had literally just started. After Conners attempts to explain that she's getting acclimated to the system, Mackey yells at her again and fires her on the spot.
- SpongeBob SquarePants: In "Patty Hype", SpongeBob and Mr. Krabs agree to trade businesses, with Krabs taking over the Pretty Patties stand and SpongeBob assuming ownership of the Krusty Krab. Initially Krabs benefits from this as he continues to do the business that SpongeBob was doing, but the following day, it blows up in his face as he's chased by an angry mob over the fact that the patties had unintended colorful side effects. Meanwhile, despite taking over an empty restaurant, SpongeBob is absolutely over the moon, enjoying every aspect of the Krusty Krab down to the squeaky pickles.
- Star Trek: Lower Decks:
- In "Moist Vessel", Captain Freeman looks for any possible excuse to have Ensign Beckett Mariner leave the Cerritos, but finds that subjecting her to grunt work fails. She decides ultimately to promote Mariner to Lieutenant, to Mariner's horror. Whereas Mariner found that she was able to stay mostly under the radar and break Starfleet protocol as an ensign, as Lieutenant, she not only has to do more mundane administrative tasks, but she's under the more watchful eye of the senior officers. Needless to say she dreads it, until a ship wide crisis forces her to have a dialogue with Freeman. Eventually she comes to realize that she enjoys the additional responsibility, but promptly gets disciplined and demoted when she makes fun of an admiral's pronunciation of the word, sensors.
- The subplot of "The Spy Humongous" involves a group of ensigns called the Red Shirts vying for the position of Acting Captain. After the events of the episode, Ensign Casey determines that he's the best candidate for the role and petitions Commander Ransom for it. Ransom apathetically gives him the role, to Casey's delight. Later on the bridge, when Casey is given the conn, he takes a brief moment to admire it and sit down... only to be immediately relieved by Shaxs, yelled at, and ordered to clean airlock 17 because a Pakled did something unspeakable in there.
- Mariner is promoted once again in Season 4, something that she hates. She responds by yet again attempting to get demoted back to ensign, something that Cmdr. Ransom refuses to do. It's not until "The Inner Fight" that Mariner explains why she hated being promoted. Initially Mariner aspired to be a captain in Starfleet however two successive traumatic experiences changed her worldview: losing her friend Sito Jaxa who was killed on a spy mission after being newly posted as an ensign on the USS Enterprise, then earning her own posting on the now-militarized Starfleet during the Dominion War. Not wanting to surpass her deceased friend, or for that matter, order more innocent lives to their deaths, Mariner decided it was best to stay an ensign.
