Creating healthy boundaries at work and not feeling guilty for it

This is hard to explain, so I will try to summarize the situation as best as I can.

Our team manager asked our boss months ago to become the "content specialist" within our team, and he wanted to take on content writing tasks. So he did. So we then started to offer content development as a part of our services to our clients.

Then last week, suddenly, our boss tells our team that we instead, will be writing content, and that our manager will be offloading some of his content writing tasks to US.

We, as a team, are in digital marketing. Content writing is a specialization that none of us own or have experience with.

So, my team manager gave me the most complex, above my head content writing task, that was originally on his plate to complete. He offloaded it onto me. This is a medically-focused piece of content, that requires medically-backed research, studies and references.

The content that my team manager has written and published so far on this one client's website is very academic-sounding, with footnotes, references, and analysis of medical studies. Our team manager has NINE years of experience editing and writing academic content. And he has a phD. So, I am now supposed to replicate his academic-sounding content writing style?????

My initial task was to create a content outline. So I did the best I could with it. This task was beyond my ability, so I copied and pasted content from medical studies into a document, with the reference links and handed it in to him.

I wrote him an email, saying this is truly beyond my ability, I don't understand the studies, the content or the language, so the best I could do was copy and paste the studies and organize them into some semblance of an outline for him.

My team manager's wishes were that I actually write the content for him, which is what my boss had insinuated to me last week.

Now I feel guilty for having handed in what I did, and for not being able to do the task.

However, I feel it is highly unethical of my company to hand over work to my team, work that we are NOT skilled in, work that we have NO experience with, and work that we have NO training for. It's unethical because this content (if approved) will be published on clients' websites for public consumption. We are NOT content writers... none of us are! We are digital marketers.

Our team manager had ASKED our boss to write content himself, and now it's OUR responsibility without training or credentials? I am beside myself.

So, I set a boundary and sent it back to him to write the content himself because it is far beyond my capabilities.

So why do I feel guilty and bad for this? I am sure he is fuming about it. He never replied to my email.

I don't like to create conflict or waves at work, and I hate it when someone is angry with me. I know he is angry about this, but the way I see it, it's his own damn fault. He wanted and asked for this responsibility. IF he's overloaded, then give us digital marketing tasks we can actually DO.

Any feedback/comments are welcome.

If you are given a task that you can’t do due to not knowing enough on the subject, weren’t trained to do and weren’t hired to do, it’s perfectly ethical to not do it with a proper explanation

Trust me many employers love to assign random tasks without extra training or release time given or extra pay provided. My place of employment does it all the time. They do it because they can get away with it and they know they can guilt you. I used to be guilted. I stopped as I got older. It’s been really bad last two years due to shortages in my field. Well I get it you don’t have extra people but why I am being punished for it.

He could fume. But it’s better him fuming than a client fuming over your writing that wouldn’t be 100%!competent! You know how to do your job. This isn’t your job.

Sure I can write research paper if I have to (and I am sure you can too), wrote for masters thesis and post graduate courses. But it was on the subject I knew! Not medical research and I was given time to do it. I’d not be writing research papers at work if it’s not my area of expertise and I wasn’t hired to do and am not paid extra. I am not a writer! Nothing to be guilty
about!

What was it? Fall prevention? Why would you know anything about it? Write this: “Don’t drink and stumble around drunk”. When asked why you wrote it, tell them that’s all you could think of on the subject matter!!!! 😂😂😂😂

LOL!

Now that was funny.

This writing piece is about the medical efficacy of the client's medical equipment for resolving issues with arthritis!!!!!!!

YA. Like hell I can write about that.

AND, our team manager is the one so far who has been writing this client's content. So if we switched to ME, the tone, style and approach would completely differ and thus would be very disjointed on their website! And I'm sure the client would not appreciate this 180 degree change.

As it is, I had attempted to write content already for this client, he didn't like what I produced, and my team manager had to perfect and tweak it! And that was just two paragraphs of content. This piece is supposed to be far lengthier!

And thanks for the support! I agree with you completely. It's not my area of expertise. And yea, I could write a research paper IF I WAS IN SCHOOL AND HAD TO...... LOL!