I have been working for a multinational company in Portugal for approximately 4 years.
My manager is on an indeterminate leave and I have been acting as her back-up, because I am the person with most experience in our small team. I don’t enjoy these additional responsibilities, as I prefer production work, rather than management/administrative work.
I have been planing to leave the company by the end of the year, and start working as a freelancer in the beginning of next year. I would like to leave on good terms, as I hope this company will become one of my clients.
However, I am not ready to tell the company that I plan on leaving, so how should I tell the office director that I should not be considered a replacement and that they should look for someone else?
Note that this is not a duplicate of the following questions, because I am not getting a promotion/additional responsibilities due to merit, and I want to leave the company:
How can I turn down a promotion gracefully?