man has been backed for the reason he is now only doing the bare minimum at work, after being an over-achiever for years.
The man, who didn’t give his name but posts to Reddit under the username u/Scary_Expert1929, took to the r/MaliciousCompliance sub on April 26, where he summed up his experience: “Punishing me for underperforming for one day in two years? No problem.”
He explained his role is to handle complaints, with a target of completing 40 a day—some of which can be solved in five minutes, but others which could include hours-long calls with a legal team.
In two years at the company, he was consistently completing between 50 and 55 cases per day, despite getting no bonus or recognition for his high numbers, as he “felt a friendly obligation to the company.”
Until one day when he was feeling unwell and got multiple difficult, time-consuming cases, and only completed 39 cases—and he was called for an “emergency one-on-one” with his manager.
He was told he had to attend a three-day workshop outside of office hours for what he described as “underperformers,” and when he hit back, pointing out his usual numbers were far above the average, was told “daily requirement is 40, and this is standard practice, nothing we can do.”
Olivia Tapper, co-founder and COO of the DTC SEO Agency, told Newsweek the manager should “never put him through a three-day seminar for underperformers because of one day’s performance. That’s not building a culture where people feel valued and safe, it’s building one of fear.”
“The manager should instead have checked in how he was feeling and the reason behind why he only hit 39,” she said. “Avoid situations like this by talking to your team, have empathy and understand why their performances are the way they are.”
The man did attend the seminar, driving there each evening after work for three days, where he was taught how to “improve my numbers and ‘reach the 40′”—and decided he would do “exactly that.”
“For the past few months, I go into work, I handle 40 cases, my daily requirement, and then I do NOTHING for the rest of my shift,” he wrote.
His manager has repeatedly brought it up with him, asking if anything is wrong, but he only asks innocently: “No, am I in trouble, am I underperforming?”
“And then of course they say that I am 100 percent within daily requirements and that way I shut the conversation down,” he said.
In a final twist, he said the company is now trying to hire two other workers, which he believes is “because they lost me as an overachiever, and they lost me for no reason other than their own stupidity.”
Tapper said it sounds to her as though the man’s manager is “a manager following systems and rules, he’s not a true leader who cares and connects with his team,” and said higher-ups “need to think of the people in our businesses and not just hitting metrics.”
“With high performers, I’ve noticed that you need to have regular check-ins. They need to keep feeling motivated, valued and it’s that intrinsic motivation that is fantastic but sometimes they also need some time to re-charge,” she said.
Reddit users loved the post, awarding it more than 30,000 upvotes, as one commenter declared: “They gave you a class on how to reach the 40, you are applying what you were taught.”
Another said the company had “zero common sense,” as another praised him: “Well played. Companies that ignore hard workers don’t deserve hard work.”
And yet another shared “the golden rule,” writing: “Never push your loyal employees to the point where they no longer care.”
Source – https://www.newsweek.com/worker-punished-underperforming-once-how-revenge-applauded-2065628