Boss Tells Worker To Quit Because He Spends Too Much Time On Hobbies; Employee Listens And Pursues His Hobby

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    Font - r/MaliciousCompliance u/the_anecdotist135 14h M ● 31 1 Boss says I should quit because I like spending time on 'Hobbies' so I did. 21
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    Font - I was working for a startup engineering firm working as a Piping Design engineer. But since it was a start up firm, we didn't have a lot of man power and the ones we had weren't as qualified either. I was one of the very few qualified enough to handle a team of my own. The boss trusted me with almost everything. I was like the second in command after the boss only because I was managing a lot of things on the side as a volunteery basis. Things like paycheck balancing, client meetings, qua
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    Font - One day he had this bright idea that we should revamp our website to attract more clients. And he gave this project to his nephew who just graduated from college as a developer of sorts. After a week or so the nephew came up with the first draft of the website and the boss was fairly disappointed as it didn't look anywhere near to what he expected. He then called me in and asked me if I knew anything about website design. At that time I was very much interested on UI/UX and was doing an o
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    Font - I spent the next week full making a proper information architure, wireframes and colour guidelines that the nephew could pick up and build the website from scratch. In the end the website looked futuristic and the boss was pretty happy. But during the week my other 'responsibilities' were put in a backlog and it just kept piling on. I knew I would be able to cover it once am done with the website and didn't pay too much attention to it.
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    Font - The next week my boss caught up with backlog and called me in to his cabin. He started yelling at me for all the 'responsibilities' that I didn't attend to. I calmly told him that I was working on the website and its not a big deal. Told him that I would clear it out as soon as possible. But he wasn't happy. He asked me why I spent so much time doing something that isn't even my responsibility. I told him that I was learning about UI/UX and was pretty much interested to learn more. (I obv
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    Font - The boss snapped and told me that I should quit and peraue my 'hobby' as a living. He said that only then I will understand how lucky I am to have a job that pays. I kind of got offended because 1. He doesn't even pay me the worth of things i do for the company and 2. He knew I could cover and yet took this as a opportunity to 'discipline' me.
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    Font - I stepped out of this cabin, went to my desk and put in my resignation and went home. He called me a couple of times asked me to revoke my resignation and then made other people from the organization call me to convince me to come back. I wasnt having it at all. It's been 2 years now, I decided to persue UI/UX as a career now and am working as a product designer in one of the biggest organisations in the country with a pay that's almost 300% more than what I was getting as a mechanical en
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    Font - Update 1: To all the people who wanted to know the company status today, the company was shut down because they had to pay a huge penalty for not being able to deliver the last project I was handling. Then covid hit and they had to reduce pay for all the other staff which lead to people leaving. Eventually the company went bankrupt for not being able to keep up financially after covid.
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    Font - Update 2: for all the people who want to know the steps I persued to have a career in UI/UX, I did the online certification course from google and spent a lot of time solving whiteboard challenges preparing myself to be a problem solver. Then I got the opportunity to intern for a service based agency for a few months where I dedicated my time to learn as much as possible and then when I though I was ready, I applied to all the openings I found on LinkedIn and other job portals until I fin
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    Rectangle - Mountain-Turnover501 I see no logic in the boss thinking process and action ... 14h + Reply Vote
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    Organism - EliSka93 9h (S) 5 Awards Honestly, pure speculation on my part, but I think a lot of bosses have inferiority complexes towards their most capable workers and think they have to put them down from time to time so they don't realise their worth. + Vote
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    Font - thermidorthelobster • 9h You've hit the nail on the head. Although I'd say it's not necessarily deliberately so they don't realise their worth, but to try to elevate the self-worth of the incompetent boss. Vote
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    Font - Pizzadiamond 2h In other words, the boss needs to validate their own feeling of superiority. + Vote
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    Font - badmanveach 3h Evaluating the worth of others is, by definition, not self-worth evaluation. + 4 Vote
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    Font - Plus1ForkOfEating +18h 1 Award I've heard it phrased this way: Grade A bosses hire other As. B bosses hire Cs. In my experience, when a B boss comes to a team with As, the As end up leaving. + Vote
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    Rectangle - jupitergal235h This is excellent. And yep, happened to me. Had A bosses and A coworkers. B boss thrust into our team. A bosses and A coworkers fled. B boss hired Cs, company failed. + 4 Vote
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    Font - TexasAggie98. 4h I am now a partner in a private company, but I spent many years as an engineer and executive with public companies. I argued with several CEOs about hiring practices. My stated goal was to be the dumbest guy in the room when I was a CEO; the CEO of the last public company that I was with wanted to be the smartest. If you are the CEO, why wouldn't you want everyone on your team to be A+++ instead of B and C? You can have much fewer employees who can do the work better and
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    Font - throwaway47138. Dumb people want to be the smartest in the room because they're afraid of looking dumb, especially in front of subordinates. Smart people don't care if they're the smartest in the room, they just want the best people for the job. If the boss is the smartest person in the room, chances are somebody in that room has made a mistake... 4h ... Vote
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    Font - Fickle-Locksmith9763. 6h I had a boss some years ago who thought this was "management." Ever so often, he would look at something a direct report had done, look for some problem - real, imagined or misunderstood - and make a medium-sized deal about it. Nothing as aggressive as OP's boss, but enough to be very annoying.
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    Font - He wasn't a bad person at heart, he genuinely thought this was a way to maintain his authority and to reenforce the idea among his direct reports that he was on top of and aware of everything. It did not work. I could see by what he chose to address that he wasn't aware of most things, let along better at analyzing or addressing them than I was, having spent most of my time on that exact that thing. Vote +
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    Font - evemeatay 9h Some (too many) people think that bosses have to punish people occasionally no matter how good they are. They think it's the only way to manage. Probably because they are so coming up the ranks that Its the only way anyone has been able to manage them. Vote
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    Font - the_anecdotist135 OP • 8h My boss had this ideology that everyone, no matter how good, need a scolding or a pull back of sorts t Just to keep them in line. I know this because he has personally bragged to me about this profound 'technique' of his + Vote
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    Font - whoozywhatzitnow • 13h When you have an employee that does way more than they were hired to because why pay someone else to do it when you can get an employee to do the extra work for no extra pay, you don't challenge them to quit. Reply Vote +
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    Font - nanny2359 4h My husband started working at a small newspaper as one of 3 reporters. 5 years later his salary had gone up about 5k, and he was the ONLY reporter on staff for over a year at that point. Man wrote an entire newspaper by himself (with occasional additions from the boss/editor). ... + Vote
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    Font - Onequestion0110 • 6h It's an interesting phenomenon. Every job I've ever had with more than half a dozen employees had that one guy. Actually it was usually a woman, but that's kinda irrelevant. They'd be doing the job of three or more people, but none of those jobs would be getting done particularly well. Passing grade, but never an A. Those same people also became bottlenecks, both for tasks and information because the bandwidth for a single person is only so much. Additionally that per
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    Font - They do it for lots of reasons - sometimes they really are the most competent person in the room, sometimes they have a need to please, sometimes they're an empire builder trying to show off. Doesn't really matter, because once they're stuck it seems to always look the same. And then it becomes a problem for so many reasons. Their fingers are in so many pies they become scary to lose. They get so many jobs that stuff gets left undone and they get disengaged after feeling like their tasks
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    Font - Urb4nN0rd +1.12h "Hey Op, can you do this for me?" "Sure this even relates to a hobby of mine!" "OP, your other work is slipping because of that thing i asked you to do! Maybe you shouldn't be spending so much time on hobbies!" Like how many times did his parents drop him as a baby... ... + Reply Vote
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    Font - the_anecdotist135 OP O • 8h Thank you all for a great response. To all the people asking about the company's whereabouts: the last project I was working on had to be pulled back and the organization had to pay a huge penalty for not being able to deliver as promised. Which wasn't enough because then covid hit and they to reduce pay for all the employees which then lead to all the staff leaving gradually. They company went bankrupt last year due to not being able to keep up financially dur
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    Font - ArchangelLBC Sounds like it couldn't have happened to a better company. ● 7h + Vote
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    Rectangle - +1 5h superstarbun Huzzah!! Thanks for the insight and kudos to you, OP! ... . + Vote

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