Construction manager meets with unqualified boss to tell him his workload is too high, boss gives him more work, he quits: 'Ok then, I am resigning.'

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Brad Dickson • Managing Editor
May 28, 2025 2:00 AM EDT

Constant pressure at work, the resulting chronic stress, is the fastest track to burnout. And it can be hard to let your managers know how you're feeling, and any admission of struggling to keep up can be taken as a sign of weakness or a lack of effort, and any complaints about workload being too high can get you labeled  as "negative."

After attempting to communicate their struggles to further up the chain of command, even making calls to the company president, the construction manager was growing weary and frustrated. He attempted to sit down and discuss his workload with his own boss, expressing concern about the excessive amount of work he still needed to complete and worrying that the pressure would lead to mistakes and delays for clients, simply because he had too much on his plate. His boss, seemingly thinking that his subordinate was just complaining, responded by telling him effectively to tough it up and "get ready" because there were going to be two more projects added to his plate soon. The frustrated worker resigned on the spot. The construction manager then shared his experience with this online workplace community, sharing his frustration with readers, sparking a discussion where some shared their own experiences and stories in the comments.

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  • 01

    "In a meeting I told my boss my workload was too large, he responded by adding more workload. I resigned as he said that."

    I was a construction manager for a very high end construction company in Asheville, NC. For a year I had been telling my boss, the VP in charge of my division, that my workload was too large. That's not good because it means delays and mistakes. A workload too large for a construction manager is catastrophic to the construction company but also to the clients, subcontractors, designers, real estate agents, banks, etc. I had told him in person and in writing, multiple times. After several months
    via Lucy_Bloom45
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    Cheezburger Image 10510881536
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  • 03
    The day I resigned I was in my weekly meeting w my boss where the theme over the past year has become "my workload is too large and how it will backfire on us soon." My boss smiled and said "well, get ready because we are going to add two more projects to your plate and we will not be able to give you additional help." I said, "OK, then I am resigning" Cue shocked Pikachu face.
    via Lucy_Bloom45
  • 04
    I have never seen a faster display of how unqualified a person was for their role. Boy, I thought my boss was unqualified before but he proved it over the next two weeks. Two months later they are struggling to get me COBRA and my 401k match. I just wanted to succeed but my boss didn't know how to make it happen.
    via Lucy_Bloom45
  • 05
    Edit: COBRA is an American program that requires employers to offer their insurance programs to employees after they leave a job amicably for a period of time. 401k is an American program that allows employees to distribute income to a retirement stock market account before taxes are taken. Often employers contribute a certain amount as an employment incentive.
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    OTTOT
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    The image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • 07
    mistedtwister 16 hr. ago I watched a very promising career take the other path in your exact circumstance and it ended in complete disaster for the whole company and a project literally burnt to the ground. A project manager who was overworked had a multi million dollar job and two others under his eye as well. When the burnout started affecting him he was told to "bury the ". He ended up having a mental breakdown and a 100 unit elderly care facility newly built went up in flames, that was the b
    via Lucy_Bloom45
  • 08
    NuclearOops 15 hr. ago. There's nothing so quite free about living in a society where 70 households lose financial stability and the community misses out on a needed medical care facility all because of a few twits who never had any right overseeing a project had plenty of money to fail at one.
    via Lucy_Bloom45
  • 09
    Prineak 13 hr. ago It's almost always because they needed to staff maybe two or three roles. Nope. You lose everything. Your little power struggle that was your fault, but you didn't think it was, it cost you everything. All you had to do was be a decent human being.
    via Lucy_Bloom45
  • 10
    thesouthdotcom . 16 hr. ago The construction industry is so fud. The mentality that everything needs to get done right this second is why we can't get new people to enter the workforce. We are building apartments, not saving someone from death. We don't need to schedule the concrete pour for 2AM because "it's a critical task," you should have allowed more time for the project.
    via Lucy_Bloom45
  • 11
    ROMULUX - 16 hr. ago Same thing happend last year when I told my supervisor that they were adding way too much work load on us and that it was going to cause issues; I'm a social worker. She gave me the "management knows best blah blah. blah" and proceeded to increase all our work load regardless in the name of "hitting better metrics than everyone is else."
    via Lucy_Bloom45
  • 12
    Well productivity plummeted because we didn't have time anymore to do what we are supposed to, an increase in mistakes happened. Now we are at the end of the grant year and they realized they over served way too many clients aka over spent money and in response the state cutts funding for next year/suspended programs due to too many issues with the way the program was run, metrics got worse, and they are panicking how to have enough funding to keep operations going through the rest of the year.
    via Lucy_Bloom45
  • 13
    Beneficial_Ask_6013 17 hr. ago So many bosses have no idea about proper livable workloads. At my old job, I worked in a marketing. department for a small junior college. Was a team of 4. We were constantly slammed with projects and rarely worked less than 50 hours. Under constant pressure from leadership to never miss a deadline. One of us retires. Now the team is down to 3. My boss (who isn't part of the team because she didn't actually contribute to the work,
    via Lucy_Bloom45
  • 14
    she simply stole credit for it) calls a meeting. Says we aren't replacing the retired worker. I ask about deadlines and the number of projects that can be submitted. She says that she brought that up with leadership, and they agree that deadlines need to be more flexible and that other departments are just going to have to be more patient with the number of projects submitted.
    via Lucy_Bloom45
  • 15
    Two weeks later, we have another meeting. She hands out our upcoming project assignments. It's more than we've ever had in my 5 years. I ask about what happened to lessening projects submissions and extending deadlines. She says we aren't doing that anymore, and these need to be done as quickly as possible. Quit the next week.
    via Lucy_Bloom45
  • 16
    SpectacularOcelot 16 hr. ago Construction PM here. Did the exact same fin thing. I was the PM, the scheduler, the right of way agent, the material procurement guy, and the parts. runner. I got bed at for not wanting to take on any estimates and both the supers had a bunch of stupid complaints my boss just sort of accepted without thought. (I won't even touch the fact that both thought THEY were running the job, and half their complaints were that I wasn't ignoring the other super.) Within a week
    via Lucy_Bloom45

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workplace discussion employment issues antiwork workplace-stories jobs employee employment-discussion job work i quit quit employees overworked-employees workplace Horrible Bosses quitting employment in the workplace
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