'Let’s stick to what’s actually in your job description, alright?': Boss tells employee to focus on his main duties, employee maliciously complies and stops answering the phones

Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor

May 30, 2025 8:00 AM EDT

This boss may or may not know that he was doing his employee a major solid. After all, doesn't every employee solely want to be responsible for exactly what they were hired to do?

It's common for most workers to take on extra tasks and responsibilities that do not actually fall under the agreed-upon list of known performance indicators. When employees take on this additional work, they typically do it out of decency to other coworkers who may be swamped with work, pressure from management to go the extra mile, or, in rare circumstances, genuine interest.

This employee tended to take on front desk duties out of the goodness of his heart when those who normally answer the phones are bombarded with other tasks or emergencies. Having that extra set of hands was, I'm sure, appreciated by those behind the front desk. However, when this employee's boss told him to solely focus on his primary duties, the structured flow of the office fell apart pretty quickly.

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In an ideal world, the author's boss wanted his employee to stop overdoing it for his own sake, but also for the sake of the front desk workers, who need to be able to handle stressful situations without him sometimes. However, we tend to believe that managers like this guy just need to flex their muscles and give unnecessary orders for no justifiable purpose. Now, the phones are going unanswered, and there is nothing this employee is going to do about it.
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"They said I could only do tasks listed in my job description. So I stopped answering the phones."

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'Let’s stick to what’s actually in your job description, alright?': Boss tells employee to focus on his main duties, employee maliciously complies and stops answering the phones

"They said I could only do tasks listed in my job description. So I stopped answering the phones."

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