Manager forces employee to submit shorter reports, employee complies and then get reprimanded for not being detailed enough

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  A warehouse coordinator takes instructions from his manager.

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• My manager told me to write shorter reports. So I did.

  
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  The coordinator reviews extensive plans and reports with his manager, thinking he will receive strong feedback.

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  The manager begins critiquing the coordinator's work.

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  The manager and coordinator shake hands, thinking they have reached an understanding about the reporting.

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• It's always amusing when employees who do a good job are reprimanded for doing too much. This coordinator's weekly reports were usually a page to a page and a half, and yet if you asked his manager, it seemed like he was writing a novel every week. The manager pulled the coordinator aside to tell him that his reports were too long. As you can imagine, this wasn't exactly an easy pill for the logistics coordinator to swallow. After all, he felt like his reports had the exact right amount of detail. If anything, shouldn't one's manager want to know more, not less? Shouldn't the manager be rewarding his employee for going above and beyond? 

  We're fairly certain that there were other folks on this team who needed to be confronted for more than doing more than what was expected of them. Maybe the manager should be spending his time figuring out a way to deal with those folks rather than someone who was excelling in his role.

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• It's hard not to be amused by the coordinator's choice to embellish his reports by merely adding adverbs and adjectives. This guy may have had a point, but he knew exactly what he was doing. But honestly, based on the manager's inability to prioritize which critiques were necessary and which ones weren't, we can't help but feel that the coordinator has a right to be a little snarky about the reporting. That's the only way that his manager was going to get the message.

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