Entitled boss quietly dumps his own admin onto an employee for months on end, dismissing any kind of confrontation about it: ‘He laughed and said "Let's not make a big thing of it"'

Author image for Olivia Arocena
Olivia Arocena • Writer and Editor
Jun 12, 2026 6:00 PM EDT

This is what happens when your boss has a questionable 'talent'

In everyday life, people constantly influence each other: Your friend says something to purposely persuade you to do x, you dress a certain way to appear "smarter" or "richer" in front of somebody else. Something that can be perceived as slightly manipulative is, indeed, normal. The problem starts when the persuasion tactics get a little extreme, and you notice the person using them is trying to use you as a volunteer for their cause without giving you anything in return.

Very rarely do we consider that some things can be a gift to someone (the ability to persuade) while at the same time being a curse to somebody else. Regarding the difference between influence and manipulation, this boss exceeded all my expectations.

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  • man smiling with crossed arms wearing a gray blazer
    via Itay Verchik

    A model depicting the boss after he said "let's not make a big thing of it"

  • my boss is one of those people who has mastered the art of making his own work sound like a generous gift to whoever ends up doing it.
    via Economy-Fishing-763
  • About six months ago he started pulling me into his office every couple of weeks for a "quick favour." It was always framed as a one off and always wrapped in flattering language. He needed someone to "polish" his
    via Economy-Fishing-763
  • board update because i was "such a strong writer." He needed me to "have a look" at the budget reconciliation because i was "so good with detail." He needed someone to "step in" for him on a meeting with another
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  • department because i had "great cross team presence." Each one was small enough on its own that saying no would have felt petty. About a month ago i sat down on a sunday night
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  • This is so problematic, but the boss really does seem to have a talent for making someone think it’s their idea to help him. Is it a win-win situation, though? I don’t think so. If you had any people-pleasing tendencies, you would fall right into his trap, and I know this because I totally would. It’s the flattering, and not making a big deal out of the stuff he asks you to do. Usually, it goes like this (at least for me it did): At first, you say yes because you wanna be the best at what you do, and then over time, you start to feel extra tired, and you don’t have any extra compensation for what you do for your boss. At that point, you’ve done so many things that flew under the radar that explaining the amount of extra hours you put into them becomes an impossible task. Also, you run the risk that he will deny all those things took that much time because you didn’t point it out at that precise moment. Sounds more like a lose-lose situation, right?

  • and listed every "quick favour" id done for him in the last six months. The list ran to eleven separate ongoing pieces of work, three of which were technically parts of his actual job description and one of which was
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  • something his predecessor had explicitly been told to stop delegating to other people. None of it was on my objectives. None of it was acknowledged in my last review. He had even taken the board update one to a
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  • leadership session as evidence of HIS year so far. I tried to raise it gently at our one to one a fortnight ago. I said i was carrying a fair bit of extra work for him and wondered
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  • whether we could either formalise it as part of my role going forward or hand a couple of bits back. He smiled in that way he does and said i was being "really mature" to flag it, that he hadnt realised it had built up, and that hed
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  • "give it some thought." Two weeks later, two more "quick favours" have landed in my inbox. The clincher was Friday. He pulled me aside and asked if i could "just take" his quarterly travel and
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  • a man sitting at a desk using a laptop computer
    via Vitaly Gariev

    An illustrative picture of the boss working only a few hours because his employees do everything for him

  • expense reconciliation off his plate going forward because i was "such a natural with this stuff." I asked him outright whether that was a permanent change to my role and whether it would be reflected in my
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  • objectives. He laughed and said "lets not make a big thing of it." Is my annoyance valid?
    via Economy-Fishing-763

  • In his case, I would recommend ‘starting from scratch’, trying to forget everything that he has already done for him, and begin setting boundaries around what he will do from now on, excusing himself with phrases like ‘I can’t do that today because I have to do x’. If, eventually, the day comes that the boss needs him to do a bunch of extra stuff, he can always agree and ask for equivalent compensation, as it would be clear that there are a lot of extra tasks at play. Although seeing his boss’s profile, I think all this could result in him throwing a temper tantrum. What do you guys think?

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