Top Employee Gets Denied a Raise Twice, Stops Putting in Effort, Epically Tells Manager There's No Reason to Work Hard with No Incentive

Most of us are all too familiar with getting underpaid for the amount of work we put in. After restless nights, hours of overtime, going above and beyond your duties, you'd think you'd get rewarded for your extra efforts. But, nope, not usually in this day and age. You get paid what you get paid, and if you don't go above what you're worth, you get fired. And if you put in the amount of effort your pay reflects, you get fired. It's a lose-lose world out in corporate America, y'all. One TikToker, however, is now going viral for saying something to his manager we all wish we could. 

TikToker @krisdrinkslemonade recently posted a video showing the epic last straw he had with his job in check adjustments for Canadian banks. Apparently, he had been the top performing employee for two years in a row, but when he asked for a raise twice, he was denied. His manager told him he was getting paid the “fair market value” of his job, and when he asked at what standard, she said the below average market value. 

So, since being told he was worth below average, he decided to start working at a below average standard. During a meeting with his manager she brought up his decline in performance, and oh boy did he let her have it! “At that point I decided I was going to become a fair market value employee and put in a below average amount of effort, because that's what I feel like you pay me to do,” he tells her with fire in his voice. “You've created an environment with no incentive for me to work hard, so I don't.” (Emphaszing the "don't" at the end.)

Tells His Boss Off:

The video ends before we get to see how the boss responded, but it went so viral that the TikToker posted a follow up video explaining everything. He explains that in the video he replaced the actual voice of his boss with a friend, perhaps to keep the identity of his boss private or maybe simply because you couldn't hear his boss, but his part was a very real live response and reaction. The video ends with him looking nervous about everything he had just said and shuts the camera off. But he says that after the recording stopped, there was a very long awkward silence. Then his boss “went through the five stages of grief," finally reaching acceptance and begging him to just do his job until his nine weeks were up.

So, basically, he and his manager were both getting laid-off, so they both had very few f***ks left to give—the TikToker definitely less so than the manager. But everything he said was so painfully true and so many viewers wish they were able to say those things to their boss or could have quit past jobs exactly the way he did it. 

Follow Up:

Through the viralness of this video, the TikToker has been able to get help from viewers that are job recruiters, business owners, and others in the job market world. He says he works on the side on a podcast and as a voice actor and would love to break into that world for his next career. And obviously, he won't take anything less than above average market value pay.