Everyone lies in bed overthinking how they could have said something cool at just the right moment sometimes, no? In retrospect, some snappy, sarcastic remark would have been so devastating, so perfect… Oh well, every dog has its day.

If you haven’t had the chance to crush someone with such a comeback, you may enjoy someone else doing it – this employee, who decided that “not my job” would be his reply to any request from management. It’s their own fault for getting on his bad side anyway.

More info: Reddit

If you have been chasing that “big fish” of promotions for far longer than normal, it may be time to reassess whether it’s even a real thing

Image credits: Tiger Lily (not the actual photo)

An employee took to the malicious compliance community to share what he did after the “big boss” told him to stop helping out people all the time

Image credits: u/jaderian212

Image credits: CDC (not the actual photo)

As he would “never be considered for promotion” if he didn’t stop helping people out, he stopped entirely, maliciously complying with the request

Image credits: u/jaderian212

Image credits: TheStandingDesk (not the actual photo)

Not long after that, work started getting backed up massively, but the poster just kept saying “not my job”

Sometimes, management will try to save money. Other times, they’ll want to keep the workforce stable. But at times, it seems that not even management itself has a clue of what’s going on in their own heads. 

Good employees will get snubbed, bad employees will be hired and even promoted, and team-buildings organized, only for employees to be laid off not long after.

It’s almost as if they’re going for the absolute worst decision record – and they’re succeeding.

This leads to a very common point of contention – workers not being promoted when they feel that they should be, especially in cases when they obviously outperform their colleagues or even do their managers’ jobs.

Even more hurtful is the fact that these workers sometimes are substituting for a recently-quit manager for months and months, being promised that big promotion “in due time”, only to have it swiped from underneath them by a new, allegedly “better qualified” hire. 

People in the comments of this story even shared similar incidents, being underappreciated and glossed over for promotions for many different reasons. 

Being too effective at their current job was a big one. 

Imagine this, you’d like to get your foot in the door in some industry, so what do you do? You start working an entry job somewhere. This is especially popular in places like restaurants, with people starting as dishwashers or line cooks and working their way up. You work so hard, showing how responsible and hardworking you are, put in the time, do far more than you should.

When the time comes, you find out that you’ll probably never get promoted because you’re working too hard at your current job and are simply too good at it.

Image credits: Artem Podrez (not the actual photo)

People speculate that such promotions aren’t even real, per se, they’re just something to keep you working your butt off while you’re in the starting position, trying to prove your worth. 

You don’t even need to be a starter at a company for this to happen to you. In fact, you could be an employee with decades of experience, gunning for that title, along with bigger pay, better hours, and more benefits, only for it to be a sham.

All of it is just a dangled carrot to make you work yourself to overdrive, burnout, or death. Sometimes it’s all three and in that order, too.

The Book of Sarah suggests looking deeper to figure out whether you’re actually chasing something real or a “carrot”. Are you stuck in the same position that you’re getting fed up with, but you won’t leave because of some nebulous promise of good things happening in the future? 

A good indication is that no matter what you do, the pie in the sky isn’t getting any closer. But such is the nature of these pies and carrots – they draw you in, blinding you of reality. 

If you see yourself in any of this, try to sit down and analyze the promises with a sober mind. Are they attainable? Have you been getting closer or just running in circles, like a rat in a wheel?

You could also get a reality check from someone else, like a family member, friend, perhaps even a coworker, watching you from the sidelines. Once you realize that nothing is happening, it’s your time to shine – either demand specific dates for something to finally happen or start looking for a better place of work.

The poster’s story collected a major 25k upvotes in the Malicious Compliance community, with over 1k comments to boot. The comments said that the poster did the right thing and shared their own stories of being passed over for promotions.

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