I'm a long time lurker of r/antiwork. A lot of the stories that make the front page of this subreddit are entertaining to read for sure, but I figured “Ah, this probably doesn't happen as much, they probably just work under a really shitty boss”.
Today I had my monthly review meeting with my boss to go over my performance, etc. She brought up some valid points, a bit too much cell phone usage, not enough energy (I had to explain that I'm just not an energetic person in general and to be honest the work I do in my position is really mundane), but overall very constructive criticisms that I need to work on. The meeting was going pretty well.
And then she goes, “Obviously, you can be easily replaced, but we want you to grow more because you're young.”
My brain immediately shut down. Like quite honestly, I mentally clocked out for the rest of the meeting. My supervisor is an overall pretty nice lady, but as soon as she said that, the first thing in my head was “Excuse me?”
I suddenly remembered some of the stories I would read on here and how demoralizing a simple sentence can be. Like I mentioned, my supervisor isn't really “shitty” by any means, but wow hearing that really just made me wanna shut down, even if it was coming from a “good place”.
Telling your employees how easily they can be replaced is not as constructive or productive as you might think. It just sucks to hear.