In a school within a university I worked for, my manager had instructed our team that the associate dean was recently dissatisfied that we had exceeded expectations on a recent project and gotten upset that the quality of the project was too good for what had been requested.
The manager sat down with us and actually had a talk about how real leaders in this school will follow directions from superiors EXACTLY as asked, even if the directions state to only make something less than outstanding. Needless to say, this was a highly toxic job.
This was also the same job, prior to me knowing it was toxic, where we were all brought into a meeting and the entire floor was asked to give our “honest” feedback about a slogan the school was considering in its marketing campaign to undergraduate students. The slogan had to do with innovating, and this was a medical school, so I raised my hand and genuinely asked in front of the group of colleagues, “why are you priming undergraduate students to be innovative in a heavily regulated field that involves mostly rote memorization of standards and concepts especially before the students themselves know what to innovate?” The slogan seems like it's selling a pipe dream that you can innovate even though you really can't as an undergrad medical student.”
I was later called into my managers office and was told the Dean of the school had received a report that I had “attacked” the marketing campaign representative during the presentation. “Attacked?” I asked. My manager accused me of verbally assaulting the speaker, so I made my case that I was giving my honest feedback in a calm manner. My manager took my side and went back to HR.
Few days later I went to the DEI rep for the school and explained the situation. I have been diagnosed on the spectrum and have trouble sometimes knowing when I'm asked something literal or if I am asked in a mind game type way. She explained to me that I wasn't going to get in trouble for this and that the accusations against me were being rescinded. And she let me know that the real reason the management got SO angry with my feedback is because the executive leadership team had secretly expressed the same feedback about the slogan, and because I had also reflected their sentiment in my critique but as a lowly rank and file worker, I received the ire of the dean and associate dean.
The strange juxtaposition of a blindly follow the rules environment laid over top of a marketing campaign that sought to try to sell students the idea that they can innovate within such a framework is so absolutely surreal to me even today now that I work elsewhere.
Now I'm just a robot at work. When I am asked to give my “honest” feedback about something, I look at whatever it is and immediately select one of several canned responses including, “Looks great!”, “Outstanding!”, “Couldn't have done it better myself!”, or “This is perfect!”.