I've been doing exactly what my boss has told me he expects me to do for the last 12 weeks, and the liberation is amazing.
Context: I have worked remotely for about 10 years, and was promoted from hourly to a salaried, corporate, employee for a large electronics retail chain about 4 years ago.
At first I loved the promotion. Along with my actual day-job, I was doing interesting, challenging, and fun work. I was developing processes, finding and eliminating waste in systems and processes that existed, and coaching/ training/ developing others. I was easily putting in 60-80 hours a week, probably more if you count the mental time–thinking about, planning, designing, brainstorming, etc.
About 2 years ago my colleague was promoted to be my supervisor, and that's when the trouble started. My new supervisor is a complete tool (as a manager.) I absolutely love him as a human, and as my friend we were tight, but once he became my manager he got all weird.
Without going into the gory details, I got put on a performance plan for lots of *STUPID* reasons among other things, my supervisor said that I had “trouble keeping up” with a workload that doubled overnight (due to a process change I had no control over and I was given zero time to adjust to the new workflow pattern), I was working 4-day weeks to try and use up some of the 180 hours of PTO that I needed to use by the refresh date, I was diagnosed with (2) major health issues in the same month, and had to take some off to see to those appointments, and there was ZERO coverage (no backfill, no backup) for the work that I cover so my boss had to do it.
The writeup basically said that I wasn't allowed to do any personal or professional development, I wasn't allowed to do anything that wasn't part of my “core job responsibility” and I was even prohibited (in writing) from talking to anyone inside or outside of our business area unless there was a specific business related reason to do so.
So that's when I decided enough was enough and cue the r/maliciouscompliance.
- I actively handed off all of my 2ndary projects, anything not related to my core job.
- I stopped participating in or leading all but (1) of the leadership groups that I was part of
- I absolutely for no reason spoke to anyone via chat or phone without them first talking to me.
- 95% of my communication to anyone immediately became via email
- I no longer talked/ participated/ or offered ideas in meetings unless directed to do so or asked a direct question.
- I no longer volunteered to lead any new projects or take on new initiatives
- I no longer – for no reason what – so – work beyond 45 hours. I have no company comm apps on my phone, and do not take my corporate asset with me when I am traveling, out of the house, or gone anywhere. If I get stranded somewhere because of weather, a flight delay, or some other reason, my boss will just have to deal with me being out of office.
Since the adjustment time of having an explosion in new work is over and I've been able to figure out how to eliminate the waste in the new processes, I can easily get my core work done in 30-35 hours a week.
Could I do more? Yes!
Am I going to? Nope.
I'm not checked out, I'm just doing exactly what they expect of me.
Since the only feedback he's ever given me (Aside from the PCR that came out of nowhere) is “You're a rockstar, keep doing exactly what you're doing!” for the last 12 weeks or so I've been enjoying evenings, weekends, days off, and even leaving early with ZERO bad feelings about how I might be letting anyone down.
Thanks for listening!
~Nytngale