There’s a big trend recently, especially with young people, of doing no more work than what you’re being paid for.

But for us people pleasers, that just no good. It’s almost impossible to say no, especially to your superiors!

Stay late for a few hours? Sure! Pick up an extra shift on your day off? Of course!

But there’s a point where even the biggest people pleasers just can’t take it anymore. This user reached that point after being chastised her for working on a website he asked her to complete.

But after he rudely suggested she go do that as a career and see how she like it, she took his advice and ended up making triple what she did under him!

Check it out!

Boss says I should quit because I like spending time on ‘Hobbies’ so I did.

I was working for a startup engineering firm working as a Piping Design engineer.

But since it was a start up firm, we didn’t have a lot of man power and the ones we had weren’t as qualified either. I was one of the very few qualified enough to handle a team of my own.

The boss trusted me with almost everything. I was like the second in command after the boss only because I was managing a lot of things on the side as a volunteer basis.

Things like paycheck balancing, client meetings, quality assurance, documentation, and other stuff which he should have hired someone else to do.

I was good at it and he took full advantage of it by giving me things to do that were never under my job description.

One of those projects included the design of the company’s new website…

One day he had this bright idea that we should revamp our website to attract more clients. And he gave this project to his nephew who just graduated from college as a developer of sorts.

After a week or so the nephew came up with the first draft of the website and the boss was fairly disappointed as it didn’t look anywhere near to what he expected.

He then called me in and asked me if I knew anything about website design.

At that time I was very much interested on UI/UX and was doing an online course to learn about it more. So I told him that I’ll see what I can do.

And the boss was lucky to have OP, because she dove in headfirst!

I spent the next week full making a proper information architure, wireframes and colour guidelines that the nephew could pick up and build the website from scratch.

In the end the website looked futuristic and the boss was pretty happy. But during the week my other ‘responsibilities’ were put in a backlog and it just kept piling on.

I knew I would be able to cover it once am done with the website and didn’t pay too much attention to it.

You know who did pay attention to it? OP’s boss!

The next week my boss caught up with backlog and called me in to his cabin. He started yelling at me for all the ‘responsibilities’ that I didn’t attend to.

I calmly told him that I was working on the website and its not a big deal. Told him that I would clear it out as soon as possible. But he wasn’t happy.

He asked me why I spent so much time doing something that isn’t even my responsibility. I told him that I was learning about UI/UX and was pretty much interested to learn more.

Sidenote: I obviously never thought about pursuing it as a career because frankly I was a mechanical engineer by qualification, and didn’t think jumping to IT would be easy.

And OP’s boss thought that if she wanted to spend that much time on it, OP should make that her career instead!

The boss snapped and told me that I should quit and peraue my ‘hobby’ as a living.

He said that only then I will understand how lucky I am to have a job that pays.

I kind of got offended because 1. He doesn’t even pay me the worth of things i do for the company and 2.

He knew I could cover and yet took this as an opportunity to ‘discipline’ me.

He probably should have chose his words more carefully, because that’s exactly what OP did!

I stepped out of this cabin, went to my desk and put in my resignation and went home.

He called me a couple of times asked me to revoke my resignation and then made other people from the organization call me to convince me to come back. I wasn’t having it at all.

It’s been 2 years now, I decided to pursue UI/UX as a career now and I’m working as a product designer in one of the biggest organizations in the country.

And the best part? It’s with a pay that’s almost 300% more than what I was getting as a mechanical engineer.

The cherry on top though was the current state of the company she left!

 The company was shut down because they had to pay a huge penalty for not being able to deliver the last project I was handling.

Then covid hit and they had to reduce pay for all the other staff which lead to people leaving.

Eventually the company went bankrupt for not being able to keep up financially after covid.

What is with bosses and scaring away the one employee that is keeping their business running? It’s like they can’t help but shoot themselves in the foot.

Reddit was quick to attribute the boss’ stupidity to him being threatened by OP!

Others wondered why he would butcher the golden goose doing all of his extra work.

Others thought it was ridiculous that of all things, OP was yelled at for completing the project that he had asked her to take on.

Finally, this person suggested OP thank his boss for such valuable career advice!

Maybe OP’s boss could find a hobby he’s passionate about, you know, considering that last job didn’t work out too well!

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.