Performance reviews are one of the few things that can make an adult feel like they’re a kid being sent to the principal’s office.

All of your work put under a microscope, and by someone far above you, I’d be surprised if you’re NOT nervous! But if you’ve done a good job, you should have nothing to worry about… Right?

Well according to this user, even going above and beyond doesn’t guarantee you an “A” from your supervisor, who scolded her for giving her employees a perfect rating in certain categories.

Check out how she got her revenge by doing exactly what he asked!

Employee evaluations can’t have 5s? Ok!

I used to work for a medium size company. Maybe 200 employees. I started off by being promoted rather quickly into supervising a few people.

My supervisor initially loved me (I’d work 60 hour weeks for ridiculously low pay, set up systems, helped organize a dysfunctional department, did part of his job, etc.).

I even won best employee. This quickly faded into being threatened by my efficiency and refusal to play politics.

And the supervisor’s resentment was only bolstered by the great feedback OP was getting from the higher-ups….

He knew I was liked higher up because I was good at what I did and he didn’t like it.

Come time for my yearly evaluations and they were at 3s, maybe a 4 here or there. I was disappointed but whatever.

Now I had to rate the people I was supervising. My people did good work. They deserved 4s and 5s.

But when OP’s supervisor saw the perfect scores, he was actually upset with OP!

He did not like this. He claimed HR didn’t like that.

I was informed my ratings were too high and to redo them.

Here we go…

Malicious compliance time.

After speaking to my subordinates to let them know I had been commanded to change their reviews and obtaining their permission, I changed them to solid 3s.

Oh this set him off. I swear I could see veins popping.

He accused me of being insubordinate and demanded I change them again to make them reflect what I truly believed.

I informed him that is what I had done the first time and I had no idea how to make them “less good.”

Even after all that grief, however, HR never had a problem with OP’s high scores when he took over the position.

I have no idea what happened and which set were finally turned in, but a few years later when I was promoted into that position, I never had any issues with any of the ratings I gave.

HR never said a word.

I don’t think they even looked at them past seeing they had one for every person.

The ratings were meaningless and had nothing to do with raises, bonuses or promotions.

He’s like the Goldilocks of supervisors! These rankings are too high, but these rankings are too low!

Reddit reminded everyone of the classic explanation for this type of grading restriction.

But even when this user asked their boss what they could improve on, their boss had nothing to tell them.

Another story shows that bosses will manipulate even the simplest grading scales to keep their employees under their thumb.

Finally, this person’s experience was a breath of fresh air, and showed that some bosses are truly looking our for their workers!

Some people simply can’t be pleased.

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.