Whether or not someone enjoys their job can depend on factors like their co-workers, boss and how much work they have to do.

In today’s story, an employee realizes that there aren’t enough employees to do the work, but the boss doesn’t seem to care.

Before quitting, the employee has the opportunity to use the boss’s advice against him.

Let’s see how the story plays out…

“You just need to prioritize” – Soon Ex-Boss

I have been working in IT for the last 10 years. 4 of those in the company I am just leaving.

I joined this company after a few bad experiences with coworkers and bosses.

After getting to know some of the staff in the company, I was really happy about the coworkers and colleagues, because most of them seemed to be really friendly.

The company was short staffed.

Into my second year at the company, I felt like we were understaffed in IT. “Not too bad still” I thought. That was up until our workload increased.

Before we could handle the daily stuff and projects and on top could do some system upgrades over the year.

Now we were getting more and more work due to new regulations from corporate and more software that needed to be supported.

During this time, I started asking my team leader to look for a new guy. We needed more hands.

OP wanted out.

After a year of bringing this up at least once per month, my boss started with his speech about “You just need to prioritize (your work).” Of course this would not help if the work is at like 110% of the load that the current team could handle.

We increased our hours and could get it done, but that was only for half a year.

At this point I was done with this whole ordeal. Corporate IT got more and more hostile (if you did not message some people directly, what was prohibited normally) and on top I saw people left and right leaving.

OP started looking for a new job.

After around 3 years of being with the company, I saw our trainee leave.

I talked to him about pay and why he wanted to leave. Not to deter him, but to understand his reasoning and show my support.

And at that point I have been passively looking for a job for about 6 months.

OP used the boss’s words back at him.

I was at this time talking to my team leader and telling him, that he needs to increase my salary by around 8% at least and bring more hands to the team.

He was asking me, why I wanted to leave.

I told him about the problems, that he knows and said that I can’t bring myself to stay in this company with the problems the team is facing.

“I just need to prioritize myself” – He did not react unfortunately, but I think he got the point.

The boss never even tried to hire more employees.

As a side note: Later I heard from my boss (basically the one above my team leader and me), that my team leader has never asked for more people.

And to be honest, I want to trust this guy, because he was sincere all the time as far as I know.

I hope OP found a great new job. It really is hard to work for a company when the employees are given too much to do.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted…

This reader doesn’t think the story qualifies as malicious compliance.

Another reader explains why the story definitely is malicious compliance.

Here are 2 theories about why the boss didn’t ask for more employees.

This reader can relate to OP’s predicament at work.

Another reader recommends going to the big boss with issues.

You really do have to make yourself your top priority sometimes.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.