Manager mocks employee for 'not looking busy enough' during a team meeting — so they quit on the spot
They were already drowning in work when their manager embarrassed them before the whole team.
Tension between managers and employees often comes down to perception, and for one worker, it ended in public humiliation. On Reddit, u/InterestingLayer9335 shared how their manager embarrassed them in front of the entire team by claiming they didn’t "look busy enough" during a meeting. That moment, they said, pushed them to quit. In the post that gained 1.6 upvotes in two days, u/InterestingLayer9335 explained, "So today my manager basically HUMILIATED me in front of the team. She straight-up said that I don’t 'look as busy' as everyone else during the meeting. I wanted to argue, but I stayed chill."
What the manager didn’t see was how much work was already on their plate. "I'm literally drowning. My inbox is chaos, and I reply in Slack literally anytime, even at midnight! It's logged in on my phone, my tasks keep piling up, and I've been pulling late nights just to keep up," the employee wrote. They said they often stayed quiet on calls because they were focused on finishing tasks, not "rambling for optics." They further wrote, "To survive, I’ve been hacking my workflow however I can, Gemini, Copilot, Writesonic, Workbeaver AI… it keeps me afloat. I even tried to get a VA (out of my own money), but that didn’t work out."
Despite the effort, the employee said they felt stuck in a lose-lose situation. "If I look stressed, I’m 'disorganized.' If I look calm, I’m 'lazy.' Feels like I can’t win either way. I finish my work and MORE and apparently I don’t look busy???" Apparently, many employees are in the same boat. There’s psychological research about how "busyness" is perceived and how that perception affects mental health and stress. A 2022 study in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience found that people who feel constantly busy often report higher stress and mental overload, even when they’re productive.
The research showed that when busyness comes from external optics, it increases stress far more than when it’s tied to meaningful work. That disconnect is what the employee faced, and that's why leaving the company "felt like a relief." "I also have another job on the way that's 30% more my current rate so there's that, feels like a micdrop moment," they wrote. The post drew hundreds of supportive responses.
When u/LimahT_25 asked about an update, writing, "How did they react, and how was the fallout? Is the manager still in the company, or did they fire her?" u/InterestingLayer9335 replied, "Honestly, it was a whole mess for like a week. I ended up getting called to HR because I was so done with the passive-aggressive comments. They actually took it seriously, had me and my manager on a call with HR. I showed them my workload, how I had been online late at night, etc. HR basically told my manager to chill and stop singling me out — IDK what else they did with her."
u/ShartlesAndJames said, "Good for you. Honestly, I've stayed in jobs where the manager was toxic and shitty, and it just slowly eroded my mental health and happiness. Eventually, I left, but having someone shitting on you all the time takes its toll, and life is too short. Good luck with your new gig." u/sweer_nugger added their own experience, "The greatest petty of my life was having an old coworker call me for something unrelated and happen to mention they had 3 people doing the work I used to do and are struggling without me." u/No-Broccoli-5932 said, "They will take 3 (at least) people to replace you. They may even call you to ‘help out.’ Believe me, it’s a great feeling!!"
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