Person Tells How They Messed Up At Work By Doing The Job 5 Times Faster Than The Previous Employee

Setting a good work pace for yourself may be difficult even at the best of times. It’s hard to tell whether you’re overworking yourself or slacking off slightly. And if you’re in the extremes of either, you run the risk of being fired or being majorly underpaid.

A poster on TIFU shared their story of the latter, about how they managed to do their work about 5 times faster than the previous employee. The problem is they’re getting paid by the hour and have just cheated themselves out of $3k a month for barely any effort.

More info: Reddit

Long story short, the poster got a new job and wanted to share that they shot themselves in the foot by being too efficient at it. A month after they started working, they would be able to complete all work tasks in 7 hours, where it would take the previous employee an entire week, even after having 4 years of experience.

Bored Panda reached out to another commenter with a similar story for more insight and advice. They were working as an assistant manager at a busy optical shop and the store never had enough payroll to operate properly. “I had to work at a furious pace to get the work done. No one was as fast as me,” they said.

They would do every job in the store: VA tech, optician, and receptionist. They’d bounce around the store, doing whatever was needed. As it was impossible to do all of the work and they were afraid of losing their job, they would work off the clock, because overtime wasn’t allowed. This would add up to them working 60-70 hours per week, being paid $9.25 an hour for 40 of those hours. “The one week I went on vacation, the other manager threatened to quit because everything was in such chaos without me there.”

One reason why they were willing to work so hard was because they had the chance of promotion, wanting to be a general manager. Truth be told, they were already doing a general manager’s job, just not getting paid for it.

The then-current general manager knew they wanted to be promoted and promised for an entire year that he’d “look out for them” when a spot opened up. When a spot actually did open up at a nearby store, the district manager requested them to work there, but the general manager had other ideas.

“He begged her not to take me, saying they couldn’t function without me because I did so much. I was so much faster than the other employees, plus I worked off the clock and worked every position.” He simply couldn’t run the store without someone picking up the slack. The district manager just agreed with the general manager and didn’t promote the commenter.

For people stuck in a similar situation, they had this to say: “I would say don’t overextend yourself at work beyond what’s reasonable. And don’t do work you’re not paid for.” If the business can’t operate without exploiting workers, they should hire more people. And if you can’t get ahead with a reasonable amount of work, you should find another job.

Kelly Gurnett writes about the phenomenon of working too fast for your own good. Apparently, they would hand in their work and people would be surprised at how fast it had been done. But this surprise wasn't always pleasant, as if people thought the work was too good or done far too quickly.

They considered why this was and ascribed it to two things. It’s possible that in a 9-5 office job you’re paid by the hour. If you do your work too fast, you may be forced to do busywork or help out less efficient colleagues for it not to seem as if you’re slacking off. This slowly drains morale and company productivity, but the suits would rather still ignore it, as it’s the status quo.

Another thing is that overachievers may be looked down upon by others, as they’re “making them look bad.” Management may also think that corners are being cut, the work not being done properly and begin scrutinizing an overachiever’s work far too closely, so it’s important to pace yourself, depending on your workplace.

The original post collected almost 13k upvotes, with about 800 comments. In the comments, others shared stories of themselves being too efficient at their job. The poster also said they may try to tell management that they are being overwhelmed by the work, in hopes that’ll fix the situation. Have stories of your own? Share them in the comments!