“Optics Matter” — A Manager Wants This Employee To Pretend To Work For Five Extra Minutes A Day
I’ve been lucky enough to never have a manager pull me aside for something like this, but reading this story, I could feel the frustration through the screen.
The setup is almost too specific to be real: an employee who gets in early, finishes everything on time, stays ahead of schedule, and is sitting at their desk with nothing to do for the last hour of the day. And the complaint isn’t about the work. It’s about the five minutes at the end.
A coworker who can’t keep up went to the manager, and the manager, who is clearly a person who peaked during a team-building exercise, used the phrase “optics matter” with a straight face. Now this person is being asked to perform productivity instead of just doing their job, because looking busy apparently matters more than being good at it. The internet had a lot to say about that in this Reddit thread.
1. “My manager told me ‘optics matter’ because I leave five minutes early?”
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The comments are split. Some people think five minutes is five minutes and just stay at your desk. Others think being asked to fake productivity is where you draw the line. The honest answer probably depends on how much you need the job and how much you actually like your manager.
7. The comments went in several directions at once.
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