An employee has sparked a discussion online after claiming that a colleague virtually stopped working after receiving a lower salary hike than the rest of the team, leaving others to pick up the slack and increasing pressure on the entire group.
In a Reddit post titled “Colleague stopped working after latest hike numbers,” the employee said that most team members received hikes of around 13%, while one colleague got just 7%. He said that the colleague’s productivity dropped sharply after the appraisal cycle, forcing teammates to take on additional work. He claimed the colleague had struggled with performance issues even before the salary revisions were announced.
“So this colleague of mine is not very technically sound, they take a lot of time to learn stuff and sometimes been caught for just sitting on the tasks when they have been assigned days ago,” the user wrote.
He said that the employee believed the lower hike may have been linked to those performance concerns. However, after learning that other team members had received significantly higher increments, the colleague allegedly became disengaged.
“Now that they reached the ‘Find out’ stage of ‘f***ing around’, their efficiency has cratered, like if they used to do 6 tasks in a day, now they just do 2, and are constantly with ‘away’ status on teams like 6hrs out of 9hrs they are away,” the employee wrote.
“But the team still has to be answerable to clients and the leadership and I have had to pick up their slack since last week,” he added.
Despite the frustration, the Redditor said that they did not want their colleague to lose their job. The 2 joined the organisation at the same time and remained on good terms socially. However, the growing workload had become difficult to manage. “What do I even do in this situation?” the employee asked.
(Also Read: Techie claims startup made fresh graduates sleep on office floor, then fired them without pay: ‘Treated like garbage’)
Social media reactions
The post prompted a range of reactions online.
One user wrote, “I can’t believe someone with that kind of performance gets 7% in this job market.”
“Anchor down, do your part and not theirs. Numbers won’t lie and their results will come through, do make everything can be measured though by your system ideally if it’s measured,” commented another.
“How can you be on good terms with someone so selfish? They are actively making your job more chaotic because they are unfit for theirs and are basically throwing a temper tantrum for not getting a raise they think they deserve,” wrote a third user.
“You gotta talk to your manager about the workload imbalance, not about punishing him or whatever. Just lay out what’s happening to your own tasks and deliverables since you’re covering his work. That’s a legitimate business problem that affects the team’s output, and your manager needs to know you’re drowning. You’re not throwing him under the bus by saying “hey, I’ve got double the work now,” you’re just being honest about what you can actually handle,” said another.
(Disclaimer: This report is based on user-generated content from social media. HT.com has not independently verified the claims and does not endorse them.)
