Top-performing star technician quiet quits and begins “working to rule,” weaponizing company policy after being repeatedly passed up for promotion: ‘Update: After 6 months, they’ve finally noticed that the quality of my work has dropped – FAIL Blog

A highly experienced, top-performing restoration technician grows increasingly frustrated after being repeatedly overlooked for promotion. Eventually, they give up and follow company policy to the letter, resulting in increased costs and delayed projects.

You might think that being good at your job, especially being the best at your job in your organization, would put you in a prime position for promotions as they become available in the organization. And, it often does, competency at a given level is often a good reason for moving up to the next one, with driven, motivated, and successful employees often, but not always, making great leaders.

While motivated and driven workers often go on to be very successful at their new role, the inverse of this is a well-known concept called the Peter Principle. This is where workers who are promoted for their success and aptitude for their current role fail at the next level of management after being promoted and remain stuck here at this level, sometimes for the rest of their careers. 

But there’s another, third option still, When you’re good at your job, and too good at your job, standing head and shoulders above your peers in terms of your production, you can oftentimes end up in a situation where your superiors simply will not promote you, as they know that they would never be able to replace you efficiently and cost effectively, and even if they hired two or three people to do your job they know that production and the quality of that production would still suffer.

So instead of being rewarded, these high performers are quietly held in place. Not necessarily because of any malicious intent, but over a lack of courage and fear that KPIs might slip backward, and they’d have to explain to their superiors why their team is suddenly failing. Of course, the high performer will never be acknowledged for their success and may even be told to “mind their place,” even though they should be much higher in the company’s ranks. 

Of course, eventually this will lead to a demotivated worker who will disengage from the work and probably end up leaving, then they’ll have to deal with replacing them anyway, but with the added burden of having no star employee to train them. 

That’s exactly what happened with this technician, who, despite carrying the company on their back for the 5 years they worked there, was repeatedly passed up for promotions. This led to them deciding to “quiet quit” and to work and think at the level they were being paid to.