‘Sorry boss. I was trying to work on my pass rate.’ Boss Thinks He Wants Quality Over Quantity Until Employee’s Output Drops

A majority of employers probably hope their people will do their jobs both quickly and well, and if they were forced to choose one, they’d say well (even if they didn’t mean it).

OP is a machinist and thought he was doing both – he was plowing through 8x as much work as the other person on his task and only had a fail rate of 1%.

I was working in a metal fabrication shop and we were repairing a bunch of parts that came off the robot.

Basically there was quite a bit of work that went in to each part but there was about 12” of weld that the robot couldn’t do that we had to do by hand, and they had to pass ultrasonic testing.

So I was getting 10 parts done in a shift as well as 120” of weld. While they guy I was working with would get two parts done and 24” of weld.

When the boss was offering Saturday OT, though, he passed OP over because of that fail rate.

One Friday the foreman comes over and asked the other guy if he wanted to work Saturday but not me. I asked if he could use my help too and he said, “No. I’d rather have guys working Saturday that can pass their UTs 100%”

I pointed out that not only did I do 5x the work but I passed about 99% of the time. I would fail about 1” of weld per 120”. AND I’d have it repaired and passed before the end of the shift.

This still wasn’t good enough and basically told me it doesn’t matter since I’m still failing.

So, OP started working slower. The boss didn’t like that, either – or having his own words thrown in his face.

So come Monday I only started completely finishing 2 parts a day and got my passing rate up to 100%. Foreman comes over frantically in the middle of the week trying to find out why my productivity has decreased so dramatically.

And I said, “Sorry boss. I was trying to work on my pass rate.”

His face got so red it was hard to keep a straight face. But I started getting Saturday work after that.

Does Reddit think OP took a risk here? Let’s find out!

The top comment says this is the way.

This person says OP is not alone in enjoying a challenge.

They say perfection is not a realistic goal, anyway.

People with experience think the foreman is missing an opportunity, here.

This guy sure tied this up all neat and tidy.

Good for him for standing up for himself after a public shaming.