OT TY
Being good at your job shouldn’t mean doing everyone else’s. How overwork hides behind “thank you” and “family,” and how Filipino new hires can spot it
OP-ED
Arah Negad
10/30/20265 min read
You’re new on the job, still learning your colleagues’ names, still trying to prove that hiring you was the right call. Then someone asks you to take on one more task. You say yes. Someone else follows. You say yes again. Before long, you’re doing work that was never yours, staying later than planned, and telling yourself this is simply what it takes to prove your worth.
And when the work is done, they thank you.
“Welcome aboard, now do everyone’s job."
Nobody tells you that being good at your job becomes a reason to give you more of it. You find out gradually: assignments keep landing on your desk, responsibilities get quietly added to your role, and the expectation grows that you’ll always find a way to deliver. What begins as initiative becomes obligation. What should be recognition of competence becomes an excuse for exploitation.
They call you family. But family is not a convenient metaphor for demanding unconditional loyalty from people whose needs become inconvenient the moment they cut into productivity. When an organization invokes belonging while ignoring its employees’ limits, the language of care becomes a tool of compliance.
New hires often miss this contradiction. Eager to establish themselves, they treat every extra assignment as a chance to show competence and every request beyond the job description as a test of adaptability. That eagerness can become their greatest vulnerability.
A new hire who consistently delivers is rarely asked whether the workload is sustainable. The assumption is that they can take more. The favor becomes routine, the exception becomes expectation, and a simple thank-you becomes the only pay for an expanding list of duties.
That is where the toxicity lies: an employee’s strengths turned into an institutional entitlement. Initiative earns more work without more support. Efficiency means inheriting someone else’s unfinished tasks. Reliability makes an employee the default fix for everyone else’s problems. Excellence, which should open doors to growth, becomes an unspoken contract for ever more labor at the same return.
Exploitation doesn’t always need threats. Sometimes it takes a manager saying, “Ikaw na lang, mabilis ka naman gumawa,” or the awkward silence when an employee asks whether a task is really theirs to handle. The message is clear: be accommodating, be grateful, be a team player, and don’t make your boundaries anyone else’s problem.
For employees still building credibility, refusing can feel riskier than accepting. They fear being labeled difficult, uncooperative, or unable to handle pressure. So they say yes when they want to say no, apologize for needing rest, and decide exhaustion is the price of success. Eventually, they mistake self-neglect for discipline and silence for maturity.
That is how unhealthy workplace cultures reproduce themselves. Those who endured unreasonable expectations often treat them as a rite of passage, telling new hires that everyone went through the same thing and that suffering builds character. What should have been challenged becomes tradition; what should have been corrected becomes precedent.
In Filipino workplaces, appeals to pakikisama, gratitude, and utang na loob can make this dynamic harder to confront. These values aren’t inherently harmful; cooperation and appreciation are essential to healthy professional relationships. The problem starts when they’re weaponized: when pakikisama means never disagreeing, gratitude means never questioning unfair treatment, and utang na loob supposedly requires employees to surrender more of themselves than the job reasonably demands.
An employment relationship is not a personal debt to be repaid through perpetual availability. Receiving an opportunity doesn’t erase an employer’s duty to set fair expectations, and being new doesn’t mean accepting every unreasonable demand.
Not every extra assignment is exploitation. Professional growth requires adaptability, and collaboration sometimes means helping beyond one’s immediate responsibilities. But occasional, mutually understood demands differ from a workplace that routinely leans on the same employees to absorb excess work without adequate support, recognition, or adjustment.
The distinction is reciprocity. Are responsibilities reasonable and clearly communicated? Is exceptional performance met with meaningful recognition, fair compensation, or a path to advancement? Can employees state their limits without being made to feel they’ve betrayed the team?
If the answer is consistently no, the organization may not be cultivating excellence. It may be cultivating obedience in employees too eager, anxious, or financially vulnerable to refuse.
The consequences follow people home. Personal time becomes an extension of the workday, rest depends on an endless list of unfinished tasks, and every achievement only clears the way for another demand. Employees start questioning their own capacity instead of the conditions they’re expected to perform under.
This is the quiet damage of romanticizing overwork: countless ordinary demands slowly consuming a person’s peace of mind. The employee keeps producing, the organization keeps benefiting, and the erosion of well-being gets mistaken for the normal difficulty of building a career.
Then comes the familiar thank-you.
Thank you for staying late. Thank you for taking over. Thank you for being flexible. Thank you for understanding.
But gratitude is no substitute for fairness. A thank-you doesn’t redistribute an unreasonable workload, and praise doesn’t pay for extra labor. Calling someone indispensable should be a reason to protect their capacity, not an excuse to exhaust it.
Perhaps the most uncomfortable question is why excellence so often has to be proven through suffering. Why does protecting your time look less admirable than sacrificing it? Why does exceeding expectations bring more work instead of real advancement?
A healthy workplace shouldn’t require employees to become less human to prove they’re good at what they do. Employers have every right to expect accountability and quality work; employees have every right to reasonable boundaries, clearly defined responsibilities, and treatment consistent with their dignity.
New hires should be allowed to grow without being quietly exploited, show initiative without becoming the default fix for every staffing problem, and take pride in their work without guilt for having a life beyond it.
The true measure of a workplace isn’t how much it can extract from its most capable people, but how responsibly it develops their potential. Excellence should lead to opportunity, not endless obligation. Reliability should invite trust, not habitual overdependence.
So, welcome aboard. Be competent. Be curious. Be willing to learn.
But remember: your ability to do more doesn’t make everything yours to carry.
A thank-you may acknowledge the work, but it doesn’t excuse the injustice of demanding too much from the person who does it.