A Woman Put Her Boyfriend On A 'Performance Improvement Plan' & People Are Split About It
She knows it sounds "harsh" but it works for them!
The TikToker explaining the 'Performance Improvement Plan.'
Break-ups are the worst and most people would understandably do the most to avoid experiencing them, but would you ever pull an HR move and put your partner on a performance improvement plan?
One TikToker did just that and shared her experience in a video that has been getting a lot of attention on social media, garnering over 4.6 million views on Twitter alone.
TikToker Nadeen Hui explains in her video how she “PIP’d” her boyfriend and it actually turned out well.
“For those of you not in tech, PIP stands for performance improvement plan, and it's what you get put on when they're about to fire you,” she explained in her video.
Hui says she and her boyfriend were going through a rough patch in their relationship, and despite having “a lot of love for each other,” they weren’t sure if they were “compatible.”
@nadeenhui we started living together really early on in our relationship so we saw all of each others living habits and lifestyles super quickly. and i honestly think it worked out better this way because we could decide if we actually wanted to work on these lifestyle habits together or split up. since it was so new, there wouldn’t be much love lost and we’d still be friends. but ultimately, we decided that we wanna stay together, and these lifestyle changes were for the better so why not do it? i had to learn to be more accepting and easy going, and he had to learn to be more tidy and considerate of shared spaces. #relationshipadvice #softwareengineerlife #lifeintech #girlsintech
“So as a last straw, we decided to try a performance improvement plan,” she says in her video.
She acknowledged that the method may come off as “harsh,” but according to her, it worked for them.
“Plus he kind of liked it,” she shared.
“So we had a shared note with daily and weekly tasks he needed to do and a set of things he needed to work on. And it worked out really well!”
Hui explained that they use a kanban board for household chores and "things that he's responsible for,” and it apparently “works.”
“Anything I need done, I just added to the kanban board, and he'll get it done, but if I just tell him, he'll forget about it,” Hui explained. “We also do weekly retrospectives, where we check in with each other at the end of each week to see how we're doing, and that's my favourite.”
People have mixed feelings about the approach that Hui and her boyfriend took to mend their relationship.
One person under her TikTok video called it “condescending,” while another wrote, “late stage capitalism is truly hell.”
Another person commented, “I’d prefer not to be someone’s manager or assign tasks though.”
But not everyone’s against Hui’s idea.
“I don’t like the workification of my non-work life….but it’s so useful,” wrote another user.
The reactions to Hui’s video on Twitter were even better.
A Twitter user shared her video with the caption, "we are in hell fr,” and people quickly jumped in to give their opinions.
\u201cwe are in hell fr\u201d— pam needs a PM/TPM/SWE job! (@pam needs a PM/TPM/SWE job!) 1677231290
“Imagine having to go do some engineering all day then come home to ur wife's art project board that says u have to do the dishes,” wrote one user.
\u201c@pamtagonia Imagine having to go do some engineering all day then come home to ur wife's art project board that says u have to do the dishes\u201d— pam needs a PM/TPM/SWE job! (@pam needs a PM/TPM/SWE job!) 1677231290
But others didn’t hate the idea.
“Shorty found a great way to communicate with her man,” wrote one Twitter user. “What’s wrong?”
\u201c@pamtagonia Shorty found a great way to communicate with her man. What\u2019s wrong?\u201d— pam needs a PM/TPM/SWE job! (@pam needs a PM/TPM/SWE job!) 1677231290
Another described it as “heaven.”
One person commented: “ok, but this is actually, respectfully, not the worst idea?”
\u201c@pamtagonia Ok but this is actually, respectfully, not the worst idea? \ud83e\udd14\u201d— pam needs a PM/TPM/SWE job! (@pam needs a PM/TPM/SWE job!) 1677231290
The Twitter user who originally reposted the video on the platform commented back saying, “it’s not the worst idea but the fact that she has to even do this for him at all??? like she has to manage all of her tasks AND his tasks like his mother…y’all stay safe tho.”
Seems like people are torn about Hui’s approach to fixing her relationship, but it seems to have worked out for her.
During an interview with the Huffington Post, Hui shared that it wasn’t only her boyfriend who got PIP’d; she had to improve herself too.
“It wasn’t an angry argument. It was literally, just like, I don’t think this is working out because our lifestyle habits just don’t work well together,” Hui recalled during the interview.
Her boyfriend had his own conditions for the PIP and asked Hui “to be patient instead of getting frustrated and wanting to walk away from it all.”
“He asked me to show recognition and be more encouraging when he was doing things right. And he asked me to be straightforward with how I was feeling, and my frustrations, so I wasn’t bottling it up.”
It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it definitely worked for Hui and her boyfriend.