If you do a job too well, you'll get stuck with it.

This is a modern workplace proverb, commonly circulated in offices and management culture as a wry warning about the “competence trap.” It reflects an informal, anonymous tradition of shop-floor and white-collar humor rather than a traceable literary origin. The saying is typically invoked when a reliable employee becomes the default person for an unpleasant, repetitive, or low-visibility task—because they execute it efficiently and without complaint—leading managers to keep assigning it to them instead of rotating duties or promoting them. It functions as a cynical commentary on incentives and recognition in bureaucratic or hierarchical organizations.

The line suggests that excellence can be perversely punished when organizations optimize for short-term convenience: if you perform a task exceptionally well, you may be rewarded not with advancement or variety, but with more of the same work. Implicitly, it critiques systems that fail to distinguish between being valuable and being valued—where dependability becomes a reason to withhold opportunities. As advice, it can be read two ways: a caution to workers to manage boundaries and visibility (so competence leads to growth), and a caution to leaders to avoid trapping high performers in “indispensable” roles that limit development and ultimately harm morale and retention.