Goodwill Is Nonfungible: Why Covering Your Boss’s Ass Isn’t a Retirement Plan

Performance reviews are often pitched as a currency—you earn “above and beyond” credits and expect to cash them in later—but like airline miles, they tend to be nontransferable and expire the moment the person who owes you something leaves.

Toy model: employee does extra work (covers Boss A’s vacation, fixes last‑minute scheduling conflicts) → Boss A writes glowing reviews → Boss A leaves → Boss B reads the glowing reviews and assumes OP is a résumé, not a person. The bank of goodwill suffers “review‑leverage decay.” I’ll call this phenomenon reciprocity capture: you do favors for a particular manager; unless the organization institutionalizes reward, that favor doesn’t follow you to the next steward.

(Parenthetical legalese: if an employer praises you but fails to codify raises/role changes, the praise functions as an unsecured, manager‑specific promissory note—collectability: dubious.) As one commenter put it, there’s an “interesting cycle where someone goes ‘above and beyond’, is recognised for it and continues to do so, something changes in the hierarchy and t—” and suddenly the incentive vanishes. Malicious compliance is often mislabeled cruelty; it’s usually just rational portfolio rebalancing.

Memo from reality: “Policy 7b — All ass‑covering guaranteed only while ass belongs to current manager.” So if you want to be consistently valued, convert applause into contractual terms. Otherwise you’ll learn the hard way that goodwill is nonfungible capital—effective, in a certain sense, until you FAFO it.