함부로 대한다는 느낌을 받을 수 있다

[Flooooooooor]

Hi all,

Sometimes, certain behaviors can cause someone to be thought of and treated as a pushover in the office. This webpage cheekily presents these behaviors as a set of positive commands to follow in order to gain this reputation.

Ex. 항상 웃어라. 그래야 곤란한 부탁들이 늘어난다.​

I am curious about the meaning of Rule #5, particularly the part in bold:

항상 고분고분하라. 그래야 상사가 무심코 던진 말 한마디에서 당신을 함부로 대한다는 느깜을 받을 수 있다.​

(This rule is accompanied by an image of a boss berating an office worker, saying: "일 못하는데 착하기만 하면 진짜 피곤한 거 알지?" to which the office worker demurely answers, "죄송합니다.")

My guess as to what this means is that if you act too obedient in the office, you will start to interpret careless remarks the boss makes as this boss walking all over you in the office. My guess is informed from ascribing the subject of the verb 받다 to 당신, not to the 상사, but even if I am correct here I do not think that I am getting the full meaning of this sentence as this meaning doesn't make perfect sense to me in context of the other "rules".

Thank you for any help on this!

 

[Taehun]

Hi, Floooooooor!

After setting aside the sarcastic tone of original webpage you linked, the expression itself, I think, a little bit unnatural.

First, your guess is right that '받다' is ascribed to '당신', not to '상사'
Because '무심코' means 'without bad intentions', '함부로 대한다는 느낌' can not be ascribed to '상사', whose words phrased with adverb '무심코'. that feeling is a subjective interpretation of '당신'
The whole your interpretation seems also right.

Second, the writer of the original post seems to suggest that "호구(a pushover)" implies also someone who gets mistakenly hurt by others words not intended to offend him/her. But is it a general property of pushovers? I don't know. this is a semantic problem, not syntactic one.

Third, when the boss said "일 못하는데 착하기만 하면 진짜 피곤한 거 알지?", actually he expected from him/her a agreement (For example by answering "네 그럼요!" or "저도 그렇게 생각합니다.") but she thought he was scolding her and said "죄송합니다"
As you already noticed, the other rules are designed to generate bad inclinations or habits of bosses to walk over their employees, but this rule#5, I think, has nothing to do with this context. Actually to interpret other people's words as offensive and get easily hurt is a bad inclination of the employee in that cartoon, not of the boss, and even when the boss could become bad from that reactions, the wordings should be more focused on '상사'.

(Ex) "그래야 상사가 무심코 던진 말 한마디에서 당신을 함부로 대한다는 느깜을 받을 수 있다"

As you pointed out, "느낌을 받다" is ascribed to '당신', not to '상사' so that the sentence is focused of the feelings of '당신'
But I think the following sentence meets the context better as a rule.

"그래야 상사가 무심코 던진 말 한마디로도 당신을 좌지우지한다는 (*being influential) 느낌을 받을 수 있다."

In this example sentence '받다' is ascribed to '상사', not to '당신' and this sentence shows how can someone make his/her boss inclined to walk over him/her by following this rule.

Anyway, the original sentence itself is a little bit unnatural syntactically, and I agree that there is a inconsistency.

 

[pcy0308]

Hello Flooooooooor,
All the points raised above by yourself and other users are valid indeed, but the gist of the cartoon is in understanding the sarcastic and rather belittling tone used in depicting a pushover, an easy target employee. In that sense, the rule #5 makes total sense and surely belongs there with the other rules.

As you may already be well aware of, the whole point of the first satirical part of the cartoon is not only to depict a pushover employee but also to provide a set of sarcastic, satirical advices/rules on "how to become a push over and fail miserably at workplace", hence "직장생활 호구로 망하는 7가지 방법". If you carefully digest what the title of the cartoon is saying, you will be able to understand better why the rule #5 is in fact "appropriate" (and all the more hilarious ).

The cartoonist is basically saying, "고분고분 하면" or "if you are submissive and obedient all the time"...
"당신" or "you" will be able to not only know but also ensure that your boss mistreats you and is always mean to you, thus succeeding in becoming a pushover and successfully being screwed over at workplace (which is the whole sarcastic, titlesake purpose of these so-called rules).

This is pretty much what all the other rules are suggesting, and the rule #5 isn't any different. There isn't any inconsistency in what the rule #5 is trying to say and and what the other six rules are saying.

That being said, you could casually interpret the rule #5 as this: "so, if you truly wanna get screwed over and successfully become a pushover at your workplace, always be compliant, obedient and submissive so that you can definitely get mistreated/ensure that your boss mistreats you (more literally, so that you can definitely get the impression of being mistreated by your boss)." Quite awesomely masochistic advice I'd say.

Hope this helps.