If you're getting fired for not being the perfectly optimal worker automaton, then I'm very sorry you ever had to work for such a business in the first place.

You say

> I'm very sorry

after saying

> perfectly optimal worker automaton

I don't know if your intent is to come across as sarcastic or as genuinely sympathetic here. If you were going for genuine sympathy, I'd like to explain why your words sound dismissive:

Taken literally, words like "perfectly" or "optimal" refer to an absolute.

Human life is very rarely absolute. We deal with ambiguous information and must make choices which are trade-offs among competing values we simultaneously genuinely hold. This is such a recurring fact of human life that people sometimes use absolute words as an exaggeration, as I think you did here. That exaggeration expresses emotions like exasperation and incredulity. It says, "it is utterly ridiculous that your job even had those unrealistic expectations of you." That is the literal meaning of what you want to say with the words "If you're getting fired for not being the perfectly optimal worker automaton", right?

If I was talking about how my workplace had ridiculous expectations of my output, that would be an expression of sympathy. But I am not, so it is not.

The other thing that exaggeration does is refuse any thought about magnitudes. Without a sense of magnitudes, you can't hold the information you'd use to decide on a balance. Exaggeration is a refusal to acknowledge problems of balance. True sympathy acknowledges the realness and difficulty of the problems faced by another.

Incredulity sounds more like, "I don't believe that your problem is real."

----

Maybe you think I'm incorrect.

Maybe you think there isn't a balance to be struck. Maybe your life experience has shown that this balance is obvious and easy for you.

Thats fine. You're free to disagree.

But if you do and sarcasm was your intent, please know that it is both less clear and less kind.