Was there anything wrong with what he said? 

The best managers are not the ones who insist that you stay at work for hours and hours after your shift is already over. Good managers know that good employees won’t become great employees if they’re too tired to work. They value hard work but recognize that good work can be done within an 8-hour shift. If employees regularly have to do anything beyond that, they’re not going to stay in their positions at the company for more than a couple of years. Some people can handle working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, but those people are usually making a ton of dough to compensate for the lack of sleep and time spent with their family and friends. If you’re paying somebody $50K and expect them to work as hard as an executive, then you’re a fool. If you tell them that they’re lucky to have their job, and other people would love to be in their position, they’re just going to resent you and the company more than they already do. 

While hard work is important, it’s equally important not to work to the bone to no end. If you’re working as hard as you possibly can without any end goal in mind, you are going to get burnt out, because you can’t see any changes. That’s what happened to the manager in this story when he was early in his career, and he didn’t want to see it happen to the young graphic designers he was training at his company. Unfortunatley, somebody else in the office took his advice the wrong way and tattled on him to the business owner. Now he’s in hot water and doesn’t quite know what move to make next.