It's not cynical to learn from repeated experience and to correctly understand your work environment. As you yourself point out. Where that work environment is

It's not cynical to learn from repeated experience and to correctly understand your work environment. As you yourself point out. Where that work environment is misrepresented by a manager, that isn't balance. It's a manager costing the company money. They need to take responsibility for that. Doing so will probably require a difficult conversation with their manager.