Not only are you doing the right thing, you are communicating the expectation from day one. (poor) Managers generally treat you the way they do because you set

Not only are you doing the right thing, you are communicating the expectation from day one. (poor) Managers generally treat you the way they do because you set the expectations. It's like unplanned ad-hoc overtime, if you work lots of overtime to meet some arbitrary deadline you didn't set, you get a well done but the next time they set arbitrary deadline you are just expected to work overtime. If instead you work your contracted hours and the deadline is missed you then force them to either a) deal with deadlines better or b) deal with you clearly about overtime. I learnt that lesson painfully. As my mum tried hammering into me and I never really got until I was a grown up - "People can only treat you the way you allow them to".