Ideal bureaucracy, rooted in Max Weber’s principles, prioritizes impersonality for technical efficiency. However, navigating interpersonal dynamics challenges this ideal, especially in Confucian societies with high power distance. Most individuals in Confucian societies tend to devote extraordinary efforts to praising or brown-nosing their supervisors, to gain favour with them (e.g., a promotion or pay raise), often referred to as Pai Ma Pi. This study investigates the influence of this social norm on public employees’ job satisfaction, using a representative sample of 1,300 responses from the Taiwanese government. Our findings indicate that public employees who deem brown-nosing an important factor in career success tend to report lower levels of job satisfaction. However, those who put greater effort into brown-nosing behaviour report a higher level of job satisfaction. To better understand these findings, we also explore the role of public service motivation (PSM) as a moderator in the relationship between brown-nosing and job satisfaction. This study provides new insights into how Chinese social norms shape individual attitudes and behaviours in the public sector. Preliminary challenges include Likert-scale limitations, potentially addressed through qualitative interviews.