It's not clear to me why you think "I refuse to do the thing you're asking me to do" is _less_ reasonable than saying "I will only do the thing you're asking me

It's not clear to me why you think "I refuse to do the thing you're asking me to do" is _less_ reasonable than saying "I will only do the thing you're asking me if you pay me $large_amount" To me, the latter response is perfectly reasonable. There are plenty of tasks that I wouldn't want to do as part of my regular work duties, that I would be happy to do in exchange for the right bonus check. If a manager is looking for someone to perform the task, and they decided to _fire_ an employee because they said "I'd do it for $X" instead of saying "No I won't do it", I'd say that manager was either on a delusional ego trip or looking for another chump to exploit.