If he starts playing it that way he's going to gradually start losing a lot of personal freedoms, because if he makes it obvious he'll only do things if specifically told then they'll just start regimenting his entire day so he doesn't have the wiggle room to slack off. This means starting to lose his ability to go out in the evening and other stuff like that.

Being passive aggressively snotty is the exact kind of behaviour they are having little patience for, unfortunately. The longer he goes without fixing his behaviour the worse it will get.