Bartleby, as an individual refuser, is engaging in a risky act: he is isolating himself from his colleagues, he is likely to draw ire from his boss, and is risking his livelihood. It is worth noting here, and remembering throughout, the refusal as an individual is an option open primarily to those who can afford it.
As the story progresses, Bartleby's continued refusals eventually cause waves throughout the office, as his coworkers gossip about his lack of work ethic, complain that they have to pick up the work of the slacker, and even encourage the employer to fire Bartleby. Instead of rallying around their colleague, they lose no time in passive-aggressively bemoaning their own situations.
This scene in Friedman's film captures that moment perfectly (Friedman 1970):
Delbanco observes that "what Bartleby does is make it harder and harder for him not to look at him" (Giamatti & Delbanco 2020). Pretty soon everyone's looking and they can't look away. Paul Giamatti in conversation with Andrew Delbanco observes that "All of us do a good job at not looking at other people, particularly if they look like a problem that we don’t want to have to deal with, then we’d rather they were somebody else’s problem" (Giamatti & Delbanco 2020).
"As Camus suggests in The Rebel, a “man who says no… is also a man who says yes, from the moment he makes his first gesture of rebellion.” And so for each of Bartleby’s rejections, might there be an unspoken acceptance of — or, at the least, a preference for — something else? Or is this guy so hardcore punk-rock that he’d even go so far as to eventually reject preferences altogether?" (Simón 2019).