It could be worse fallacy

What if you are the supervisor at a publishing company and complain to one of your writer employees that his writing is poor quality. The writer responds saying that the boss should be happy that it was that quality because it could have been worse. The writing he turned in is “good” because it is better that an even worse version which he could have turned in.

I have seen this in relationships too. Say your partner has an annoying habit. You ask them to please stop. He or she says, “You should be thankful that I dont do this more than I do already.” They are presenting their present annoying behavior as good because this is better than hypothetical more annoying behavior which they could do.

This seems similar to relative privation<> (also known as: it could be worse, it could be better):

Trying to make a scenario appear better or worse by comparing it to the best or worst case scenario.

In your case it's not necessarily comparing to the worst scenario (I'm not sure if this is a hard and fast rule), but it is "it could be worse".