Work item which is disabled and in Open status do not get Skipped Why?

Initially we had some set of Manual work items defined in the system and its strategies were all assigned to accounts.

Now subsequently we do not want this work item, hence we disabled it, and our expectation is the system should skip the work items. But what is happening if the work item is already in the status of Open it is not skipping it and expects the user to manually complete it.

Is this the standard behavior?

regards

Partha