There's nothing better than getting along with your coworkers. After all, you're together a lot, and there's nothing like bonding with your coworkers over the shared misery of sitting in a cubicle for eight hours a day. You've got someone to share your coffee breaks with, someone to help you with that pesky Excel spreadsheet, and someone to vent to when your boss schedules a meeting on Friday afternoon. It's like having a built-in support system, except instead of therapy sessions, you just g...

They say the best revenge in life is success… That teacher who said you'd never make it? That bully in high school? Anyone who doubted you or tried to keep you down. Well, the best thing you can do is go on to prove that you're not as weak or insignificant as they're telling you you are. Of course, although not as often discussed, going on to leave a peaceable existence of mediocrity is also an acceptable option if that's what you prefer, though decidedly less exciting of a story. This employee…

When you have someone in your organization, or externally who your organization is paying, specifically to do a task… It makes sense to let them do that task; if you insist on your involvement and time being spent on that same task, all you're doing is double handling and wasting your own time and the organization's money. And, yet, so many managers struggle with this simple concept, refusing to relinquish even the smallest, most important things to those who should be responsible for them, bog…

In jobs and industries that operate off of shift work “The Schedule” is hailed by management as an ancient relic of extreme importance

Hotel disputes aren't uncommon, and dare I say it's usually the guest who starts them? Imagine working your shift, minding your own business, when a guest comes right up to you and demands a full refund because they are in fact, leaving now. The thing is, you just checked them in, 45 minutes ago. You know you can't give them a refund… It's against the hotel's policy. On the other hand, you don't really want to start an argument, and anyway, it's late. What would you do? Well, this front desk wo…

Working at the front desk, you get to see a lot of different guests in your lifetime. It's hard to keep up with the complaints that people have, it's ridiculous. Some people want a discount because the room wasn't the right temperature when they entered. Other people want a discount because you didn't smile enough. Then again, some people don't even want a discount, they just want to make you miserable. Honestly, I'm so glad my customer days are behind me… I don't know if I could put up with it…

Starting a small business is a scary thing, putting it all on the line to try and create a successful business, which will see you solely reaping possibly unlimited benefits—if you can make it that far. But, hey, you take on all of the risks, you get all of the rewards; that's fundamentally how we've decided things should work in this world… and when it works well for someone, you're not going to see them complaining. However, taking on the risk means taking on the risk. Which is something a lo…

Working remotely has its advantages and disadvantages… While you no longer have to use your own time and money to commute into an office, which is probably open plan (which you loathe,) crammed directly adjacent to your other disgruntled coworkers (whom you abhor,) all that in order to have your time and productivity wasted by meaningless small talk and because you need to “look" busy even though that actually means you're being less productive. On the flip side, while remote working would cert…

the night shift is not for the weak

Getting the Monday Blues is in employees' DNA. Nobody likes going back to work after having a nice, long relaxing weekend spent by doing absolutely zilch. Maybe some micromanagers enjoy the prospect of coming back to psychoanalyze their employees' work, but for the most part, everyone likes the weekend. I don't know who came up with the 5 day work week, but it feels a bit extreme. Why do we only get 2 days to chill? After the Industrial Revolution, employees' work time was cut into 2, but we st…

Management doesn't have any idea what you do; let's just get that out of the way.

There's a pretty simple rule of management that leaders should follow: Don't mess with something that's working. Whether that's a single high-performing worker, an efficient team, or just a general flow of business, messing with something for the sake of it is always going to end poorly. It's a similar premise to “let sleeping dogs lie” but in this case, it's more of "leave

Landlords are just about one of the only things that could make us root for lawyers. The lesser of two evils really comes into play when those two parties are in the same room together. The powerful preying on the weak is one of the oldest tropes in storytelling. What's not to love about a story like this? A wily lawyer who wants to do the right thing—but still doesn't work for free—coming to the aid of a desperate owner of a local restaurant (that happens to be the lawyer's favorite.) The cart…

Being lazy on the job is something every single worker has experienced. No matter how good of a worker you are, or even how much you love your job, everyone has downtime in which they simply need to be a little lazy. There are actual studies that show that out of the 8 hours a day that people work, the average amount of time workers actually get work done is 3 hours. This means that 5 hours of those 8 are for workers to simply idle by, scroll on their phones, or stare into the abyss. Hopefully,…

All throughout the 2000s and 2010s, we used to eat up “goodwill” stories about people banding together to help their fellow—coworkers by donating PTO to a sick team member and crowdfunding to help cover the cost and medical debt of sick community members. All this really begs questioning, questions that are finally being asked more frequently in discourse online. Where these types of stories are no longer viewed purely as “wholesome” or “heartwarming” but rather as a sign of the dystopian, soci…

Some employees think that the office manager, HR, or whoever organizes the office works for them personally. See, I was an office manager back in the day, and people would leave the dining room an absolute mess. When I opened the fridge, I frequently thought that people were growing fungi there on purpose, by leaving their containers for weeks on end. It was so frustrating that I sent out countless emails, and even held an office meeting regarding the whole thing. Nothing changed, and I eventua…