Punishment: A negative stimulus administered in response to you doing something that you shouldn't have done in order to discourage you from doing it again. The hope here is that this would be severe enough to prevent further instances of the behavior. While that's all well and good, the punishment needs to fit the crime… if it's not severe enough, the behavior will probably just continue, especially when the person you're trying to incentivize isn't particularly incentivize-able—probably becau…

It's a bummer when well-intentioned actions lead to unexpected consequences… This worker would occasionally go out and buy office supplies for their colleagues. It was a kind gesture that seemed to them to be constructive to the business. Unfortunately, their boss didn't seem to care about the benefits, only taking issue with the simple fact that they were absent for longer than the duration that their lunch break allowed. You know, the typical controlling manager nonsense. In response, the bos…

When someone does you a favor at work, the proper reaction should be a mix of ‘grateful’ and ‘thank you’. One employee was using their lunchtime to get office supplies for coworkers at their workplace, paying with the company card. They had been doing this for YEARS, so imagine their surprise when one day, they came back from lunch per usual with a bag of corporate goodies in their hand, a receipt in the other, and received a frown and a scolding from their boss, instead of a ‘thank you’. OP wa…

Problems arise in apartment complexes all the time; I should know, I lived in one. A lot of complexes use rent payment portals, because they're safe, secure, and allow landlords to collect payments online and keep track of everything, nice and tidy. Or at least, they are supposed to be. OP shared that they lived in an apartment complex that was acquired by a new management company, which switched the resident and rent payment portals. To say that this move caused disruptions would be an underst…

Corporations like to hire Karens; don't ask me why… It's an enigma I could never make sense of. But a Karen can only fool so many until he or she hits an inevitable roadblock in the form of a regular, run-of-the-mill employee who makes an attempt to address the toxic culture the Karen has created. Every now and then, such an employee will interrupt the Karen's attempts at making them follow some rule created by a corporate suit 15 years ago. In this particular instance, a Karen joined a deliver…

If you've never gotten fired, have you even lived? I remember the absolute shame and frankly, heartbreak (I was 16, and very dramatic) I felt when I was called by a manager and promptly fired after being accused of fighting with his wife on the job. The story goes as such: I was looking for a job while I was in high school. I was not a very good student and didn't attend any of my classes, so there were weeks I would stay at home, instead of going to school, and boy was it boring . Eventually,…

People's reactions seem to be split on this one!

Despite finding it difficult to fathom, I am fully aware that coworkers have the tendency to try throwing you under the bus, and you can either sit there and take it, or hatch a clever plan to dodge their attempts. But sometimes, the bad guy wins… we aren't exactly living in a corporate fairy tale. Before we get into u/TroaAxaltion's story of petty revenge that actually ended them up being fired, you can check out their first original post for some extra context, here. OP was working in the con…

Managers often bend over backward to make rude, entitled, and petty customers comfortable, and it makes the employee who originally denied the customer's request look pretty bad. Let's say you're a Karen, and you want to use an expired coupon. For the sake of our little experiment, let's say that this coupon has expired over a month ago. You're furious when the employee points out the obvious, because, well, you're a Karen, and demand to speak to the manager. Poof, the manager arrives and overr…

Customers are not your friends, and this case makes that perfectly clear. They stomp loudly into your restaurant, noses up in the air, demands rolling off their tongue. If you can't give them your full, undivided attention for the entirety of the time they are there, then what are you even doing with your life? OP was serving a table who came in with a rude attitude and continuously made his life hard with their special requests. One of the customers at the table demanded OP get his food 'right…

No one wants to go to mandatory company events on your day off, so managers and bosses better make sure that employees who are required to go have a good time. First of all, these company events are usually after a tough work week, they usually involve way too much schmoozing for anyone's good, and they're usually wildly inconvenient in terms of location and time. All that happened with this Redditor , who was also an underpaid employee who primarily decided to attend the event because it meant…

Managers don't always have the courage to tell employees to their faces that they're fired, which only prolongs the inevitable process. This person was working at a ‘community center’, that ironically cost $150 a month, if that gives you any idea of the type of workplace this was. The person finished their shift and went to clock out per usual. Except… something was wrong. They noticed that they weren't able to clock out, so they opened up the app that the staff were required to have in order t…

Can't live with them, can't live without them.

Some managers just don't have the brains or the cells that are supposed to accompany them in order to lead a team. In this case, OP was working in finance, and like many other employees in similar shoes, she was hoping that one day she could get a promotion. Her dream was basically crushed by her boss who told her that if she was gonna have kids in the next few years, there was no way she was getting promoted. First of all, that's very illegal. Second of all, what did her boss expect her to do,…

One of the best perks of working from home is that you can look absolutely depraved, un-showered, and unprofessional– and nobody needs to know it! You can click through emails, study spreadsheets, and make Zoom calls, while wearing pajamas in the comfort of your home. Some bosses however– tyrannical micromanagers, that is– will insist on destroying that beautiful facade that you've grown to love and demand that their employees turn their cameras on for every meeting.

Back in the day, when mythical pensions existed and companies took care of their employees, workers would typically stay at their job and work for their company for decades, oftentimes riding out their first entry-level position all the way to retirement. Nowadays, celebrating a 2 year anniversary with a company is a huge accomplishment and most employees just don't have the same kind of loyalty anymore. In this case, one part-time employee had just celebrated his 30 year anniversary before...