Have you ever had that one coworker who will manipulate every situation and use every tool and any loophole at their disposal in order to make sure that things always go their way? If you haven't, good for you, and please let me know how you've managed to avoid them for so long. These coworkers—Gary, let's call them Gary… Now, Gary is no dull blade; the ability to gaslight and manipulate your way through a team of people takes knowledge, brains, and skill. But Gary is often lazy, looking to avo…

Things certainly aren't how they used to be… While that common cliché has been repeated for generations now, possibly since the beginning of human existence, when it comes to the housing market, it's pretty clear that things aren't how they used to be. Gone are the days when a young couple could afford a four-bedroom home on one income while starting a family—raising and somehow funding an entire brood of children. The thing is, your older family, friends, and coworkers might not even realize h…

Overnight shifts are brutal. You clock in at midnight and go home when the rest of the world is just starting to wake up. If you're not nocturnal, the 7am slump hits harder than Rocky Balboa after his training montage, and you're desperate to get home as soon as your shift is over. In this case, one overnight employee was brought to the brink after losing her patience with a coworker who was supposed to relieve her at the end of her shift.

As human beings, we all develop interesting ticks and facets of our personalities that can manifest into very strange behavior. Often our desire to feel “good” and avoidance of feeling “bad” can cause us to make a series of consecutive decisions that see us walking too far down a particular path and becoming something we might never have anticipated. Take "Disney Adults" or any fandom as a prime example of this. You get exposed to something at some point in your life, say, Disney media and it m…

Coworkers either become some of your closest friends — or they become the most infuriating plague on your existence you would have never hoped for. They're either some of the most chill and kindest people in the world, or they're nosy, backstabbing, and cruel — there is no in-between. Unfortunately, some workplaces tend to have more of the latter category, and these coworkers make the workplace a toxic apocalypse. This worker had to endure a nosy coworker who was determined to make worse the fa…

When you end up in a situation where you're faced with a micromanaging boss, there often aren't a lot of options… HR might not take you seriously or even take your side; you usually won't be in a position where you can outright quit on the spot, and standing up for yourself is usually just going to make your life harder. This means that you may need to resort to alternative means, just as this worker did when they grew tired of their micromanaging boss. They share that, as happens all too often…

Sometimes a company will have little shindigs and events to thank their employees for a job well done. Even though every employee would prefer a raise as a ‘thank you’, we'll take what we can get, even if it's just free food and more time spent with people you see nearly every day of the week. In this case, one employee took the free food concept a little too far.

What is it with people constantly trying to blame someone else for the thing that they themselves are most guilty of? This hypocritical finger-pointing is just a vapid means of projection that these narcissistic robots employ whenever they feel threatened. This thread was posted to Reddit's r/AITA (Am I the A--Hole) subreddit by the coworker scapegoated by the others, Redditor u/Maleficent_Shoe3791. She had been doing all of the work to make up for their lazy behavior, and they still tried to b…

Let's be real… We've all had that one coworker who is always coming in late and leaving early to pick up their kids. No big deal, right? Everyone deserves to have a flexible working arrangement. But, when that flexibility and those considerations aren't offered to other workers, and it places more work or undesirable shifts on those workers' shoulders, it becomes a problem. Reddit especially champions the idea that those with kids shouldn't expect special treatment over their coworkers who are…

When you have a job, it's usually best to do that job if you want to keep it… Not get embroiled in a war of petty acts against a coworker who wanted no part in that war in the first place. If you choose the latter pathway, you need to be prepared for any consequences that follow. Redditor u/Peach_Gfuel shared this story to Reddit's r/MaliciousCompliance subreddit about their coworker who insisted on getting revenge on them for a perceived slight. u/Peach_Gfuel had previously worked for the Qual…

Being embroiled in an ongoing prank war sounds like a lot of fun—until you find yourself in one. It turns out there's not much that's desirable about constantly being on edge, wondering when the next strike will happen, especially when that strike is likely to come at the most inconvenient time. This is doubly true when you didn't consent to partake in the prank war, to begin with, and it always seems to come from that one clueless coworker who thinks they're hilarious despite being merely obno…

Have you ever entered a workplace, friend group, or any social group and been warned to watch out for one particular member? It's an unfortunate aspect of our social nature; we always need a group or individual to be “othered” to feel like we're “in." While it's important to keep an eye out for red flags and not make yourself too vulnerable to possible exploitative behavior from these people (if what people say is true), it's just as important to form your own opinions. You might find that this…

Sometimes an inappropriate action deserves the appropriate response; it's the simple laws of cause and effect acting out their parts. This is how it was when worker u/elena247 's coworker decided to execute the clever ploy of bringing their dirty dishes to work to have others wash them. When u/elena247 discovered what their coworker was up to, they decided the appropriate response was to introduce the dirty dishes to the trash can. Sounds like a reasonable course of action to us. It's hard to i…

It's incredibly frustrating when someone in your workplace gets away with downright obscene behavior, and no one is doing a thing about it. You might think that that's what the HR department is for, but in a lot of organizations, they're content to sit on their hands and let the worst offenders get away with anything but murder—just as long as they don't have to deal with any conflict or rocking boats. As a manager, this can present an incredibly difficult problem; you can be as accommodating a…

Getting roasted on your own Reddit post is a sure sign that you have messed up somewhere. You have every chance to twist the entire narrative of a chain of events in your own story to suit your own ends… and somehow, you still manage to turn everyone against you? It's certainly not something we see every day, and if it happens to you, you need to go home and rethink your life. This worker and Reddit user shared their story to the r/MaliciousCompliance subreddit, thinking they had a clever story…

Doing your own job is tiring enough without having to do your coworker's job too. Unfortunately, the reality is you'll often find yourselves having to make up for your coworker's chain-dragging—hey, at least those group projects in school prepared us for something … right? Another unfortunate reality comes in the realization that most managers will be slow to do anything about this. Even if they say they're looking into it, you can bet on a sloth to show more urgency and keep a greater pace. No…