Some employers love to preach loyalty, but as soon as they think that they might be better off without you—or that you haven't made them as much money as you could have—they won't hesitate to send you packing, no matter how long you've worked together and what your contributions have been previously. This isn't true of all employers and all situations, but the bad experiences and accounts

There are the kinds of places where the boss is watching you like a hawk, counting the minutes that you're spending at your desk. Meanwhile, they're going out for a smoke break with their favorite staff, what seems like every five minutes. This is exactly why most places have laws around what breaks an employee is entitled to because even with the laws, too many business owners and managers have their own ideas about when and even how breaks should be taken, whether or not those ideas are align…

The flexibility of working from home is a knife that cuts both ways, especially if you're not careful and diligent with your time. While working from the comfort of your own home and away from pointless and draining conversations in the office, before you know it, you're taking calls in the early morning and late in the evening and working past your scheduled hours more and more often, blurring the line between your working and personal life. To make matters worse, on days when you're sick and…

Something is fishy in this story, and it's not anything to tank lightly… This self-proclaimed fish enthusiast was allowed by their employer to keep a fish tank at their desk, something that brightens up their day, the tank supplied and financed by themself alone. Their coworkers, however, latched on to the idea, proclaiming that it would be more fun to open up the fish tank to everyone and make it a communal office engagement project. Their lack of knowledge and unwillingness to learn about the…

For every great boss in an organization, there must be a boss of equal and opposing terribleness. Sometimes, these bosses work together at the same level, or one above the other in the chain of command, or sometimes one will follow the other in the same position. It's uncanny the amount of times in your career that you'll have the most amazing and empowering boss only to have the worst boss you've ever experienced immediately after. With these bosses making you repeatedly question just how comm…

We've all dreamed of quitting a job in dramatic fashion The myth of the hard-nosed boss: a harsh take-no-prisoners leadership style with the “greater good” and the learning of the team in mind. The issue is far too many leaders think they're living up to this mythology when in reality they're treading over the fine line This worker made a splash, quite literally, when they quit their job after suffering one insult and one impolite demand too many from their toxic boss.

It's often said that anyone at a comedy show is fair game, but even then, there's a limit to what constitutes “fair.” Even if you're up on a stage, you can't expect to just go around saying what you want without any consequence. If you go after the person who is basically responsible for whether or not you get the gig, you'd better do so tactfully and not

Giving full credit for something to the person who "finishes" it is generally a poor idea, as it completely discounts other contributors' efforts. You see this with things like sales where the person to “finalize” the deal gets credit for the sale against their figures, regardless of whether or not they were the one to work on it originally. Really, absolute policies might be easy and cut and clean, but they create nightmares down the line whenever there are situations that aren't as black and…

Constant exposure to a toxic workplace environment can cause devastating burnout that really sneaks up on you…

Efficiency is usually a prized quality, especially when someone's time is costing you a lot of money. In fact, when you work on a contract basis your clients are usually accusing you of wasting time or for charging time that wasn't worked or worked “appropriately” enough for the project. It's unusual to have the client accusing you of working too quickly and demanding that you take your time on something—unless the job is being charged at a flat rate and they're concerned about the quality of t…

There's really no place for bait-and-switch tactics in the interview process. The process of looking for a job is long and difficult enough without using deceit to try and trick prospective candidates into taking a job that wasn't what they thought they were signing up for, either changing the terms of their employment or compensation at the last minute and hoping they'll be desperate enough to go along with it. Still, as with anything in life, communication is key, and sometimes—no, often—simp…

There's something about Fridays that makes everyone collectively decide that work can wait. Maybe it's the promise of a 48-hour break (which feels way too short when you put it that way), or maybe it's just the primal urge to mentally clock out early. By 3 p.m. on Friday, Slack is silent, email chains mysteriously stop, and half the team is "wrapping up" for the weekend. Translation: watching dog videos and scrolling through memes until it's socially acceptable to leave. The problem is that Mon…

When you're working, you need to take breaks; it's just a simple fact of working—at least until our employers manage to replace us with AI and AI-powered robots. Even when that inevitably occurs, there's sure to be downtime for updates and bug fixing, so it's all the same, really. Customers and bosses alike seem prone to misunderstanding when a worker is on their break. And, let's be honest, in some working environments, where there isn't the appropriate space to take breaks or where you're alw…

Who hasn't watched the amenities of their workplace—the absolute basics that you might expect to have in the office break room—slowly eroding? First, it starts with the coffee. If you had a machine in the workplace, suddenly that's gone, leaving a French Press. Ok, fair enough, but before long, the actual coffee they were providing is replaced with the cheapest instant coffee available that doesn't even really taste like coffee. Now, they're no longer providing milk, so everyone has to buy thei…

When you first start off your career, you're bright and starry-eyed, carrying such ideals as “work hard and be rewarded,” fueled by stories and mythology of working stories you've heard. The reality is that work is more like Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the hill only to have it roll back down again—nothing gained, changed, or earned except the opportunity to complete the task again. You probably think that as long as you put effort into something, it will eventually pay off and that honest f…

It's pretty safe to say that your employer will never fully appreciate your contribution until after you leave. At this point, they will realize that your contribution isn't quite as easy to replicate as they thought, leading to productivity losses that they will have to pay a lot more to replicate. Of course, they could have just given you a moderate raise and saved more money than they ended up spending. A certain part of this is misreading the relationship, overestimating the hold they have…