“It's just business,” people (often your boss) love to spout… and it always is until it's personal. You can rest assured that anyone using this canned clamshell phrasing is probably using this to dismiss situations where they're exploiting you and are going to take it very personally should things one day not go their way. It's the same sort of tactic that is used when you're told by a notoriously toxic employer that “We're all a family here.” The hope is that you'll buy into the thin words the…

Hiring for a position as a regular manager is an exhaustive process, draining your time and resources, so it's really hard to imagine something like this ever happening with a manager who is concerned about their own time. But, there are those within certain organizations whose job it is to recruit full-time, and these recruiters and certain members of HR constantly scout and search for strong talent even if the organization really doesn't need them. This works in large corporations that are li…

As nerve-wracking as it can be, starting a new job can also be an exciting experience. New challenges and opportunities await… Unless the job you've been hired for isn't actually as advertised. See, there's this thing that can happen where all optimism you had for the new role evaporates as you slowly realize that the job you've been hired for doesn't actually exist in the way you thought it did and the organization you're working for has no idea how the job they hired you for should function.…

When you're the go-to person in your workplace, continually asked to step up or fill in for your boss when they're away and taking on their excess work when they're overloaded, you'd probably expect that you'd be the next in line for promotion, a shoo-in, essentially having already displayed an aptitude for that level of work. You might especially expect this if you had worked in similar roles in the past and had taken a step down when moving into your current role for reasons not related to pe…

As much as getting fired stinks… at least there's a certain finality to it. Hey, you no longer have an income, which will soon affect your ability to afford food and a roof over your head, but at least you no longer have to get up at 5 a.m. every morning just to put on stuffy clothing, grab a hurried breakfast on your way out the door, and sit in traffic for an hour. Only to sit in traffic again on your way home after sitting in a noisy “open office” for nine hours.

Flexibility begets flexibility—treat workers with the understanding, trust, and respect they deserve and get the same in return. Particularly in a line of work where being a few minutes late means nothing, but the worker's willingness to stay late or work unexpected hours means everything, you'd do well to accept that them walking in the door a few minutes late isn't that big of a deal. That is unless you, their new supervisor, have a bone to pick with them over the fact that their self-determi…

When apparent negligence and mysterious circumstances are working directly in your employer's favor, it's sometimes hard to imagine that things aren't actually working as intended. Longtime readers will know that I'm a big believer in Hanlon's Razor, the idea that you should "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." As with Occam's Razor, where the simplest explanation is the most likely, the simplest likely explanation for something is usually that they're ju…

Joining the workforce for the first time is a surreal experience. You start off bright-eyed and filled with wonder about what the world might have in store for you… ready to give it your all, dreaming of the drastic contributions you're going to make to society. But, the more time you spend working, the more the wonderous color drains from the dream, leaving behind a sad, beige, and grey world that looks like every house-flipping millennial's home renovation.

People work jobs to get paid—it's as plain and simple as that. It's not something we're doing out of goodwill because we care so much about our boss that we want to fatten his wallet up for him. While our bosses might wish that this was the case, the arrangement of employment is based on a simple transaction: The worker's time and skills are provided in exchange for a consistent paycheck.

As the slow march of time presses ever onward, it's not uncommon for change to occur—in fact, it's unavoidable. Small incremental shifts in policy and perception mount and build up into larger changes. Sometimes, you won't even realize how far things have gone until you take a look back at the winding road back to where things used to be. While these changes are usually for the better, sometimes things work their way into normalization that takes us back a step or two. We might not even realize…

The inconsistency of eyewitness testimony is something that is often discussed, owing to the fact that the mere recollection of an event changes the original memory that we had stored in ways that can cause us to convince ourselves that we remember something that never really happened. Beware of being so wholly convinced that you're unmistakably right about something. You should always leave room for the fact that you might have made some margin of error. After all, that's what a “mistake” is b…

Getting time off work is often needlessly complicated, so many employers are skeptical of employees when they call out or request sick leave, believing them to be “just faking it” in order to get a day off. This attitude is prevalent within retail and service industry employers, which presents problems since employees are interacting with other people and even handling food. Most commonly employers will require sick workers to get a sick note from a doctor, even for a simple flu, requiring empl…

Working a bad job can be literally bad for your health, with chronic stress from being overworked and mistreated causing all sorts of untold medical issues.

There are a lot of things that could happen during the interview process that might make you lose faith in it. You'll find yourself completing endless applications that you'll never hear back from, getting ghosted after first-round interviews, even completing three rounds of interviews during which the interviewer insists you tell the owner of your current company that you intend to leave, only to ghost you for a month before confirming that they went another candidate; you might even successfu…

It's unfortunate when loyalty isn't repaid in kind, especially in a long-standing relationship in which mutual trust and reciprocation should have meant a better result. Sure, circumstances change, and it might “just be business,” but there's always a personal aspect involved when a relationship has lasted this long. Plus, treating your long-standing employees well is just good business. If you're seriously thinking about firing your oldest employee unceremoniously just to save a few dollars… w…

You should always be careful with ultimatums, particularly when you're really just on a power trip and bluffing… Sooner or later, someone is going to call you on your bluff, and you're going to be left standing there with your hands tied, looking pretty silly. Still, this is a favorite tactic amongst toxic managers, who relish the idea of threatening their workers with firing more than J. Jonah Jameson. There's nothing they enjoy more than putting a proverbial gun to your head, putting your fam…