Having a job generally means that you do that job and get paid for it—simple, right? Like, it doesn't really take anyone telling you that to figure it out. But what should you do if you do the job that you're being paid to do and it doesn't take you nearly as long as your employer expects it will? This happens all the time, and depending on the job—and the person—and the place, and the time, your approach to this situation might be different. The more motivated among us who couldn't simply stan…

Living, working—merely existing in a negative environment is enough to cause you a miserable existence. Over time, the repeated accusations and insulations of wrongdoing eat away at you, eroding what optimism and willpower you have remaining to make positive changes for yourself. The problem with this is that it includes sapping the energy you might have to leave the toxic situation yourself, creating a vicious cyclical feedback loop that drains you of your life force. Though it might not seem…

Moving up the chain in any workplace comes with a certain amount of sacrifice, as you get more responsibility, your ability to simply log off and not worry about the fate and trajectory of your work slowly decreases. Sure, you might get less productive work done every day due to all the oversight and meetings, but the responsibility rests a heavy weight on your shoulders all the same. Of course, you get paid more, too, and that has its own benefits. But, there reaches a point where more and mor…

When you're planning the biggest event of your life, what is possibly a once-in-a-lifetime event, it's important to make sure you actually get to the planning part of it and not just leave essential parts to chance… this, coming from someone who is notoriously poor at planning beyond the end of the week. If you want to go on a trip that is going to require you to take time off work, you should probably make sure you request the time off work first so that you're not stuck with an already booked…

It's often said that we accuse others of the thing we're most guilty of, our own guilt subconsciously directing our thoughts in that direction. For instance, your boss who is constantly hounding you about your hours and accusing you of having not worked them is probably not working their full hours themself, either slacking off at their desk or making excuses for leaving early that they wouldn't accept from anyone else, amounting to hours of time over the course of a month. This, of course, tak…

With the continued rise of video-centric social media platforms in conjunction with the ever-increasing presence of video recording devices, it seems that any etiquette there might have been surrounding not recording videos of strangers or acquaintances and posting them online is virtually nonexistent. The desire for views, clicks, and fake internet points has increasingly encouraged bystanders to whip out their phones and start recording whenever something “interesting” occurs. Turning unhelpf…

Some business leaders wield workers' feelings of insecurity like a weapon, using snide, cutting disparaging comments to keep their subordinates on the back foot and underfoot where they safely won't try to rock the boat, following orders without question—most importantly, not daring to ask for more money or promotions that align their compensation with the work they're actually doing. While being capable of getting along with anyone is an important skill to have, it remains a fact that you're n…

The reality of the hiring process meeting expectations takes place on both sides. The entire process has such a ridiculously excessive performative requirement that there's no way either party can live up to all of the gassing up they've been doing. There is sure to be more time spent completing monotonous tasks than the interviewer implied, with also less room for growth and creative freedom than you might have been led to believe you would receive. Similarly, your employer might come to find…

Nothing breaks familiar bonds between once close-knit coworkers, who have bonded through commiserative mutual suffering at the hands of a toxic employer like the eventuality of one of them leaving. As the realization dawns that they're going to have to continue on in the world while their coworker is freed, stress sets in, and the toxic atmosphere takes hold. Then they collectively turn on the leaving coworker, partly out of jealousy at their newfound liberation and partly because turning on th…

"Cause and effect" or "action and reaction" is typically a predictable concept—bounce a ball on the ground at your feet, and you'd expect it to come flying straight back at your face. Still, when the factor of human perception motivations is included, you can end up with some interesting reactions that you might not have considered. Take for instance, this worker who injured themself during their lunch break while working from home, leading to their boss's ending of their workplace's flexible w…

If you’ve ever worked a job where your work site was off-site, then you know exactly how this goes. It’s not unusual for some superior, probably your boss’s boss or boss’s boss’s boss, to make important decisions about the manner of your work and instate policy that makes very little sense in the reality of your working conditions. Almost always, they're sitting behind a desk in a city a long way away and entirely disconnected from the reality—even the context—of your job. The problem is that t…

The last 50 years have brought an unprecedented amount of technology and reform to the way we do business. Those writing Science Fiction around that time might have predicted that we'd either be living in a utopia where we no longer needed to work to live or we'd be living in a dystopian world where few oligarchs, like the fictional Eldon Tyrell, hoarded wealth from the masses like dragons sitting on a pile of gold, while many struggled just to survive in a world of decaying infrastructure amid…

The age-old workplace practice of requiring workers to go to the doctor after missing a day of work to get a sick note feels a little strange; it's infantilizing in the sense that the only other thing like it in our lives is when we had to bring a note from your mommy into grade school after missing class. If your boss wants to treat you like a child, you might as well act like one and act like you don't know a thing. The real problem comes in the form of the fact that it's impossible to get in…

Working in modern workplaces can be exceptionally exhausting. Constant distractions due to open-plan offices tear employees away from their work. At the same time, success is attached to social and political status with heavy reliance on the “optics” of busyness rather than employees' actual effectiveness in completing their tasks. The reality is that we all work differently, and forcing all staff to work what you perceive to be the “appearance” of hard work will result in a performative cultur…

You've probably heard that old adage about the new hire who goes in for their first day of training ready to do everything by the book but is instead surprised and maybe even disappointed when they're instead taught all of the shortcuts that the experienced grizzled employee has developed over the years, cutting out the parts of the process that are superfluous and unnecessary. The problem is that by learning and only using the shortcuts in the first instance, they're never going to understand…

Giving honest feedback is tough, but the only thing harder is receiving it. Especially when the content or implications of that feedback catch us off guard, we might think we're doing everything right and are contributing far above our pay grade and described role, and yet, the visibility of our contributions may not be what we think it is… and we might have fallen afoul elsewhere within our supervisor's expectations. See, it all comes down to perception, which never quite matches up with the r…