All throughout the 2000s and 2010s, we used to eat up “goodwill” stories about people banding together to help their fellow—coworkers by donating PTO to a sick team member and crowdfunding to help cover the cost and medical debt of sick community members. All this really begs questioning, questions that are finally being asked more frequently in discourse online. Where these types of stories are no longer viewed purely as “wholesome” or “heartwarming” but rather as a sign of the dystopian, soci…

Rejection is a hard pill to swallow, no matter what form it comes in. You can sugarcoat it any way you like, throw around the whole “It's not me, it's you,” “It's just not a good fit,” and your words are still going to have the same message: “You're not good enough for me." This, of course, is a brutal affront to anyone's ego

There's no surer sign that you might need to reassess your leadership "style" than having multiple people opt out, in quick succession, of being under that leadership. After all, as the old adage famously goes, “People don't quit jobs; they quit bosses.” There's no telling the level of miserable or monotonous job conditions some people will put up with just as long as they enjoy working with the people in their immediate team—especially their managers. Good managers are hard to come by, so when…

There's this old adage that takes many shapes and forms but usually goes somewhere along the lines of this: You should always be kind, or at least decent, to the people you meet as you never know when even the smallest act may have far-reaching consequences. You've probably heard of or read one of these stories before, and it's one of the oldest tropes for teaching the morale of being kind to others. Where old stories involved a frail old woman or man asking for assistance from a character, onl…

Bad experiences are a dime a dozen when it comes to interviewing for a retail role; in no other line of work are there so many desperate interviewing managers looking for such a high level of effort and experience for such minimal pay. Usually, if an interviewer takes issue with you, there's no coming back from it, no avenue of recourse; after all, they're the ones doing the judging, and you hold very little control over the situation outside of your ability to walk away. Yet, sometimes, a hidd…

The nature of something serious lends you to believe that that thing will be handled seriously, with calculated, methodical decision-making in its orchestration. Company-wide layoffs are a bit like that; the wide-sweeping impact made on people's lives means you'd expect each and every decision to be made with careful thought. Well, that's not always the case. At the end of the day, there's some administrator somewhere handling the clerical work through some management system, and both people an…

Increased remuneration during your time at a company and throughout the course of your career is usually considered to be given due to your own increased contributions owing to your growing knowledge and experience. The off-the-cuff expectation we have is that generally, our earning potential will only go one direction, and while this certainly won't be the case for all of us thanks to the possibility of layoffs and a shifting job market, we certainly wouldn't expect our pay to decrease whilst…

Attitude is important when it comes to the workplace. Still, the workplace itself is largely responsible for your attitude when you're at work. You can't just demand that your workers be happy and have that be the solution to what is an otherwise miserable job. Yet, one of the first things you're taught in retail is that you should always smile and “greet” “guests” as they walk in the door, setting the stage for an enjoyable experience for them during which they're more likely to fork out more…

There's this thing that happens in some organizations where upper management knowingly sets policies that they know infringe (or come close to infringing) on their legal minimum obligations to their workforce. Then they act all surprised when said minimum obligation isn't being upheld because it's simply not possible to do under the constraints they've created. A perfect example of this is employee breaks, of which there are usually laws where you're working around when, how long, and how often…

There are plenty of times in life where things just don't make sense and where people try and lead you to believe that 1+1=3 which doesn't really line up with the figure that you might have expected or the actual truth of the situation. A lot of these situations will probably take place at work under the supervision of someone who has no business being in charge. Let's do a little math equation as an example. I know—I know…. you didn't think you were signing up for homework when you clicked on…

Overtime, by definition, is still time on the clock, and voluntarily staying to work that time doesn't automatically mean that your employer is now a charity. You can't just “volunteer” for your employer. The very premise itself is silly. Sure, if you're on a salary that is exempt from overtime pay, you'll probably have to work some extra hours during times of high workload, but it's expected that, in turn, during times when there is less work to be done you'll still get paid your full salary.…

Typically, when working a shift job that relies on a schedule, you'd expect your obligations simply to be present when that shift starts until when that shift ends—nothing more and nothing less. Yet, it's common in many industries that rely on the “almighty” schedule for managers to expect you to be present and ready to work (sometimes even actually working) before your shift starts. Usually, this expectation will be somewhere around five minutes before the start of the shift but occasionally w…

Contracting is a tough gig, yet it is becoming increasingly common as companies seek to shift further towards a low-cost, low-obligation workforce. The thing is, as a contractor, you have fewer benefits and less guarantee of income, but while that uncertainty can be hard to manage, it makes up for that in flexibility. See, when you're a contractor, your “employer” (clients) really can't make you do anything outside of the contracted production they're paying you for. They can't set when or how…

Getting denied a raise stinks, but at least you've left your thoughts and intentions on the table for consideration, hopefully setting yourself up for a pay bump in the near future when the next round of budgeting is finalized. Of course, this isn't always the case, and your employer may go the route of stonewalling you indefinitely—or gaslighting you by dangling the potential of a raise in front of you like a carrot on a stick in order to get you to do more work. Still, in most cases, it's alm…

Being fired from a job has a certain finality to it… Never again will you have to step foot in that place or have boring conversations with your droning boss. Still, despite your employer giving you complete decisiveness that they no longer want to pay you to hang around, there's no guarantee that they won't contact you out of the blue months or years later asking for your help with something that no one was able to handle after you left. It's almost as if your role actually was important and t…

Trying to keep up with an increasing workload on an understaffed team is a lot like trying to drive a car that only has three wheels. It's difficult to keep things moving forward without veering off course; things operate extremely inefficiently, and there's probably a lot of noise and scraping going on. Of course, managing these situations is no easy task—not impossible for a talented manager, but only through a great deal of effort. For this reason, managers who manage to protect their alread…