Filling in for your boss can be an enlightening experience and open you up to the opportunity for new growth, learning, and perspective. It shows you all of the administrative things that your boss might handle that help shape their own approach to things and that, while they have more oversight, they might not have as much insight into every detail you handle in your role. Usually, this will be done as a favor to your boss, assuring them that at least someone is looking out for their role and…

This bakery owner kneaded a reality check, and—well… he sure got one. Trust some small business owners to think that their power over their workers is absolute and that they own and orchestrate every part of their lives. Unfortunately, in communities where jobs are scarce, this can literally be the case. Whilst traveling and working in cafes in small towns, I personally witnessed a local cafe owner, an absolute demon of a woman, torpedo the job prospects of a single mother who worked for her. A…

There's some dubiousness to the truth behind this post, and, let's be honest—as with anything you read online—there often is. But this thread sparked an important fervor of discussion around something I think is an important topic: How much information about your personal life do you owe your employer? If you're taking a sick day—do they need to know why? If you're leaving your position—do they need to know why? The answer, in any case, is no. Your employer doesn't need to know more than the ex…

Learning that you're making less than a new hire with less experience is insulting. Yet, companies seem to consistently possess a higher hiring budget than a budget for raises for dedicated workers—with the frequency of stories like this making it seem more like the norm than some fringe occurrence. A female machinist shared her recent workplace experience on the popular r/antiwork Reddit sub. She explained that she had been training a new hire and found out that the trainee was earning a highe…

The act of working is a transactional thing: Spend time doing something for someone else and get paid for that time in return. Spend time, get paid—it's as simple as that. This gets more complicated when you aren't getting paid for the time that you're working. We've already established the relationship between time and pay… So, if you're not getting paid for the time that you're working, whatever on earth are you working for anyway? Of course, there are circumstances where you're not strictly…

If you're working a full-time job that doesn't pay you enough to make ends meet, why on earth are you working that job? Better yet, how are they justifying paying you less than the basic living wage? Then when you eventually have to go and take up a second job to make up for the shortfall, how dare they go and make an issue about it, harping on about “loyalty” as if you owe them an ounce of it. This was the matter at hand when a user on Reddit's r/antiwork subreddit community shared a highly pe…

The bad part about an unpaid lunch break is there's a whole hour in the middle of your day that you're not getting paid for, meaning you're stuck at work for that much longer before you finally get to escape the prison and go home. On the other hand, the great part about an unpaid lunch break is there's a whole hour in the middle of your day that you get to yourself to eat your lunch, get out for a walk, and worry about other things in life outside of your to-do list and your boss's whims. Of c…

Starting a new job is always tough. Sure, you might have tons of knowledge and industry experience, but there's always a different way of doing the same old thing at every new organization you walk into. You might think that a square peg would always just fit into the square hole, but your new job may require you to revolve the square 360 degrees clockwise, counterclockwise, and then on a vertical axis—all before putting it in the same square hole you always did before. Sure, it may be stupid,…

You might think that being injured while trying to defend your company's property would get you a warm thanks and a pat on the back, at the very least… and definitely not a swift kick out the door. But chasing down someone who has nothing to lose is dangerous and not a risk worth taking—and (hopefully) not a risk your employer wants to take liability for. For that reason, most businesses often have rules about not engaging with shoplifters, thieves, and other criminals—even for security guards,…