“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…

Meddling pedantic coworkers who consider them to be a step above the rabble, despite being in exactly the same position as this “rabble," are a one-way ticket to a hellish workplace. The problem is that managers usually leave these busybody coworkers alone and may even regard them as proficient workers because they're making the manager's life easier by doing their dirty work for them. To be fair, the managers are also probably afraid of these people, seeing as they usually memorize the technic…

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…

It's not often that the villain wins in the end—unless it's the second part of a trilogy, and you need to set up the third part so that our heroes are fighting back from the brink of defeat… a la Star Wars' second (fifth) installment The Empire Strikes Back . See, ending your story with a conclusion where the villain wins usually doesn't provide a satisfying story structure—unless things have been leading there the entire time, and that's the point the story is trying to prove. [SPOILERS: No Co…

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.

It's hard to imagine how many times I've written this sentence in various different ways… but you really should not overestimate your knowledge when joining a leadership role in a new organization. Take some time to integrate yourself and learn the ins and outs along with the important players before even considering making changes. If you make changes too soon, wielding your ego with ham-handed fury, you'll soon find the organization crumbling beneath your feet.

When you want to make a demand to show how much authority you have, you're generally not going to be thinking with anything but your ego. This brainless decision-making is bound to get you in a whole heap of trouble. It's no secret that petty managers love to tell workers to put their phones away. Within certain industries, it's sometimes their sole managerial function; lord forbid they actually took the time to learn any other administrative or operational skills. The idea here is that treatin…

Being in charge doesn't mean you have all the answers. In fact, it often shouldn't, and this means that while you don't know the answers, you are experienced in identifying people with those answers and knowing when to differ to their better judgment. Those in petty positions of power who are unable to get their ego out of the way and accept the expertise of their subordinates are bound to end up in embarrassing situations like this one. This venue supervisor refused to accept that the experien…

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…

Interacting with people constantly in any line of work opens you up to a number of strange experiences, and you'd better believe that police officers and other first responders have seen the wildest ones. Similarly, every job has a process that needs to be followed, even if that process is nonsensical and enforced by a power-tripping boss who also adds their own directives to it and demands they are followed to the letter. Take, for example, when this police officer was told that they needed to…

It's always perplexing when your superiors demand that you do less work, stop thinking for yourself, and just mindlessly follow your contracted tasks like a mindless drone. The fact is, you're making them all look bad, and while they appreciate your efforts, if they let you carry on being exceptional, you'll put everyone else out of a job. As we've scrawled on the pages of Fail Blog a thousand times before, too many bosses and employers prioritize the ability to follow orders without thinking o…

One thing employers almost unanimously do is encourage collaboration, promote synergy, and do deep dives into core competencies in order to close the loop on big data and growth hack deliverables… While no one is completely sure what any of this means , there's a chance that your boss has used one of these phrases in order to promote whatever thing they're pursuing, and it remains certain that collaboration is often at the forefront of company initiatives.

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.