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 only takes one perceived slight for some people to reveal their true nature, their carefully crafted persona of a sane and calm individual slipping and revealing the chaos and hatred underneath. To be fair, a lot of people are wound pretty tight by their jobs and are often covering their mounting stress with the placid exterior of their working persona—but that still doesn't excuse this supervisor's extremely vindictive behavior retaliating against this worker for handing in their notice as…

When you're in charge and tell your workers not to do something, and they listen and don't do that thing, it's kind of hard to be surprised. Yet, this logic somehow doesn't apply when your boss tells you not to work overtime to finish a project that you'd need to work overtime to finish on time. Without fail, they're still surprised when it's not finished by the time the deadline passes… not that they were really paying attention to the deadline until their boss asked them about it. This one is…

When you demand that your workers adhere strictly to a schedule, you shouldn't be surprised when they continue to adhere to it even after you make a mistake in planning their schedule. After all, if you're insisting on micromanaging them, then you had better be prepared to micromanage, ensuring that you're feeding a constant stream of tasks if you want them to have any productivity at all. Of course, no one likes to work in these conditions, so you're always going to end up with a team of miser…

Working while in university is an interesting experience. Every time you're at work, there are people trying to convince you that the smoothie and salad shop in which you're working is the most important thing, more important than that test you need to study for to pass the class that is going to get you the degree you're actually working for. “That's all well and good, but there's no way my minimum-wage job is the most important thing in my life right now,” you tell yourself. It's only five ye…

This story serves as proof that politics, politicians, and political parties are silly wherever in the world you go—and also that politicians are completely incapable of listening to expert advice. In general, for some reason, people are particularly unwilling to listen to A/V guys , thinking that because they set up their home sound system and know how to use a TV remote, they know all there is to know about running an event as a sound engineer. For some reason, stories like this consistently…

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…

One of the benefits of working in a particular industry is that you get key insights into how things work, learning all kinds of insider information from working behind the scenes. Often, though, all this insider information does is lead back to the fact that the entire thing is just an elaborate charade. This knowledge is, of course, a double-edged sword because often you joined that industry in the first place due to a personal interest, and now you have to live with the knowledge that the en…

Getting passed up for a promotion when you know you are deserving of the role is rough. Probably the only thing worse is being asked for help by the person who got the job and has no idea what they're doing—proving definitely that you should have gotten the role in the first place. But, it's not uncommon for these types of things to happen in the workplace, where politics, corporate narratives, and other misguided decision-making processes often override actual logical reasoning. Unfortunately,…

It always seems to be the moment where we think too much of ourselves, riding high and mighty on our high horse, that we're struck down… and when you're riding high, there's a longer way to fall.