People will gatekeep the most insanely petty things in order to feel even a semblance of purpose and power. Name a hobby, sport, community, or industry—and I promise you that there are a number of people there who will make it as challenging as possible for you to join, contribute, or succeed in a way that they perceive might threaten their supposed authority. We're territorial beasts, after all, with many of us being fueled by our ego's lust for significance, prominence, and recognition. Consi…

Your emergency contact is intended to be just that—for emergencies. Its intended purpose really isn't so that your boss and coworkers can call and tell on you for playing hookey from work like they're a teacher reaching out to an unruly child's parent.

Most days in the workplace are ordinary and routine, so when something out of the ordinary happens, it can make for a memorable shift. These people know that all too well — they replied to u/Murkantilism's question, “What is the craziest thing you've seen somebody do at the workplace?”

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…

Working for an employer who is certain their workers are stealing from them is a lot like when your parents were convinced you were secretly going to parties as a teen when you were doing nothing of the sort… Or like having a partner who is certain you must be cheating on them despite you giving them no reason to doubt you. As with anything, when someone repeatedly accuses you of doing something that you're not, it's more of a reflection on them and reveals the things they would do in your plac…

It's always a good policy in life to take the high road, but when that's not an option, the low road will do just fine—just make sure to set fire to every metaphorical bridge you might cross along the way. This full scorched earth policy isn't the way you should normally go about doing business; for one thing, it's (usually) unethical, and it's not going to make you many friends or get you very far. For that reason, you should always aim to leave things on good terms when you leave a job—you ne…

Awkward cringe-fest

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…

Tsk, tsk, questionable decisions are being made by management and HR all around the world at this very moment, and you never know the consequences it will bring… In this case, OP explained how he was going to 'jump ship' as soon as possible due to HR in his company, who were doing everything in their power to micromanage the company's employees to a ridiculous degree. An employee at OP's workplace who was working in IT asked for an 8% raise, showing their boss salaries in the area where people…

Throughout the course of your working life, there will be people you just gel with—people who operate on the same wavelength as you and with whom coexistence and cooperation are effortless. There will be others who you just can't seem to get along with—the antithesis of yourself—like a foil that some cunning author wrote into the narrative of your life. But this first group, these people who are a cut from the same cloth as yourself, become the best coworkers and even lifelong friends. When one…

Negotiating leave during the interview process can be tricky. Do you mention it to ensure you can take that vacation you already planned? Or do you not mention it, helping your chances of getting the job but drastically increasing chances that you won't be taking that vacation? If you choose to bring your leave requirements to the table of negotiation, the hiring manager then has the option of saying yes or no, or passing over you completely for the crime of having a personal life—it's all with…

For some unfathomable reason, companies have a larger hiring budget than retention budget. They're willing to pay more money to hire a new employee, than they would be willing to pay as a raise for an existing employee. OP was working as a junior at an IT job for a company. During OP's yearly evaluation, they asked their boss for a 5-10% raise, which was completely fair, as they had taken on many responsibilities since the beginning of their employment. OP's boss refused, giving a bunch of reas…

There will be moments throughout your life that really stick with you, great experiences, or hard lessons that become formative parts of who you are and what you want to do. These “core memories”

It's important to be good at your job as this helps you to establish and maintain good standing with your employer as well as key clients and ensures that you develop a good long-standing relationship within your industry.

The relationship between an organization and its employees is built on a foundation of trust... breaking that trust can result in negative consequences for both parties. Employers should realize that failing to honor an employee's accrued leave can damage the morale of the remaining team and lead to a loss of trust. Eventually, this will harm the organization's bottom line—in the form of higher turnover, less institutional knowledge, and less productivity—costing far more than fronting the cost…

Management often doesn't realize that when you quit, you technically stop working for them. In this case, OP was working for a security company, and one month in, already decided to quit. OP gave his manager two weeks' notice, despite the fact he didn't actually owe them that. Two weeks go by and OP's manager hadn't yet found a replacement. On OP's last day, things changed, and a new trainee showed up, less than eager to be trained. OP did his best to train the new hire, despite running into a…