We know all too well at this point that HOAs are full of obnoxious type-A individuals who will stop at nothing to make your neighborhood experience a living nightmare. No HOA is immune to these extremes, so it is up to homeowners to find some level of healthy distance from them so that life in the neighborhood is at least slightly bearable. Now, as someone who lives in a city, my personal encounters with HOAs are nonexistent, but I also know full well what it's like to be taken advantage of by…

Imagine how audacious you'd have to be to expect a free upgrade everywhere you go? Like if you were heading to the mechanic for a tire rotation and expected a full new set of tires. Or if you had coach tickets for your flight home for the holidays and Jeff Bezos just showed up to the tarmac insisting you take his private jet instead. Feels silly, huh?

Sometimes big problems require simple solutions. This seemed to be the case in the entitled couple vs small bookstore story we came across on Reddit. The bookstore employee recalls an older couple who oozed entitlement so much in the establishment that it ruined the comfort of big comfy chairs for everyone. This couple would come in, never by anything, but would sit in the only two big comfy chairs all day long, cut the line to demand free hot water, and even kick their feet up on the table SHO…

Sorry, not sorry, for the egg puns—they are eggcellent!

Karens gonna Karen no matter your profession. So whether you work in the service industry or are the CEO of your own company, nobody is safe from a Karen. Take, for example, this electrician's story on Reddit . He was hired, as an electrician, to do some lighting work at a grocery store. This was back when he was a young blue collar worker and still new to the trade. He was alone, on a ladder, working on the lights, very much looking like an electrician and in no way a grocery store clerk. And…

Every so often, your coworker asks you to do a favor for them. It might be to proofread an email, grab something from the kitchen, or brainstorm for 15 minutes. However, giving them a free manicure is not exactly the kind of favor one expects to be confronted with at work. This employee's coworker admired their nails and asked them what they were using. You would think the conversation ended there, and the coworker would just take it upon herself to purchase the same product as the employee. Ho…

Isn't it funny when managers try to act like the know what they're doing but it's actually painfully obvious that they have NO idea and they are just talking as a power move? It's so comical and, honestly, sad. If you're a clueless manager, let me let you in a on a little secret: nobody cares that you're in charge, they care about getting their job done efficiently and acting their wages. So, as a quick PSA to managers, stop making it about you being high up on the executive ladder, we all know…

What would we ever do without receptionists ? These people keep the world running by doing all the organization and planning that keeps businesses afloat. CEOs and CFOs get the fancy titles and get to spend their time taking clients to glamorous lunches. They aren't the ones truly running the company, though. They may have the look of a person in power, but you know who's really in charge? The person who unlocks the doors each morning, keeps the office full of food and coffee, handles phone cal…

Not everyone is good at giving gifts. Obviously, for some people out there, it's their bread and butter. Their love language, if you will. If that's you, congratulations. However, the rest of us (myself included) were not born with the “good gift-giver” gene. As someone who was once gifted a dictionary and a pencil case holder for my 15th birthday, not to mention a DVD of Inside Out for my 21st birthday, I was not raised to be good at this. That's why when this time of year rolls around, I get…

There's this general idea online and in life that pregnant people deserve special treatment. You're probably holding your breath reading this, wondering where I'm going with that statement—and before you get too outraged, let me just say that, yes, absolutely, that idea and treatment is resoundingly deserved. After all, they're growing a whole new person inside of them—an astonishing feat that deserves special recognition before you even factor in the ordeal of troubling side effects that come…

One guest got up on the wrong side of the bed one morning, and decided to take it out on a poor front desk clerk, who could only reply with the corporate script she had been given. The guest was aghast when she found out that the hotel did not provide a Thanksgiving meal, and promptly demanded a discount. It was not the hotel clerk's first rodeo, and she politely explained to the guest that with all due respect, the hotel was not required to provide a Thanksgiving meal… Obviously, the Karen gue…

Ma'am, just get a janky $10 phone charger from CVS and move ON! Some Karens do not understand the concept that there are limits to how long one can complain about something, especially something as replaceable as a phone charger. Now, if you're like this Karen and you're really just trying to get access to a free charger, there is a much better way of going about this. For instance, she could have just asked the front desk agent if there was a charger she could borrow for an hour or so. But lik…

It doesn't matter how old and grumpy your entitled male Karen neighbor may be. Make no mistake: he does not write the rules. As someone who cannot afford to live in a residential neighborhood, I can merely compare this incident to one that happened to me in a communal laundry room in my apartment building. When I first moved into what is now my current place, there was this older lady who claimed that I could not use one of the washing machines because “everyone knows that it's her machine.” Ev…

Rallying family members for group gatherings can take more mental energy than taxes, apartment hunting, and scheduling your next doctor appointment combined. Everyone has that one family member who makes planning these kinds of social occasions way more difficult than it needs to be. It's like rallying a whole troop of soldiers, except really you're just rallying one infuriating human who has no regard for other people's time and schedules. I'm all for moving at your own pace, but not at the ex…

You've probably heard about the “Ship of Theseus,” a paradoxical thought experiment that challenges you to question whether or not an object that has had all of its parts replaced is actually the same object anymore. Another variant of this is the "grandfather’s axe," which seeks to challenge whether or not an axe that has had its handle replaced and then later its head is really the same axe as it was before. Although not really quite the same philosophical question, I can't help but wonder… I…

We all spent the past week giving thanks and expressing our gratitude for life's many joys. Unfortunately for us and for the rest of the world, life still comes with Karens. So now that we are done saying what we're thankful for this week, let's take a look at some of the people who we aren't thankful for but we have to deal with every so often. This week's roundup of Karen stories includes an Internet rant, a parking debacle, a customer service experience gone wrong, a workplace sabotage saga,…