When you first start off your career, you're bright and starry-eyed, carrying such ideals as “work hard and be rewarded,” fueled by stories and mythology of working stories you've heard. The reality is that work is more like Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the hill only to have it roll back down again—nothing gained, changed, or earned except the opportunity to complete the task again. You probably think that as long as you put effort into something, it will eventually pay off and that honest f…

Slow and steady wins the race

Sometimes, the best way to communicate to your new manager that they're doing a bad job is to do exactly what they have instructed. Perhaps you have tried to do the decent thing and explain exactly why a new policy isn't practical or efficient for the people who actually execute said tasks and responsibilities, but we all know that most managers are intellectually incapable of processing that kind of criticism in a productive way. Instead, they would rather interpret this criticism as indicativ…

It's pretty safe to say that your employer will never fully appreciate your contribution until after you leave. At this point, they will realize that your contribution isn't quite as easy to replicate as they thought, leading to productivity losses that they will have to pay a lot more to replicate. Of course, they could have just given you a moderate raise and saved more money than they ended up spending. A certain part of this is misreading the relationship, overestimating the hold they have…

This is definitely not the tone you want to set before firing a bunch of people on your team! This boss had the audacity to send a team-wide message to boost everyone's morale by including the overused colloquial statement, “just remember that in da clurrb, we all fam.” Yes, it was written that exact way, and no, this message did not get the intended reaction from its audience. Instead, this toxic boss's employees responded with confusion, frustration, and eye-rolls about how outdated and despe…

Karmic interference

It is truly mind-boggling how some employers will treat the workers who are essential to the success and operation of their business. They gamble that they can pay them below market rates and keep them exactly where they are and that their workers will continue to be milked like the cash cow that they are… After taking on increasing responsibility in their boss's small business, this worker knew it was time to move on to greener pastures . They did what they thought was the right thing and gave…

This kind of boss is just the worst, as this flustered nanny can tell you. Up next, this non-HOA homeowner is refusing to take down their holiday lights, and told the HOA member to “just get off my property… I've just had enough.”

It must have been challenging for this boss to read about how her own lack of professionalism. However, as Justin Timberlake himself once sang and then experienced, “what goes around… comes around.” Here, we have a former employee who quit after experiencing a severe case of burnout. Their horrible boss established a workplace environment that discouraged calling in sick

When people use the term “not leadership material” they can mean a wide variety of things. It can mean that you're not suited to the organization's toxic expectations of complicity and your unwillingness to follow whatever directive is passed down to you blindly. It can also mean that your performance isn't up to standard or that you don't prioritize interpersonal relationships and kiss the appropriate rear ends often enough. “Doesn't do the things I want them to,”

Imagine getting in trouble during your first week at a new job because you didn't stand up when your boss entered the room. Who does this employer think he is, a king? You would think in this day and age, given all the cultural conversations we have been having regarding employees' rights and backward workplace behavior, that this would not be allowed. And yet, the other employees in this office, from the bottom of the “food chain” to the top, seem to feel that this is the appropriate standard.…

Always be careful with the words you say at work, folks! This micromanager was so annoyed by his employee wearing headphones in the office simply because he had to call his nice twice on one occasion. Talk about a power trip! In this day and age, nearly everyone wears headphones in offices to focus. Plus, the employee's line of work never involves serious or dangerous circumstances that would require him not to wear headphones. So when the boss told the employee he never wanted to see him weari…

In every industry, there are things that folks outside of said industry would not necessarily want to know about. For instance, if you're eating at a restaurant and you learn that they don't clean the kitchen nearly enough, you might never want to eat there ever again. If you work at a company and you learn that the truth behind who gets promoted and who doesn't has absolutely nothing to do with merit, you might be discouraged. But like all secrets, the truth is bound to come out, and while it…

If it’s not within your job description, you should have a right to say no. This employee was not a professional painter by any means, and yet, his boss seemed to have the audacity to ask him to stay late to paint the office before the owners came to visit. Now, at the very least, he offered overtime pay, but he even suggested that the Redditor bring his wife so she could be another set of hands as well (mind you, the original poster’s wife is not an employee there). Thankfully, OP had enough c…

When there's a reckless driver on the road, one's first instinct is presumably to protect oneself and to protect the others on the road. However, this Redditor deserves some props for not only doing that but also for finding a way to enact some safe yet satisfying petty revenge. Here's how he pulled it off. The reckless driver in question was also not the smartest person in the world, as he plastered his car with lots of personal details such as his name, phone, and website. That's because he's…

It's called a 9-5 for a reason!