Setting boundaries with people around you is essential to preserving a good balance between all parties and reducing the possibility of a misunderstanding, whether it be with your family, friends, fellow pupils, or even at your place of employment. The story below is of a bewildered employee. After an unusual encounter with her former manager, the original poster (OP) shared on Reddit. To put things in context, OP had just begun her new job and had quit her previous one due to the unprofessiona…

Ahh, retail… a fine industry where middle manglement regularly tries to shove a dirt sandwich down your throat while whispering sweetly to you it's actually honey. The story shared in this post is a tale as old as time in retail, where management will happily tell you with a smile that the company's official policy is that the customer comes first… but that the unofficial policy is that making sure staff never claim or report overtime also comes first. So, then, what happens when you're working…

There is nothing worse than being caught in the middle of a toxic workplace dynamic. This manager had to constantly deal with a temperamental and disrespectful VP who routinely made matters all the more difficult for the manager's team of designers. The last straw came when the VP delayed a project for so long that the design team had to put together an entire marketing strategy for a prospective client in less than a week. When the day for the meeting finally arrived, the VP decided to disinvi…

When someone ruins what could have otherwise been a great job for you, there's no better feeling than helping them on their way to unemployment as well. This worker made the tough decision to leave a job they loved due to the unbearable attitudes of the workgroup's executive directors, who had a propensity for taking credit for others' work and rewarding themselves for doing so while deriding those workers who had actually done the work for them. After being accused of underperformance in what…

You're always told that you should be friendly with team members—but not too friendly. Despite encouraging team bonding and after-hours unpaid recreational activities with your team, organizations have a tendency to get a little weird about things if you get too close or if things get too recreational . This, of course, doesn't apply in the service industry for some reason, where it's generally expected that staff will almost certainly engage in an interpersonal free-for-all. Still, this parano…

For all the bosses out there, forcing your employees to work as fast as they can will not get you anywhere in the long run. If you decide it should reasonably take an employee X amount of time to complete a task, and they give it to you in that amount of time, that should be considered a win. And that's exactly how this company used to run. Even if an employee could complete a task in ¾ of the time allotted, they were still compensated for the time requested. But not anymore. Now, even if an em…

What you choose to spend your hard-earned money on should be of no concern to your employer. You work hard for your money, so you should be able to use it to buy what you want. Even if you don't need more clothes, collectibles, fancy dinners, or whatever else you choose to spend your money, it's just that - it's your money. Well, this employee is being scolded by his boss for what he's been spending his money on recently. And here's the kicker - it's not even flashy items. One of the recent ite…

Being charged with the responsibility of a section of a business usually means that it's implied that you'll hold that section's interests at a level of most importance and not jeopardize them over petty slights and egotistical battles with your subordinates and external parties. Yet, some people can't help themselves and let their ego get involved in every possible decision, finding themselves battling for superiority at every step of the way rather than managing the task they've been employed…

Health and Safety is no joke—though often made into one by one of those weird things in workplace culture that is handled with complete polarity depending on the organization you work for. If you work for a “cowboy” small business owner whose organization's growth has far outpaced the professionalism of its structure, one where the owner is used to taking risks that place themselves in danger, relishing these moments with machismo and bravado, bragging about them for years afterward. They now f…

Let's face it: we all need a break from work. There's no way our brains can stay totally engrossed for 8+ hours while still producing our best quality work all day long. Whether it's stepping outside for a quick breath of fresh air or eating a snack, sometimes that mental break is really what an employee needs to power through the rest of the day's tasks. Well, this boss is trying to mandate a new break policy. He's only allowing his employees two 15-minute breaks a day due to the company being…

There's this weird thing that happens in employment, you're there to get a paycheck—no question about that. And while your employer will want to pay you (close) to market rate if they want to keep you they're always going to want to pay you as little as they possibly can get away with. You want more, they want to pay less, probably figuring that they'll get the same amount of work out of you regardless. This dynamic will hang over any employment agreement you enter into. There becomes a point t…

Imagine putting a toxic work experience behind you and thinking you've completely moved on until the opportunity to get your boss back conveniently arises. Sure, you may have transitioned to bigger and better things in life, but you cannot help but admit that you still harbor a little resentment from those horrid years you endured under such problematic leadership. This Redditor put in her notice after her bosses accused her of doing zero work despite all the evidence proving otherwise (meanwhi…

A surprising amount of experts and analysts get hired to improve the efficiency of businesses that they know nothing about, putting more effort into marketing themselves and trying to ensure corporate clients than into ensuring their analysis offers any actual value—or that their statistics hold any actual significance. At the end of the day, all they care about is that they're able to give the client some result, a result that the manager who hired them is going to take at face value since the…

Imagine your boss getting your entire team together and then casually asking all of you to take a massive pay cut. It's possible that you've been in a similar situation, where you have been encouraged to “take one for the team,” so to speak. But here's the truth: taking a pay cut is far from taking one for the team. It's taking one for the boss, who likely has not been asked to do the same. In this specific instance, how could you be taking one for the team if the entire team is getting hurt by…

It's easy to feel like your boss is always watching over you like a hawk, and nine times out of ten, they have more important things to be doing than monitoring your every move. However, every so often, you may find yourself in a sticky situation where your greatest suspicions have been confirmed, and you are stuck in one of those toxic work environments that everyone writes about on the internet these days. When this happens, the key is to immediately start thinking about ways to protect yours…

Socializing with one's coworkers is important, but why does it have to take up so much of one's personal time? Sure, these events are typically not in the office. They might be at a bar, a restaurant, or the boss's home, which is ten times nicer than anything you could ever afford. The reality of the matter is that regardless of location, you're still networking with your coworkers. You're still on the job. It doesn't matter if food and drink are on the company because your time is actively bei…