"Normally, I’d do it my usual way—efficiently and with a bit of common sense."

We expect our employers to act in good faith. That being said, instilling all of your trust in your boss without making sure to protect yourself is a recipe for disaster, as this employee unfortunately has recently learned the hard way. He had been consistently depositing money into his retirement account for the last few years. However, when he checked his account most recently, he soon discovered that his boss had been “withdrawing money from his paystubs” yet had not contributed that money t…

When you're working, you need to take breaks; it's just a simple fact of working—at least until our employers manage to replace us with AI and AI-powered robots. Even when that inevitably occurs, there's sure to be downtime for updates and bug fixing, so it's all the same, really. Customers and bosses alike seem prone to misunderstanding when a worker is on their break. And, let's be honest, in some working environments, where there isn't the appropriate space to take breaks or where you're alw…

It's not easy saying no to your employer, but every so often, it's more than necessary to stand your ground. This is crucial for several reasons, but most of all, one needs to make sure one's employer understands the limitations of their so-called “control" and jurisdiction. It's one thing to draw mental boundaries between work and life, but it's even more challenging to make those essential boundaries known to your boss. This employee was leaving the company for seven weeks for paternity leave…

Well, that's one way to send a message!

Who hasn't watched the amenities of their workplace—the absolute basics that you might expect to have in the office break room—slowly eroding? First, it starts with the coffee. If you had a machine in the workplace, suddenly that's gone, leaving a French Press. Ok, fair enough, but before long, the actual coffee they were providing is replaced with the cheapest instant coffee available that doesn't even really taste like coffee. Now, they're no longer providing milk, so everyone has to buy thei…

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,”