Rejection is a hard pill to swallow, no matter what form it comes in. You can sugarcoat it any way you like, throw around the whole “It's not me, it's you,” “It's just not a good fit,” and your words are still going to have the same message: “You're not good enough for me." This, of course, is a brutal affront to anyone's ego

Not honoring an employee's schedule when they have been following all the rules and going through the proper channels is about as disrespectful as it gets. When a manager rejects your request to not work a certain shift, the message is clear: your life and commitments do not matter. What matters is this silly arbitrary work schedule that is 100% malleable but apparently, that would require too much critical thinking on the manager's part. This thread was posted to Reddit's r/MaliciousCompliance…

Customer service work can be difficult at times. The old adage ‘the customer is always right’ can reach unprecedented heights, depending on the circumstances and parties involved. The story that follows is an account of a customer service representative. The Original Poster (OP) was involved in asset finance, namely with regard to land and cars. But in an effort to find a solution, he chose to bring up the issue with his management after encountering an angry client who refused to abide by the…

There's no surer sign that you might need to reassess your leadership "style" than having multiple people opt out, in quick succession, of being under that leadership. After all, as the old adage famously goes, “People don't quit jobs; they quit bosses.” There's no telling the level of miserable or monotonous job conditions some people will put up with just as long as they enjoy working with the people in their immediate team—especially their managers. Good managers are hard to come by, so when…

There are a few key elements to take into account when searching for a job. The salary is undoubtedly the first, followed by the employees in second place, and the boss in third. The story below is an account of a frustrated and underappreciated employee. The Original Poster (OP) had worked for the same business for a considerable amount of time. OP enjoyed his job and loved his manager. However, as luck would have it, OP's manager resigned to pursue greater opportunities, and the manager appoi…

There's this old adage that takes many shapes and forms but usually goes somewhere along the lines of this: You should always be kind, or at least decent, to the people you meet as you never know when even the smallest act may have far-reaching consequences. You've probably heard of or read one of these stories before, and it's one of the oldest tropes for teaching the morale of being kind to others. Where old stories involved a frail old woman or man asking for assistance from a character, onl…

Bad experiences are a dime a dozen when it comes to interviewing for a retail role; in no other line of work are there so many desperate interviewing managers looking for such a high level of effort and experience for such minimal pay. Usually, if an interviewer takes issue with you, there's no coming back from it, no avenue of recourse; after all, they're the ones doing the judging, and you hold very little control over the situation outside of your ability to walk away. Yet, sometimes, a hidd…

You know that feeling everyone occasionally gets at work that you're being watched 24/7? Well, what if you suddenly discovered that this was actually the case? Sometimes when you have a micromanager for a boss, you get the feeling that someone is breathing down your neck and following your every move, as if they are just waiting to point out an error or give you a hard time about the way in which you go about fulfilling your daily responsibilities at work. This obviously does not make for a ple…

Be very very careful with anonymous surveys… you never really know if they're actually anonymous or not! In some workplaces, HR will send around anonymous surveys every now and then. They can address mundane topics, like asking if people want more employee events, and trying to take the temperature on morale. Other times these surveys are directly asking how leadership is doing, and those feel risky to answer. Even if the results come through a third-party service, it can't be that hard to figu…

Imagine waking up to an email in your inbox from your manager enforcing a mandatory “deep clean” shift on your one day off. Any sensible human would likely groan and decline the offer. And yes, no matter what this manager says and no matter how he tries to frame it, this is an offer as the employee's contract makes no mention of this “deep clean” shift. Furthermore, this manager had absolutely no plans to adjust the coming week's schedule to accommodate the weekend day or to try to carve out ti…

Since the job market is the one place where it is perfectly acceptable to look out for your best interests, it can prove to be a horrible place for the faint of heart. Your family's health and welfare should come first. Because of this, you will be taken aback by the story that follows, as workplace loyalty is rare and hard to come by. The Original Poster (OP) works as a mechanic. Having worked for the same company for a few years, he was largely satisfied. That all changed, though, when one of…

People will stop at nothing to climb the corporate ladder and achieve success in the competitive field of business. Having said that, how would you react if an individual in a position of power attempted to coerce you into following their instructions? Would you let your fear overcome you, or would you outsmart their sly tactics and advance toward your goal? The story below is an account of a hard-working individual. The Original Poster (OP) has spent a considerable amount of time employed by t…

The nature of something serious lends you to believe that that thing will be handled seriously, with calculated, methodical decision-making in its orchestration. Company-wide layoffs are a bit like that; the wide-sweeping impact made on people's lives means you'd expect each and every decision to be made with careful thought. Well, that's not always the case. At the end of the day, there's some administrator somewhere handling the clerical work through some management system, and both people an…

Increased remuneration during your time at a company and throughout the course of your career is usually considered to be given due to your own increased contributions owing to your growing knowledge and experience. The off-the-cuff expectation we have is that generally, our earning potential will only go one direction, and while this certainly won't be the case for all of us thanks to the possibility of layoffs and a shifting job market, we certainly wouldn't expect our pay to decrease whilst…

Attitude is important when it comes to the workplace. Still, the workplace itself is largely responsible for your attitude when you're at work. You can't just demand that your workers be happy and have that be the solution to what is an otherwise miserable job. Yet, one of the first things you're taught in retail is that you should always smile and “greet” “guests” as they walk in the door, setting the stage for an enjoyable experience for them during which they're more likely to fork out more…

There's this thing that happens in some organizations where upper management knowingly sets policies that they know infringe (or come close to infringing) on their legal minimum obligations to their workforce. Then they act all surprised when said minimum obligation isn't being upheld because it's simply not possible to do under the constraints they've created. A perfect example of this is employee breaks, of which there are usually laws where you're working around when, how long, and how often…