What is the point in filling out a schedule if your availability is not going to be honored by your manager? It's kind of the whole point in having an elaborate shift-based schedule in the first place. And look: we are sympathetic to the fact that last-minute crises occur and schedules have to be adjusted accordingly. However, when those instances do occur and managers need to call in favors, they should remember that they are in no place to make demands. Asking nicely if someone can shuffle ar…

Why is it so common for bosses to feel threatened by their competent employees? A competent employee means the whole team’s work is stronger. A competent employee means you don’t have to monitor their output every second of every day because you can count on them to get their work done and to get it done well. A competent employee does not mean that you should feel the need to take them off certain big projects because you are worried that their competent work will make your output seem incompe…

Nothing sows the seeds of distrust from your manager like calling out sick for work; no matter what evidence you have of your illness or incapacity, they're always going to have some degree of doubt —even if they've seen the evidence with their own two eyes.

Does anyone else smell a lawsuit coming? It’s pretty hard to imagine sillier circumstances to fire someone than to fire a pregnant employee mere hours before they are going to give birth. Perhaps this boss has some extremely backward sense of right and wrong, but you would think someone else at this company would inform him that pregnant women are a protected class. What’s even crazier is that this woman’s husband also works at the same company, so now there is just bad blood all around that to…

Arrogance is the worst trait a person can have for a number of reasons. Life is dynamic; you can be at the top one day and the bottom the next. It's important to always be humble and treat others with kindness since success is relative as opposed to absolute. The story below is an account of an employee who overcame the system. Due to an injury, OP has been released from his present role. According to the terms of the employment contract, the hiring company has the legal right to terminate the…

For some inexplicable reason, basic comforts are considered to stand in opposition to efficiency—if you're uncomfortable, you'll work harder being the deeply flawed logic at play. If there's a comfort that can be denied… you bet it will be, all in the name of bigger bonuses for the executives and higher returns for shareholders. There seems to be a societal impression that customers will think someone who is comfortable won't offer good service, which is a complete farce. One can't help but won…

We've all heard about the underwhelming gifts companies sometimes give their employees—whether it's a questionable free breakfast, an after-hours company party where you're expected to contribute a dish, or a mediocre pen. Those in corporate America have pretty much seen it all. However, one woman discovered a significant mistake in the company's finances that could have cost them millions of dollars. Going above and beyond, she thoroughly investigated the numbers and was proven right. Despite…

It's not uncommon in the workplace to be told not to worry about something only to later be asked why you weren't worried about it—or to have that thing that you were told not to worry about coming back to haunt you or completely blow up in the company's face.

Remember that scene from The Matrix where that kid with the spoon is all like, “There is no spoon,” when there's clearly a spoon right there in front of Neo's face? Yeah—well, it turns out that kid is now managing a team, except now, instead of “There is no spoon,” it's “There is no snow.” as if they somehow know more about the situation than what their subordinates are currently witnessing outside of their own window.

Becoming too good at your job can have surprising and sometimes unfortunate consequences. For instance, you might be the type of person who gets all your work done early. If your supervisors and managers start to notice, you're likely to be asked to take on more work for the same pay. Another example is if the team you're working on becomes entirely dependent on you, so much so that you could never get promoted or moved to a different department because then the entire functionality of the team…

Not every employee looking to work remotely is grasping at straws with their reasoning; sometimes, the reasons are valid. Even worse, if those valid reasons are ignored, sometimes everyone at the office is going to have to suffer the consequences. In this case, we have an employee with a bit of a gas issue due to some side effects of a new medication. This issue was not controllable, and therefore not the fault of the employee. But of course, out of embarrassment, the employee did not want to s…

Imagine working at a company for nine years and suddenly learning that your three weeks of paid time off will now be significantly reduced to only one week. First of all, for some of you, you might be thinking that the initial PTO plan was not exactly generous for a loyal employee who has stuck around for nearly a decade. That is a red flag in and of itself, but now the new PTO policy that is about to be enforced is pretty much as insulting as it gets. The new policy, included in a screenshot b…

An excellent example of the saying 'Don't judge a book by its cover' is the business world. Even while everything appears ideal from the outside, things aren't always bright and sunny on the inside. The story that follows is from a resentful employee who has to commute every single day between the main office and his secondary office. Everything was going great, and OP was doing rather well despite spending long hours on the road; however, when a new bookkeeper joined the company, everything to…

Walking the walk of your own talk is important as a leader as it shows that you're willing to stand by the words that are coming out of your own mouth. It also helps your subordinates realize that there's no hypocrisy at play and that the rules and requirements you're enforcing apply to everyone equally.

This dude saw right through his boss and was not afraid to call him out on his nonsense. If your supervisor has a preferred method of communication, always be sure that the reason behind this is not so they can do whatever they want and leave no paper trail in the process. In other words, if you have to call out sick due to an emergency, always get it in writing, even if your boss prefers a phone call. Besides, if you're at all like me, emailing is so much better than speaking to your boss on t…

Paid or unpaid, it seems like the best workers always get terminated. I see this a lot in my line of work… People who work hard don't get a return on their endless commitment. Why bother putting in lots of effort if it goes unappreciated? It seems as though managers don't know how to keep their employees happy. This firefighter was volunteering at a local fire station for seven years when he finally had enough of upper management and their ridiculous demands. From asking him to work 28 twelve-h…