Vice presidents are hard pills to swallow. They assume that the sun rises and sets at their demand. However, sometimes you find a rose in a thornbush... such as this legend of a manager who wouldn't let his team be bossed around by the VP's silly demands. I feel obligated to share this inspirational story of an IT manager who bravely resisted the awful vice president's effort to pilfer the Fourth of July. The VP is determined that her time is more important than the IT team's combined total. Bu…

What do you do when your company, nay—industry—regards employment not as an ongoing arrangement but as a mere rental of skilled labor? Sending you packing as soon as your position has served its most immediate purpose. In truth, it seems short-sighted since, when it comes to programming and development, there will always be a need for ongoing troubleshooting, updates, and improvements—who better to do that than the person who wrote the original program?

There is nothing like a new manager coming in and messing up the structure and workflow that was functioning so well for literally everyone else. It's a classic conundrum that can manifest itself across all industries. That being said, it becomes particularly infuriating when these sudden changes affect you personally. This airline service provider submitted a PTO request for the Holiday season way back in October. The request was approved and all was well. But the new manager, who apparently w…

There are so many potential red flags when it comes to work trips. Let's start with expenses. If it's not all-expense paid, there better be a good reason. That doesn't mean the flight and hotels. I'm talking breakfast, lunch, dinner, coffee, and snacks. That's right, we workers are not playing around anymore. Then there's the issue of the quality of the hotel. Do not settle for your boss getting some janky old room at the nearest motel. The situation needs to be just as convenient and nice for…

Which bonus would you rather have: a subscription for a monthly jelly delivery, or a pair of socks? There's not a correct answer to that question, but those are two real things that some workers got as holiday bonuses . I never knew that a subscription to a jelly of the month club was such a popular gift. Numerous people cited that as a present their workplace gave them in this post from r/askreddit. That's a cool gift, I suppose, it's good to broaden your horizons and try new things. But you k…

Imagine your boss not paying you and then giving you a lecture about your inability to handle finances well! It takes a special kind of cognitive dissonance and tunnel vision to have that level of audacity. It's the kind of narcissistic “main character syndrome” behavior we have seen in a lot of anecdotes about horrible bosses here at FAIL Blog. What's especially amusing here, however, is that when this boss was backed into a corner about being late on payroll, instead of owning up to her mista…

I've written about this same premise quite a few times in the annals of Fail Blog, but any time your boss is accusing you of doing something despite there being no evidence—and especially when the evidence shows quite the opposite—it's more than likely that they're just projecting their own personality flaws, predispositions, and hidden thoughts. Basically, they're just admitting that if they were in your position, they would be doing the same thing they're accusing you of.

Management at one car dealership messed with the wrong sales team. In trying to save themselves money, these managers soured their whole team's attitudes toward their jobs. If you've ever heard a great salesperson sell something, you know it's a true skill. Some people are just born with the ability to effortlessly talk someone into buying their product. They can make you go from not wanting a fancy car, to taking out your wallet and buying something way pricier than you intended. In the moment…

Once you see what some CEOs are giving to their employees for the holidays, you'll never feel bad about your own gift-giving skills ever again. These people are out here giving gifts that are not just bad, but insulting to the very people who work so hard to keep their company going. CEOs who hand out M&Ms in lieu of a holiday bonus, you're getting coal in your stocking this year! These people all had a few mildly infuriating moments that happened to them during the holiday season. One person h…

People love to make mountains out of molehills. Most of the time, it's because their actual problems are absolutely nothing compared to those of countless others in the world. But people love to feel like the underdog in their own story, even when the obstacles they're up against are as simple as waiting in a long line at the grocery store. This form of main character syndrome has manifested itself in countless work environments, public spaces, and schools. It's the boss with five homes who mak…

From roughly the age of 15 to 22 (fresh out of college), we are expected to accept any position, as long as someone will hire us, regardless of the duties and responsibilities. Hold your horses; what I mean to say is that every position, within 'normal bounds', is acceptable. As a result, I believe we can all agree that for nearly ten years, we have been changing jobs frequently in the hopes of finding one that won't be emotionally or physically taxing. The jobs differ according to age, prefere…

The phrase “tripping over dollars to pick up dimes” has become a popular one in the discourse of online workplace discussion, particularly when it comes to employers holding out on overdue raises and earned bonuses from their top workers, though it has other applications too when it comes to other overly drastic cost-cutting measures in the workplace.

There's no greater sign of a toxic workplace than having a coworker looking over your shoulder at all times, waiting to see you mess up. Oftentimes, these are the folks who are threatened by someone else's presence, especially someone they think is the competition. However, just as it was in this situation, the employee did virtually nothing wrong and the coworker was just seeing what they wanted to see. To me, this phenomenon feels reminiscent of high school behavior. I remember when a classma…

Some unfortunate situations in life arise out of mere happenstance or coincidence—but when something unfortunate happens to you that seems just a little too conveniently inconvenient, it can be hard to dismiss it as such. Of course, such thinking gives rise to all sorts of ridiculous conspiracy, but when your employer suddenly fires you just before you're set to receive a huge payout—one that they've been dangling on a stick all year like you're some kind of cartoon donkey—it just seems like th…

Imagine wanting a single day to spend with your visiting relatives over the holiday period and being told that it's not an option. Unfortunately, it's a reality that many employees face, particularly in sectors like retail, which also happen to be experiencing pumping trade at this time of year, and can't afford to have a single staff member away—primarily due to the appallingly low staffing levels they keep. They regard their authority in this situation to be absolute and—to be fair, it often…

If you feel taken for granted more than anyone else you know, you're probably the parent of a teenager or you work in IT. Even worse, you might be both. Now, I have never worked at a company big enough to have an official IT person, but I know how grateful my coworkers and I would be if we did. One has to wonder where this lack of proper gratitude comes from considering how lost we would be without the technologically competent folks in our lives and especially in our workplace environments. No…