One thing employers almost unanimously do is encourage collaboration, promote synergy, and do deep dives into core competencies in order to close the loop on big data and growth hack deliverables… While no one is completely sure what any of this means , there's a chance that your boss has used one of these phrases in order to promote whatever thing they're pursuing, and it remains certain that collaboration is often at the forefront of company initiatives.

When apparent negligence and mysterious circumstances are working directly in your employer's favor, it's sometimes hard to imagine that things aren't actually working as intended. Longtime readers will know that I'm a big believer in Hanlon's Razor, the idea that you should "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." As with Occam's Razor, where the simplest explanation is the most likely, the simplest likely explanation for something is usually that they're ju…

Joining the workforce for the first time is a surreal experience. You start off bright-eyed and filled with wonder about what the world might have in store for you… ready to give it your all, dreaming of the drastic contributions you're going to make to society. But, the more time you spend working, the more the wonderous color drains from the dream, leaving behind a sad, beige, and grey world that looks like every house-flipping millennial's home renovation.

In case it hasn't been clear, workplace culture is undergoing a serious facelift these days. The question is how everyone responds to these (in some cases, very necessary and long overdue) changes. Here, we have a supervisor who specifically told the receptionist staff to never fetch coffee for salesmen at the office, as they are more than capable of making their own beverages. However, you can't enforce these policies and then not have your employees' backs when they follow through. That's wha…

As the slow march of time presses ever onward, it's not uncommon for change to occur—in fact, it's unavoidable. Small incremental shifts in policy and perception mount and build up into larger changes. Sometimes, you won't even realize how far things have gone until you take a look back at the winding road back to where things used to be. While these changes are usually for the better, sometimes things work their way into normalization that takes us back a step or two. We might not even realize…

Getting time off work is often needlessly complicated, so many employers are skeptical of employees when they call out or request sick leave, believing them to be “just faking it” in order to get a day off. This attitude is prevalent within retail and service industry employers, which presents problems since employees are interacting with other people and even handling food. Most commonly employers will require sick workers to get a sick note from a doctor, even for a simple flu, requiring empl…

It's important to have your coworkers' backs in case something ridiculously unjust like this happens. Of course, this kind of unity among employees can be rare depending on the workplace environment, but if I was suddenly fired for being 20 minutes late despite an otherwise perfect attendance record and excellent punctuality, I would hope that my coworkers would stand up for me. This thread was posted to Reddit by u/No_StopItStepbro , who along with his fellow employees devised a plan to collec…

Working a bad job can be literally bad for your health, with chronic stress from being overworked and mistreated causing all sorts of untold medical issues.

It only takes one perceived slight for some people to reveal their true nature, their carefully crafted persona of a sane and calm individual slipping and revealing the chaos and hatred underneath. To be fair, a lot of people are wound pretty tight by their jobs and are often covering their mounting stress with the placid exterior of their working persona—but that still doesn't excuse this supervisor's extremely vindictive behavior retaliating against this worker for handing in their notice as…

Innovation is never rewarded in the workplace. For some reason, bosses, managers, and supervisors feel entitled to the intellectual property of their employees when they're on the clock, but when an irreplaceable worker creates something invaluable to the company, suddenly it's like we're on the recess blacktop again and the school bully is trying to steal your jump rope because 'they saw it first'...

When you demand that your workers adhere strictly to a schedule, you shouldn't be surprised when they continue to adhere to it even after you make a mistake in planning their schedule. After all, if you're insisting on micromanaging them, then you had better be prepared to micromanage, ensuring that you're feeding a constant stream of tasks if you want them to have any productivity at all. Of course, no one likes to work in these conditions, so you're always going to end up with a team of miser…

Traveling memes for workers who desperately need a vacation

It's unfortunate when loyalty isn't repaid in kind, especially in a long-standing relationship in which mutual trust and reciprocation should have meant a better result. Sure, circumstances change, and it might “just be business,” but there's always a personal aspect involved when a relationship has lasted this long. Plus, treating your long-standing employees well is just good business. If you're seriously thinking about firing your oldest employee unceremoniously just to save a few dollars… w…

You should always be careful with ultimatums, particularly when you're really just on a power trip and bluffing… Sooner or later, someone is going to call you on your bluff, and you're going to be left standing there with your hands tied, looking pretty silly. Still, this is a favorite tactic amongst toxic managers, who relish the idea of threatening their workers with firing more than J. Jonah Jameson. There's nothing they enjoy more than putting a proverbial gun to your head, putting your fam…

Getting passed up for a promotion when you know you are deserving of the role is rough. Probably the only thing worse is being asked for help by the person who got the job and has no idea what they're doing—proving definitely that you should have gotten the role in the first place. But, it's not uncommon for these types of things to happen in the workplace, where politics, corporate narratives, and other misguided decision-making processes often override actual logical reasoning. Unfortunately,…

Requiring your workers to complete work-related tasks while off the clock presents a range of moral, ethical, and legal issues. Still, it's incredibly common with different policies, making this intention incredibly overt to more subtle. At the end of the day, the design of these policies is to keep costs down, reducing labor costs by shaving off “unnecessary” time at the end of shifts, which means that workers are completing those “unnecessary” necessary tasks on their own time. A great exampl…