The proverb “A bird in the hand is better than two in the bush” postulates that you're better off with what you have or are able to get now rather than what you might be able to get in the future. Reson being that While working for an emergency telecommunications company, this worker fell into the all-too-common trap of taking on additional work with the promise that it would eventually lead to more pay. Spoiler alert: It didn't. With the proverbial carrot dangling just in front of them indefin…

"I'm being encouraged by management to 'reflect on my life to figure out where it all went wrong'..."

When asked to choose between a single work-sponsored lunch or a permanent raise , why would you ever choose the lunch? It's a long-running joke that companies love to provide pizza Fridays instead of doling out much-needed raises (which could, in turn, let employees buy their own pizza, or you know, more important things in life than that). The company only has to shell out a few hundred dollars for a pizza party, and it does raise employee's spirits for a few hours while their stomachs are ful…

We thought the titular contests of the “Hunger Games” series were just some SciFi hoopla, yet here is this eerily similar real-world equivalent: competing for the privilege of working so that you can continue to support your own survival. In fact, “Hunger Games” is a fitting name given the fact that the arena for this real-world analog was in a restaurant. Everyone who has ever worked in the service industry or retail knows that customer reviews are a total grab bag, you can do nothing exceptio…

Some revenge stories are smellier than others.

A double-edged sword cuts both ways, and you could probably get a paper cut from a double-sided print job, too. Cutting costs might seem like a good idea, but really, you're probably just going to slice right through other important things like customer satisfaction and, by extension, your company's profit. After all, as the old saying goes…You gotta spend money to make money. Overly inflexible policies are almost certainly a double-edged sword. When you demand rigid adherence to rules, leaving…

Is it really even petty revenge when you revoke your recently ex-employers' access to your personal software that you paid for and were only using for your work out of goodwill? At that point, you're just reclaiming what was rightfully yours, to begin with, and since the company had been effectively leasing your software license, you might as well go ahead and send them a bill for however long they had been using it, too . It's not your fault if they can't properly invest in the resources neede…

"He wasn't using headphones btw, even though the FA offered - I think he thought the wires would make him look stupid."

This was not exactly the ideal encounter between a boss and his employee during Employee Appreciation Week! After his office was gifted bagels for the “special occasion,” the employee got scolded by his manager for pausing his work to actually eat his bagel, as if he was supposed to clock out and clock back in all over a bagel (that they gave him!). Let's also take a moment to remind ourselves that the whole construct of Employee Appreciation Week is problematic. It should go without saying tha…

When maintaining million-dollar machines is the singular focus of your work, you'd hope that your manager would leave well enough alone and trust you to know how to do your thing. Alas, when it comes to new management, leaving well enough alone is something that is never in the playbook, a “one-size-fits-all” approach taking precedence over logical reason. This machine operator worked at an aerospace manufacturing company, executing an efficient routine by starting work early to ensure that mac…

Looks like a fun lawsuit

"Why are they good enough now?"

Let this story serve as yet another relevant reminder that paternity leave deserves to be taken seriously by employers. You would think that in this day and age, this would be common knowledge, but you would be surprised. Here, we have an employee who initially only asked for one week of paid time off to help take care of his newborn baby. Apparently, the timing was not convenient for his boss, not that this should really matter. However, according to the boss's warped perspective, it was reaso…

Many times in life you should be careful what you wish for. Especially in business, foolish ultimatums that you think your subordinates won't be able to rise to may only inspire them to call your bluff and look elsewhere for employment. Being underappreciated in your work really is frustrating, especially since it usually goes hand in hand with being underpaid. Employers often will downplay your contributions, whether consciously or subconsciously, instead attributing the company's success to t…

Being consistently overloaded with work in an organization where the expectations are completely out of touch with reality is a soul-sucking experience… always falling short, no matter how much time and effort you put in. Let's face it: if your team is “understaffed” for a long enough period of time, it's pretty safe to say that your employer has no intentions of hiring anyone else, and they consider it to be an ideal staffing level. It's only when productivity and customer satisfaction start s…

Corporations always find a junior employee to do their dirty work for them.