You wake up every day and drive into the office to do your job… and there's a comfort in that dull mundanity, a consistency. You've got a mortgage to pay and a family to feed, so you're happy (enough) and more or less resigned to the arrangement. Yet, as time goes on, you find yourself doing more and more work, your coworkers are leaving, and no one is being hired to replace them, leaving their workload split up amongst those remaining. The company is floundering—that's easy enough to see—and u…

When you go out of your way to attend an interview, no one really owes you anything, but you might expect that you'd be treated with a little common decency—and that a little thing called decorum would be followed. Sure, there's nothing in writing, and no commitments have been made, but by going out of your way—and out of pocket—to put a vote of confidence in them and their process, you'd hope that you might actually get to sit down in a room with them… Not receiving a cancellation via text and…

Certain things in life bring with them a certain finality… Like getting fired, signing up for a mortgage, or having kids. But it's important to note that they also bring with them opportunity... Opportunity for new pathways and new experiences—even if those experiences are more mundane than the ones that came before. The reality is that when one door closes, another one opens, and you'll likely find that you end up in the right place eventually, even if you really wish that that initial door ha…

It's pretty safe to say that forcing out the only worker in your company who knows the contacts and data for all of your suppliers would be—well… not a great idea. It would be common sense to, at the very least, tactfully make sure that you understand the ins and outs and inner workings of their role before you decide to force them out of the company. But, if you're the sort of manager or employer who is willing to use this strategy as a management tactic, it's probably safe to say that critica…

It should be no surprise to any worker in this day and age that companies usually have a far greater hiring budget than the budget for retention and raises for existing workers. Hiring and filling positions is a priority, and there is little consideration of the fact that they fail to offer competitive rates and incentives to their workers to encourage them to stay, which is the reason why they need to hire so many new workers in the first place. It makes logical sense when you quickly lay it o…

"Comfort equals laziness" is an attitude that is pervasive throughout certain industries, with the idea that a comfortable employee is an unproductive one and that relative comfort is somehow offputting, prompting employers in these industries to treat their workers with cynicism and hostility.

Restrictive policies are often written with a singular use case in mind, with the authoring manager's short-sighted and horse-blinded perspective generally resulting in the policy not being as cost-saving as intended in the first place and leaving ample opportunity for loopholes and malicious compliance.

You'll never be appreciated in a toxic workplace until you're gone. Even then, instead of being grateful for everything you've done, they'll take to blaming you for all their own mistakes the moment you're out the door, making you a scapegoat for their own mistakes and incompetence. The problem is the remaining coworkers and friends you left behind in that toxic environment will keep their mouths shut for fear of drawing unnecessary attention to themselves, leaving your name tarnished and yours…

Every member of a team brings with them their own unique traits, abilities, and experiences. No two people will be exactly the same or have the same perspective. Even on a single issue, it's surprising just how different different people's perceptions of that thing can be. In this same vein, it's important to accommodate other members of the team ; maybe they don't have the skills or even physical capabilities that you do, so it might make sense for you to pick up more of those tasks that you'r…

There's a tendency within organizations as they grow and expand to slowly erode the perks that made working there great, which made the early stages of the company successful in the first place. But when you have ten employees offering comprehensive benefits, it creates a far smaller total number than when you have 100. At some point, the owners or some executives are going to notice this number and put all benefits on the chopping block so that they can pocket that extra profit or qualify them…

It's pretty confusing when your employer is losing workers faster than it can replace them and doesn't seem at all phased. Sometimes, you can chalk this up to general incompetence. Still, it's more likely that there are over-inflated egos involved, with key members of the company refusing even to consider that they, their policies, and the way they treat workers might be the problem. Other executives and HR play along, worried that if they acknowledge the situation, the entire company might imp…

“It's just business,” people (often your boss) love to spout… and it always is until it's personal. You can rest assured that anyone using this canned clamshell phrasing is probably using this to dismiss situations where they're exploiting you and are going to take it very personally should things one day not go their way. It's the same sort of tactic that is used when you're told by a notoriously toxic employer that “We're all a family here.” The hope is that you'll buy into the thin words the…

Meddling pedantic coworkers who consider them to be a step above the rabble, despite being in exactly the same position as this “rabble," are a one-way ticket to a hellish workplace. The problem is that managers usually leave these busybody coworkers alone and may even regard them as proficient workers because they're making the manager's life easier by doing their dirty work for them. To be fair, the managers are also probably afraid of these people, seeing as they usually memorize the technic…

Hiring for a position as a regular manager is an exhaustive process, draining your time and resources, so it's really hard to imagine something like this ever happening with a manager who is concerned about their own time. But, there are those within certain organizations whose job it is to recruit full-time, and these recruiters and certain members of HR constantly scout and search for strong talent even if the organization really doesn't need them. This works in large corporations that are li…

It's not often that the villain wins in the end—unless it's the second part of a trilogy, and you need to set up the third part so that our heroes are fighting back from the brink of defeat… a la Star Wars' second (fifth) installment The Empire Strikes Back . See, ending your story with a conclusion where the villain wins usually doesn't provide a satisfying story structure—unless things have been leading there the entire time, and that's the point the story is trying to prove. [SPOILERS: No Co…

As nerve-wracking as it can be, starting a new job can also be an exciting experience. New challenges and opportunities await… Unless the job you've been hired for isn't actually as advertised. See, there's this thing that can happen where all optimism you had for the new role evaporates as you slowly realize that the job you've been hired for doesn't actually exist in the way you thought it did and the organization you're working for has no idea how the job they hired you for should function.…