No one wants to end their year at work on a sour note like this. Of course, annual performance reviews are bound to cause some sort of anxiety among most employees, especially those who are preparing to advocate for a raise. Unfortunately for this employee, she was met with total rejection, and it only gets worse from there. This Redditor had been at the company for over three years without a significant pay raise during her time there. Not only was the CEO complimenting her work all the time d…

The music people choose to listen to in order to get through the workday is a private decision. It's not meant to be publicized for all your employers and coworkers to see. No one needs to know how much you listen to Taylor Swift or the Wicked soundtrack. Unfortunately for this Redditor , he and his team of 30 or so coworkers were asked to share their Spotify Wrapped screenshots with the whole team as part of a team-building exercise. This would be an immediate no for me. If I want to share tha…

‘Tis the season to receive an underwhelming Christmas bonus from your out-of-touch employer! Sometimes, it’s a basket of stale cookies. Sometimes, it's a water bottle with the company logo on it that you can't even put in the dishwasher. And sometimes, it's a $25 gift card to the AMC movie theater near you, which for this employee , was a full 1.5 hours away and in an entirely other state. First of all, anyone who knows anything about the state of moviegoing today would implicitly understand th…

A good manager keeps their word. This applies to all aspects of management, whether it's expectations and responsibilities for employees or respecting employees' rights and boundaries. Here, we have a coordinator at an airline service provider who wanted to take off work for the Holidays and had been saving up his PTO to finally use in December. He followed standard protocol, put in his request months in advance, and that request was rightfully accepted. Flash forward, of course, to December it…

There aren’t many things in life that feel better than knowing you’re about to amaze a person underestimating you. Waiting quietly, letting them speak while thinking about how much fun you're going to have watching them realize they undervalued your worth. All the more when it lands you a better job and with it, more money. That’s exactly what happened to one guy at the start of his career, some twenty years ago, who had to take a test following a group interview for a tech support position at…

Sometimes, the only way to properly explain yourself to your micromanaging employer is by sticking to your principles. This employee had actively been trying to gain management experience over the years but was repeatedly denied the opportunity, which already left them feeling undervalued, under-appreciated, and underpaid. Matters were made worse after the employee , who was working checkout at the store, noticed an error when scanning a customer's item. They replaced the item with something si…

Sometimes, there is only so much poor treatment one can take. It is an unfortunate reality that in certain workplace environments, employees have to expect a certain level of vigilance from management that can, at times, border on micromanaging or even callous. However, the greatest indicator that a workplace is run by decent folks is how they treat their employees when they are going through hardship and need support. In this instance, we have an employee who was in the midst of a health scare…

Applying for jobs is always a brutal process, and most candidates need all the help they can get. That's why it's especially upsetting that this former employee who was recently let go received a savage reference from their former employer, who had made it seem like they were on good terms. Of course, if they weren't, the Redditor would never have listed their ex-boss as a reference in the first place. Let's also take this opportunity to remind ourselves how references can be useful and how the…

By now, we all know that job interviews are basically a game of strategy. As a candidate who wants to win the game, all you need to do is find the best answers to satisfy the interviewer, regardless of your thoughts or feelings, and you are one step closer to securing the job. It is well established that people constantly lie in job interviews and simply say what the interviewer wants to hear, just to get the job. ‘Why do you want to work for our company?’ is an age-old question and its reply i…

It's not easy saying no to your employer, but every so often, it's more than necessary to stand your ground. This is crucial for several reasons, but most of all, one needs to make sure one's employer understands the limitations of their so-called “control" and jurisdiction. It's one thing to draw mental boundaries between work and life, but it's even more challenging to make those essential boundaries known to your boss. This employee was leaving the company for seven weeks for paternity leave…

Let this story serve as yet another reminder to never give your employer the benefit of the doubt if they are not going to reciprocate. Here, we have an employee who worked for over three years as a traveling supervisor and had seen the once-gracious company bought out by a larger corporation, after which the treatment of employees gradually worsened over time. When the Redditor decided to finally put in his two weeks' notice, his boss forced him to pay for his own travel to get home. Now, many…

One would hope that most managers who work with student workers would be sympathetic to how challenging it can be to balance education with employment. Let’s face the facts: if it weren’t necessary, most folks wouldn’t take on all that responsibility. And yet, there are still far too many employers in this day and age who become far too concerned with their own insular experience that they are then unable to step outside of themselves and understand how hard things may be for their student work…

There are a number of reasons why HR might reprimand you for something… but this seems a bit far-fetched. Here, we have an employee who, like any other twenty-something employee in the 2020s, has a personal social media account where they post photos with friends and the occasional relatable memes. This past weekend, the employee shared a relatively benign photo of their friend group grabbing drinks on a Saturday night. There was nothing inappropriate documented that could come back to bite the…

Who didn't experience the frustration of getting email after email of rejection from countless jobs you thought you'd be perfect for? If you never experienced that, then congratulations! You are one in a million. If you do know what we're talking about, our question to you is – After how many rejections did you acknowledge that maybe the problem is you and something should change? 50? 100? 1000? Plus, what does one should change to actually make a difference? The person in this Reddit story cam…

Let this story serve as a friendly reminder to stand up for what you were hired for in the first place. If your boss tries to impose new rules and regulations, new responsibilities, and new expectations that were not expressly written in your initial contract, then you are well within your right to advocate for yourself. That means advocating for a raise or promotion if you feel compelled to do so. It can also mean enforcing what's currently written in your contract if you do not wish to accept…

Karmic interference