They say to never trust your employer, but we always need a former employer for references so do we have much of a choice in the matter? The truth is that we do not. Even after you leave a company, you're still beholden to your former employer in some way. If you have minimal work experience, you might not have another employer to use as a reference. It's the cyclical nature of the working world. Even when you leave one place, you're never really free now, are you? Sure, it's possible to frame…

There's nothing like hustling to go above and beyond in your role only to have your new boss turn around and throw some random metric that is vaguely associated with productivity back in your face for no reason. Your KPIs and contributions that are tied to actual revenue for the company are topping the charts, and yet your insecure micromanaging manager is concerned about the fact that your screen was “idle” for a few minutes. This is the problem with modern “productivity” tracking software tha…

It's always fascinating when bosses decide to get petty right before one of their employees walks out on them. They have absolutely nothing to gain from being savage and they're probably risking their already lukewarm reputation, yet sometimes folks in authority cannot help themselves. This boss had a habit of taking credit for other people's work, and he even did so when his employee (now off to bigger and better things) fixed a major tech issue at work. Not only did he get petty, but he had t…

People often forget that in any job search, you are interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you. That means that no matter what your level of desperation is, always keep in mind that you still have the power of choice during your interview and search process. That means that you should feel empowered to ask questions and not just the basic fundamentals like salary and benefits. You should feel entitled to ask your interviewer about their experience at the company, what their concerns…

Let's be honest: Missing out on a job in the last round of the interview can be tough, especially when you're desperate for a job… but if a prospective employer is using tactics like this, you probably didn't want to work there anyway. No honest hiring manager wants to waste their own time and spend more time recruiting than they have to.

Yay for the New Year...

Look, by nature, the interview process is going to require jumping through hoops and putting a little bit of yourself out there—and it's a lot like dating in that respect. The whole thing may seem like an unnecessary performance, but like with a first date, the idea is that setting a basic social exchange with some universal ground rules in place allows each party to assess the other party and decide whether there is any compatibility for proceeding further.

There are definitely unwritten rules about using the communal microwave in an office. If you're heating up your lunch during an in-demand time and it's a frozen meal that takes more than five minutes to cook, you might want to step back and let other people use it first. Furthermore, if you're eating something particularly aromatic, consider eating in the break room and not right at your desk. This also applies when you're eating a messy meal. I cannot tell you the number of times I have seen c…

There is a reason why they say to make sure to get everything down in writing. This employee had the unfortunate experience of learning that life lesson the hard way after the HR representatives of the mental health facility in which he works kept shadily making adjustments to his contract. As someone who has worked freelance, part-time, full-time, and just about all the variations in between, I can confirm wholeheartedly that companies and bosses are going to make grand promises they cannot ke…

Let's be real here: if your company is not willing to provide health insurance for you, they have no business enforcing a strict sick day policy. Such hypocrisy reveals nothing more than the blatant disregard for the employee's actual humanity, but before we get too serious about this matter, let's also acknowledge how hard it is for companies to enforce certain specific sick day rules and regulations. For instance, if they need you to come in and prove that you are, in fact, unwell as you have…

It's not easy to remember your worth when you're desperate for work. The working world is engineered to make us feel grateful for signing any sort of contract in a highly competitive market with next to no jobs. That being said, even if you finally landed in a decent position after months and months of searching, always be sure to remember that if you end up taking on more responsibilities than the ones that were initially outlined upon getting hired, that means you have the right to advocate f…

Job searching can be a painful process, and trying to stand out from a crowd through an electronic submission is difficult to do, meaning that you'll probably submit hundreds of applications to jobs—most of which you'll never hear back from. In a hundred submissions, you might hear back from a few—let's say 5%—so five interviews per 100 applications, which is a generous estimate. Of these five, you'll actually sit a first-round interview for three, hopefully getting asked to come back by two of…

Hopefully, this dude doesn't need a letter of recommendation any time soon. He certainly won't be getting one from his former employers after saying literally everything he could say in the most dramatic email since that time I asked my therapist to resume sessions because the “job search was proving stressful.” But that's another story! As for this employee's resignation email, there is definitely a vicarious fulfillment we got from reading this, as I'm sure like many of you, we all have forme…

Paid time off should never be met with these kinds of invasive questions. When you sign a contract that entitled you to paid vacation time, there simply should not be any sort of explanation necessary, as you are granted a set number of days to do whatever you like in that free time. Now, some employers think that they are owed an explanation for every choice you make. Or perhaps they throw shade at the fact that you are using those days. Or perhaps it's all just societal pressure in your head!…

Welcome to the working world, where even your former bosses think that they're always in charge of you well after you leave. What happened to this security officer, unfortunately, is not an industry-specific experience. No matter what field you're in, you have probably dealt with a supervisor who thinks it's okay to call you whenever they'd like or who has even tried to manipulate you to stay as their underling until the end of time. Even at 22, I knew that it was not cool for my former employe…

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…