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…

Finders keepers! It's a rule that can be the best or the worst, depending on if you're the finder or the person who lost something valuable. Finding a $20 bill on the ground is amazing, because there's no way of proving who really lost it. But being the person who went to do laundry and suddenly realized that $20 bill had flown out of their pocket makes you really dislike the “finders keepers” rule. This 8-year-old found themselves on both sides of the rule, starting with a standoff with their…

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…

This person's boss had some feedback for them, but it was so vague that the employee was left baffled. Most employees have quarterly or yearly check-ins with their supervisors. It's a good way to manage expectations and address any concerning employee behavior before it becomes a major problem. This person worked on a team of scientists who seem to have some communication issues all around. This employee's boss tried to warn them that they were coming off as “contemptuous” when they spoke to th…

Don't underestimate the kids! You know what they say: the hardest job is being a parent . If you've ever watched a child for an afternoon, or raised a couple on your own, you know just how true that is. Kids need near-constant attention to avoid getting into trouble, and that can be exhausting even when you have plenty of energy. This parent decided to take their 7-year-old to a fun toy event . They write that the kids were paired with an older veteran . However, their kid got paired with a vet…

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…

Remember going to a video rental store to pick out a bunch of movies? Long before streaming services and YouTube, if you wanted a movie night, you'd head to a movie theater or a video rental store. You could rent a bunch of movies and pay for them by the day. You'd gather all your friends, watch that new movie together with a bowl of popcorn, and then return it ASAP to avoid paying too much for the privilege of renting a video. Eventually, a lot of these stores began renting video games, DVDs,…

There are always whispers of that one strict teacher in every school. It's the teacher who doesn't smile until May. Some of these teachers are the type who won't let students use the bathroom, or who punish the whole class for one kid's mistake. There are plenty of ways to be a strict teacher, and it often comes from years of frustration with students' behavior. It seems like some older teachers take this a bit too far, though. They start to barely tolerate any behavior that's outside their rul…

The best way to explain to your boss why a certain policy doesn't work? Show, don't tell! Here, we have an employer who falsely accused the folks on his team of abusing the company's sick day policy with no substantial evidence that anyone was actually doing so. It was probably the classic managerial way of trying to solve a productivity issue that likely has more to do with their own managerial style and a lack of a proper number of team members than anything else. Now, if any employee got sic…

You don't know a good thing until it's gone: a phrase that is applicable to so many areas of life. And it fits quite neatly in the sense of employers This media designer slowly found themselves, over time, burdened with more and more responsibilities that were unrelated to their own actual role, over time eventually taking on the equivalent roles of “at least” four people. Finding themselves on the hook for their own materials and equipment as if they were a contractor despite, you know, being…

Dealing with kids is one obstacle, but dealing with their parents is almost always more challenging. Teachers can attest to this, and parents themselves are likely to agree. This dynamic becomes particularly transparent during gatherings and events, and Halloween is no exception. Here, we have a neighbor who was, for better or for worse, known by everyone to be a good baker. News travels fast in the suburbs, so it did not take long for the entitled Karen Mom who just moved to the neighborhood t…

When we were kids, we were constantly told to always listen to the adults in our lives, most importantly to our parents and teachers. We were raised in the belief that adults always knew what was right and wrong, so we should take their words as guidance through life. Unfortunately, that is often not the case, and surely now we can all think of examples of times adults were very much in the wrong, and went as far as taking advantage of their seniority over the kids in their lives, leading to ve…

Every coworker has their preferred way of working, and part of collaborating in the workplace requires both parties to readjust in order to get the job done. This hotel maintenance worker wanted to be called when any little thing went wrong, even if it meant being called all the time for simpler tasks that other coworkers could rectify without him. This, of course, only made the work day more difficult and more time-consuming for the maintenance worker, but that's supposedly what he wanted. Now…

More often than not, when someone isn't pulling their weight on the team, you'll find that your team leader is remiss and unlikely to do anything about it. Preferring to let their weight be shouldered rather than attract the attention of the higher powers. See, it stands to reason that, in most organizations, no attention is the best attention; as soon as the powers that be set their sights on your team, it can be impossible to shake it off, with their increasing scrutiny and weight bearing dow…

You don't always get the chance to go absolutely crazy at your job, and this person decided to embrace it. They were told to print a frankly absurd amount of papers out, and they did it with gusto. Up next, read about this worker who discovered that their company punished them in exactly the same way whether they were 3 minutes late or 3 hours late, saying, “ No reasons for being late are accepted .”

”Never interfere with an enemy while he’s in the process of destroying himself."