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…

We all have people in our lives who make us wonder how they managed to get this far without having a single drop of technological knowledge or orientation. It is truly amazing (and slightly infuriating) that certain people can completely avoid adapting to necessary technological advancements, and still get so far in life. More often than not, those people end up becoming our bosses, which then leads us to be assigned the fantastic task of helping them navigate through the easiest tech stuff. Af…

Don't you sometimes wish you could say whatever you want to your boss, without thinking of the repercussions? Perhaps we could come up with a workplace ‘purge day’, in which everyone could do and say whatever they wanted at work, and then all will be forgotten the next day. Some employees don't need a day like that, as they are not afraid to put people in their place, even their bosses. Take the employee in this Reddit story for example. If I were told by my boss that I have to accept a $1 rais…

Nobody likes to admit defeat, it is an extremely difficult challenge, to acknowledge that you tried your best, but there is nothing more you can do. In a workplace environment, this challenge might be twice as hard, because not only do you lose your pride, but you might lose your job in the process. It's much like what happened to the employee in this Reddit story. OP (original poster) tried their best to stand up to their toxic management until they realized there was nothing more they could d…

Getting rejected or passed over for a promotion that you've been promised for years is always going to leave a bad taste in your mouth. You might believe the words of your employer when they tell you that your efforts will one day lead you to a higher role. And, yet, every time the opportunity presents itself to promote you, they go with someone else, and you're faced with that, no matter what their intentions might have initially been, they're dangling a carrot on a stick out in front of you t…

Nobody likes to be forgotten or left behind, whether on purpose or by total accident. When someone you know is organizing an event, and you find out you are not invited, even if it was unintentional, it is such an awkward conversation to have, that you often don't know how to approach it. What are you even supposed to say? “Hey, was I not invited because you don't want me there, or did you just completely forget I existed?” However, if something like that does happen to you, it is still better…

Imagine being a hardworking employee who truly puts in the work, only to find out that someone else in the office is claiming credit for your hard work. What would you do in this situation? Naturally, if you have proof that a coworker is taking credit for work they didn't do, the best thing to do is talk to your boss about it, and ask them to step in. However, this story might suggest that asking your boss for help might not be the right call. The employee in this Reddit story turned to her man…

We all, at some point, have to do things at work that are not part of our job description and have nothing to do with our actual role. When one is asked to do something outside of their role, they tend to agree, mostly to stay on good terms with their manager, and in hopes that doing so will benefit them in the future. It is all part of a workplace strategy in order to get ahead. So what can one do when they are not only asked to do things above their pay grade but also blamed for mistakes made…

Sometimes (most times), the only way to deal with a toxic workplace environment is by leaving it, because no amount of hard work or money can change that place. There comes a time to admit it is definitely not worth risking one's mental health over it. However, it might be tempting to stay in a toxic workplace when one is being offered a raise providing they stay, which is what happened in this Reddit story. OP (original poster) was an employee in a family business who was constantly being bull…

It's surprising how many businesses seem to be able to continue to persist despite the fact that a light gust would blow them over, being consistently and continuously mismanaged to the point where one single mishap would cause them to cease to exist. This employee worked for a horrendously mismanaged manufacturing company that was seemingly on the verge of collapse. The management team that had employed them was suddenly fired soon after they were hired, which caused them to be understandably…

Let this story serve as a friendly reminder to always remember what policies your boss can and cannot enforce. Here, we have a salaried employee at a call center whose hours are 10:00 am to 6:00 pm as they were expressly written in her contract, and yet her boss thought he could make his employees work late. This was not simply on one occasion; he was doing this regularly. In fact, he ended up trying to enforce a brand new policy that stated that employees would be reprimanded if they did not s…

Going above and beyond should earn you praise and commendation. Unfortunately, it's more likely that all it will do is increase expectations. Showing your superiors what is “possible” and setting a new baseline for yourself. When this worker went above and beyond in their contributions to their workplace, creating and sharing video content for

There's no motivation in life like receiving a hard-earned reward—our brains are literally wired this way. When it comes to work, you might hope that that reward would be increased compensation that matches your increased contribution and efforts. But, unfortunately, at a lot of organizations, showing a willingness to take on more work is only showing that you're willing to be paid less for it, leaving you with more to do in the same amount of time with little to no increased compensation. Let'…

Obsessive control over situations and circumstances does net results—and that's part of the problem. This early, immediate, and measurable success creates the validation necessary for managers—and really anyone in a position of authority—causing them to fall further and further into the pitfall that is micromanagement. Other than the fact that it ruins morale and generally makes everyone you're working with miserable, micromanagement presents some problems: namely, you'll reach a point, a limit…

Having a job generally means that you do that job and get paid for it—simple, right? Like, it doesn't really take anyone telling you that to figure it out. But what should you do if you do the job that you're being paid to do and it doesn't take you nearly as long as your employer expects it will? This happens all the time, and depending on the job—and the person—and the place, and the time, your approach to this situation might be different. The more motivated among us who couldn't simply stan…