The end of the year in the corporate world is full of holiday cheer (whether it's forced or not) and mild panic. Half the team is out using up their PTO before the New Year, while the rest of us are trying to make up for their absence while pretending to care about the work holiday party. Between the buzz of what Secret Santa gift you're getting this year, questionable holiday-themed potluck contributions, and wearing your coat inside the office while you struggle to defrost from the outside...

When you’re applying for jobs, you’re probably checking out every online review you can find to dodge any potential red flags. After all, who wants to go through multiple interviews only to discover that the company’s run by an entitled boss who thinks coworkers should act like “family”? Hard pass. Sites that let employees rate companies are a goldmine for honest feedback—sometimes with details that make you grateful for the warning. Well, after one employee spent six grueling months working un…

Getting to reply to your most irritating customer would be a dream come true for many food service workers. Normally if a customer complains about the service, the worker has to fetch their manager and let them handle it, or they have to meet the complaints with a smile and just let the insults roll off their shoulders. However, complaining in an online review leaves some room for creativity, as this server, u/human_ken_doll, found out. This waiter shared a lengthy “review” from a diner who was…

As much as people love to talk about how great Airbnb is, there is also a lot wrong with that concept, starting with the people who become hosts. Everywhere you go, you'll hear at least one horror story of an Airbnb host who overcharged, gave terrible reviews, or even put up a hidden camera in the bathroom (if you know you know). This is why many people prefer to go back to ‘the old-fashioned way' and simply book a hotel. While this story is not as bad as a hidden camera tale, it is a perfect e…

Every so often, one feels the urge to write a review of a local restaurant online… If you're a good customer and a decent human being, you likely feel this urge when you want to shine a light on great food, great service, and all-around great vibes. Those kinds of reviews can boost the online profile of a small place and can really help draw in customers. Now, if you're an entitled Karen customer, you may feel the urge to write an online review because you just have to air your grievances to th…

How hard is it to maintain a business that actually operates according to the law, and does not try to scam their customers? Is scamming customers even worth it? You would think it would have been much better to secure a deal that works for both parties than to lose customer after customer once they realized they were being scammed. Take the car dealership from this Reddit story as an example. After a customer (OP, original poster), inquired them about a car deal, he quickly realized the deal h…

Being able to leave an honest review on anything is one of the most beneficial tools of the internet. Building a community that wants to share their experiences for the sake of other people is an advantage that we should appreciate much more than we do. Take your workplace for example. In many companies, there are hundreds of employees who go through their work day in the offices and have a working relationship with coworkers and management. When an employee leaves, they should have the opportu…

Not every person makes a great tourist. In fact, traveling is very much not for everyone. What's the point in going to the Grand Canyon if you don't have a genuine interest in seeing it? Otherwise, you're just ruining the experience for everyone who actually wants to be there. Now, while the experience of traveling with a curmudgeon of a tourist can be excruciating, reading these one-star reviews from these kinds of tourists has proven to be a weirdly cathartic experience. If you need further c…

Do you prefer an Airbnb or a hotel?

Sometimes, writing a measured review is the only way to frustrate the people who did you wrong. It's funny how we often associate these kinds of critical reviews with entitled Karen on the internet when it has to do with customer service encounters. However, when it comes to reviews of companies, we tend to immediately side with the people writing the review. What does this say about our culture and inherent biases? Well, it has a lot to do with authority complexes and power dynamics, as do mos…

We prepare, we carry out, and we want the finest result. But what would you do if an associate decided they didn't feel like dealing with you after months of preparation for one of the most important events of your life? The story below is an account of a frustrated individual. The original poster (OP) thought of a way to contribute to his brother's wedding, making it special and unforgettable. To ensure the bride and groom arrived at the venue with style and swagger, he had planned to charter…

“It's just trees,” lamented one unhappy 1-star reviewer who was writing about… a national forest. Don't you hate when you visit the outdoors, and the outdoors are there? Crazy how that works. These people decided to visit our nation's many great national parks, and they then proceeded to leave very funny, and very unhinged 1-star reviews about them. The funniest to me are the ones where people get the location entirely wrong. For example, one reviewer was frustrated because their “Milkshake was…

"This dealership had an average rating of around 4.5 stars and 400 total reviews. Their current rating? 1.9 stars with nearly 3.5k total reviews."

Writing a bad review for a restaurant won't help much unless you just want to vent. If you want the whole world to know that you had a bad experience, you're certainly entitled to do that. In a world where many establishments specifically ask customers to review their business, it's never been easier to lodge a complaint. However, as u/Fatastic_Captain highlighted in their post to an anti-Karen subreddit, a lot of shoppers are foiled by their own mistakes. For example, one person left a one-sta…

A lot of diners only leave reviews for restaurants when things go wrong. Unless you're an avid foodie who documents their day-to-day eating via review writing, you probably only leave reviews when a place has wronged you. Maybe you leave one star for the Italian restaurant that served you microwaved noodles, or leave a warning for the next person to order from the coffee shop that gave you spoiled milk in your beverage. There are lots of times people have exceptional meals, but don't think to l…

It takes a certain kind of person to be a difficult customer at a restaurant; it takes another kind of person to go out of their way to write a completely off-base one-star review. These three reviews may all be referring to different kinds of restaurants: a taco place, a dog-friendly café, and a fancy restaurant. However, they also have a few characteristics in common: 1) they are poorly written, with grammatical errors all over the place; 2) it is clear from the get-go that the writers of the…