Back in the day, it was practically a sin to even think about using up your PTO or daring to call in sick. And even though things are slowly changing, there's sometimes still a gap between generations when it comes to work-life balance. Some folks out there still cling to the idea that burning yourself out is some kind of badge of honor. And you know what's the absolute worst? When that kind of mindset infects your boss.

This story is about (drum roll, please) new management and the silly demands they make in order to make a statement at a workplace. They stroll in, head high, title in check, scanning employees to see who will break the easiest. Who can they push around, and who will fight back? Well, one employee was not having it with their new boss. The employee was an engineer for the company, and they had one mandatory team day at the office. OP wasn't feeling well, so they informed their boss that they wo…

Nothing sows the seeds of distrust from your manager like calling out sick for work; no matter what evidence you have of your illness or incapacity, they're always going to have some degree of doubt —even if they've seen the evidence with their own two eyes.

Big companies can get away with inhumane injustices simply because they have the sharkiest lawyers on retainer waiting to crush the opposition. Employees are only a tiny bug carcass on the windshield of massive corporations, so when the little guy attempts to stand up to them, all businesses need to do is blast the wiper fluid and brush away their problems.

It seems like managers are always skeptical about whether or not their employees are actually sick. Perhaps it's a worker's inherent guilt of leaving your team in a bind with your absence, but most likely it's because managers don't trust their staff. Truth is, most people only have a handful of PTO to use per year, so workers would rather show up ill to the office once or twice a year instead of forgoing their 2 week trip to Bermuda.

‘Know your worth’ is a phrase we usually hear when we're down in the dumps on a break up, but some of the unlucky few get this 3-word pep talk from strangers online when they get fired from a dead-end job. In this case, a loyal employee and construction manager for a large company, got fired after he got extremely ill. Because he had to call out sick for 2 months, the higher ups decided he was no longer ‘employee’ material and phoned in their pink slip.

Sometimes your actions to prevent something can bring it into existence as if you're unknowingly fulfilling a prophecy of your own making. That's what happened to this boss, who attempted to keep their workers from taking sick days by demanding they get a doctor's note only to have the doctor recommend them to take more time off than they would have in the first place. This is a common experience we've all probably had ourselves or witnessed at some point in our working life. A lot of organizat…

You haven't experienced the true face of humanity unless you've worked at one point or another in customer service, and yes, that includes retail. The fact of the matter is, you can't indoctrinate someone for minimum wage and expect them to actually give a hoot about the job. It's not a secret, customers know this, management knows this, heck the workers themselves are well aware. Now, of course, there are the outliers, the people who care about their employment, the ones who make an effort to…