Navigating a troublesome coworker in the workplace is a daunting experience. With them creating trouble at every turn and drowning you and your teammates in false reports to managers and HR, it's sometimes hard to know where to turn, constantly treading on broken glass-covered thin ice as you all wait for the coworker to either resign or get fired so that you can all return to a peaceable existence. It's wild how the presence of this one person can turn a team on its head , which kinda makes yo…

You find out a lot about someone when they attain a petty position of power, do they take up the mantle reluctantly? Or do they wield their tiny shred of power with impunity? Sometimes you might be surprised to discover how someone reacts , but more often than not the latter category is easy to spot from a mile away.

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…

I suppose it's only fair for everyone's spouse to be on the same page. That certainly was this Redditor's mentality when she Googled the contact information of the husband's coworker. The coworker had been flirting pretty aggressively with OP's husband, both during and outside of work hours. Thankfully, the husband was communicative with his wife and told her everything, which we know is not normally what happens in these situations.

In every office, there is one person who finds an excuse to be absent and to shirk their responsibilities as much as possible. As much as we often praise the folks who find ways to work smart and not hard, in this instance, someone else at the office is often left picking up all that slack. If you're the first kind of person, the key is to find a way to do the bare minimum without affecting anyone else's workload. If you're the other kind of person and you're the people please who has to take o…

Getting on with the daily grind can often be a wearisome chore, especially when you find yourself needing to do your coworker's tasks for them in addition to your own. It's not like you had enough to do as it was. Now you're busy going around picking up after them as well, and to make matters worse, you know, mentioning it to your boss won't do a thing to solve the problem and might even end up with you being labeled as not being a “team player.”

Who doesn't have nightmares about work emails? Whether it's you sending an email to the wrong person or receiving a dreaded email from your manager, we all have anxiety concerning the ubiquitous phenomenon that is emailing. Sometimes, I even get anxious about sending someone without an attachment or with an egregious typo, especially in my early working days as an intern. In fact, I can't imagine the stress this intern was under when she opened her work email one day only to discover that her a…

Thinking that you can trust someone, that they're your friend, and confiding in them only for them to turn around and stab you in the back—throwing your confidence back in your face—has got to be one of the hardest lessons to experience. You never know when a new friend or friendly coworker is actually going to turn out to be another rat racing up the ladder to the top, gnawing every rung they climb as they go to ensure that others are unable to follow. This administrator was blindsided when he…

Every member of a team brings with them their own unique traits, abilities, and experiences. No two people will be exactly the same or have the same perspective. Even on a single issue, it's surprising just how different different people's perceptions of that thing can be. In this same vein, it's important to accommodate other members of the team ; maybe they don't have the skills or even physical capabilities that you do, so it might make sense for you to pick up more of those tasks that you'r…

Meddling pedantic coworkers who consider them to be a step above the rabble, despite being in exactly the same position as this “rabble," are a one-way ticket to a hellish workplace. The problem is that managers usually leave these busybody coworkers alone and may even regard them as proficient workers because they're making the manager's life easier by doing their dirty work for them. To be fair, the managers are also probably afraid of these people, seeing as they usually memorize the technic…

There is something to be said for creating a healthy distance with your coworkers. Most folks understand this choice. The ways in which people choose to draw boundaries between their work and their social lives are personal choices. However, as much as you would think everyone would understand those choices, some folks simply don't get it. Like the coworkers who keep inviting you to events that you continually turn down…

When you work with someone for 40 hours per week, you get to know all their habits, whether you want to or not. You learn that one person likes to play music out loud, or that another person has a love of strong-smelling foods that leaves the break room smelling rank. Other people got too close with their coworkers , and suffered the consequences, like one person who's been begging their coworker to give them back the money they owe. Their coworker is posting their extravagant weekend plans all…

Your things are your own, and while it can be nice to share, you need to respect other people's stuff and not take things without asking. This is essentially the first lesson that we're ever taught in school, and yet, a frightful amount of people can't seem to get that one right. We're not saying that you should go around teaching people lessons; It's just not a good idea, you might actually be the one in the wrong, and there's far too much chance of you getting the facts wrong, but it's mighty…

A birthday cake is dividing this workplace. That's because of two coworkers who can't see eye to eye about food. People eat all sorts of diets for all sorts of reasons. For example, if you go to the doctor and your cholesterol is high, they might tell you to stop eating eggs. Or if you want to have more vegetables and less red meat, you might start eating fish in place of burgers. Everyone eats in their own unique ways, and has their own specific likes and dislikes. But for some reason, people…

Every toxic workplace has a problematic employee or two, and everyone is secretly wondering why they're still working at the company. Especially after all the nonsense they have pulled over the years. Perhaps they know the big boss at the top. Perhaps they're even related to them (nepo baby alert!). Perhaps no one at the managerial level is aware of some of the craziness these terrible coworkers have gotten away with over the years. You are smart enough to stay out of it and just observe all th…

When we think about the difficult lives of teachers, we often draw our attention to the annoying students they are forced to educate, but we rarely acknowledge that teachers may also have to deal with annoying coworkers just like everyone else. Having an insufferable coworker at your school has to be infuriating after a full schedule of teaching neurotic and whiny students all day. These teachers rarely get a moment of peace at their desks, and when they do, they generally need to do some lesso…