One of the most respected ways to lead is from the front. Of course, you may be the first one to catch an arrow or a spear to the throat—dooming everyone who was relying on your command and is now floundering, leaderless. But, if you pull it off and make it through the battle unscathed you can sure as heck bet that the troops will love you far more than they would had you been in your command tent at the back of the field. The difference here and the limitation of this anecdote is that there ar…

The way this stubborn CEO handled the fallout of this situation says quite a bit about his leadership style. This formerly in-person work environment went fully remote a few years ago and opted to stay that way, which was a big win for the 32 employees who fought for this change. That being said, there was a catch: the CEO enforced silly idle time requirements, which resulted in heavy monitoring of their productivity on Microsoft Teams. It got to the point where employees were regularly shamed…

You know your work environment is toxic if you have to describe your supervisor as a “tyrant.” This employee had one of those bosses that no one likes. Not a single person in the company is happy to see that boss when she walks in the door, probably because she had a habit of flipping out over any and everything. No one wants to have a micromanager boss , especially not one who is constantly flipping out. It's not good to have to be in a constant state of fight or flight over office work! And t…

You know that feeling everyone occasionally gets at work that you're being watched 24/7? Well, what if you suddenly discovered that this was actually the case? Sometimes when you have a micromanager for a boss, you get the feeling that someone is breathing down your neck and following your every move, as if they are just waiting to point out an error or give you a hard time about the way in which you go about fulfilling your daily responsibilities at work. This obviously does not make for a ple…

Don't accept that job until you've vetted the company well. I know it's hard not to accept the first gig that offers you a contract, but it's worth your time to spot red flags before signing on. One person mentioned another great one, which is having a lot of very young people who are running an older company. Young people are great, of course, but it signifies that the company can't retain their older workers, who probably left to find better wages . And it implies that they're hiring youngste…

Bad bosses will come up with any excuse imaginable to justify their poor management skills. This manager messaged his employees and used the rainy weather to justify delaying payment to his employees. The Redditor's coworker was smart enough to ask why he was forced to work under these weather conditions and yet he couldn't get paid on time. Employment should always be a two-way street, people, and that applies to every aspect of the professional relationship. This sounds like a grown-up versio…

Imagine waking up to an email in your inbox from your manager enforcing a mandatory “deep clean” shift on your one day off. Any sensible human would likely groan and decline the offer. And yes, no matter what this manager says and no matter how he tries to frame it, this is an offer as the employee's contract makes no mention of this “deep clean” shift. Furthermore, this manager had absolutely no plans to adjust the coming week's schedule to accommodate the weekend day or to try to carve out ti…

This company call certainly did not inspire confidence. Normally, company meetings have that annoying motivational nonsense going on, but this time, we've got a VP who decided it was a good time to tell all the 300+ employees who have not received raises that they should be working longer hours. In fact, he said that anyone who is not willing to work 50 hours should quit now. Not exactly the inspiring words people want to hear after they have been denied even basic cost of living raises. There…

It's time to discuss dress code at work. Within reason, people should have at least some sense of flexibility depending on the job. This is not the Pleistocene era. This employee simply wanted to wear shorts during his shift at a home convenience store because it was objectively “shorts weather.” His manager, however, who was seeking promotional opportunities and brownie points from the higher-ups, decided to be a stickler and to insist that the Redditor go home and return with pants. What this…

Employers should learn to be careful what they wish for more than anyone else. This old adage is something we tend to teach our kids in preschool. We've heard it over and over again on television, in nursery rhymes, and in countless mediocre school productions of Into the Woods . Yet still, it seems that our managers and bosses have forgotten what things might look like if their wishes come true and the ridiculous demands they put upon their employees are met. This thread was posted to Reddit's…

Always be careful how you treat your employees because if you treat them poorly, karma certainly will rear its head. If the number of satisfying quitting stories we have told right here at FAIL Blog serves as any indication, it's that people with bad bosses are not going to leave their jobs quietly. In many cases, it is up to them to stick it to their bosses while they have the chance. Here, we have an employee who, among other responsibilities, was tasked with receiving dozens of sales calls a…

Don't you just love it when you ask for something completely standard and are then told that you're being unprofessional? That kind of manipulative response from an employer is not only frustrating and unprofessional in and of itself, but it can also leave the employee spiraling and genuinely considering if they were in the wrong or not. It's a classic way to shirk responsibility and reflect blame right back onto the employee, and it's upsetting how common this management tactic seems to be. Th…

This boss had a whole lot of audacity asking his already underpaid top employee to take a 30% pay cut. One has to wonder if the boss himself was willing to cut his own pay too. Somehow, we doubt it. Clearly, this dude should not be running a business, starting with the fact that he spent a large sum of money on business consultants who told him nothing particularly innovative about the state of his company. Unfortunately, his top employee had to suffer the consequences of his boss's total misma…

Some people thrive on red-eye flights, while the rest of us are left trying to figure out how they do it. Personally speaking, I have never been able to get enough sleep on long flights especially red-eyes. Part of that is because for whatever reason, I am always seated next to a bathroom, a screaming child, or a sick passenger who will not stop sneezing or coughing. The fact that this boss thought it was a good idea to force his employee to take a red-eye says a whole lot about how he values t…

Scheduling appointments during the work day can be difficult to navigate depending on how flexible and understanding your boss is. Most folks understand that it isn't exactly easy to schedule a doctor's appointment after work hours or on the weekends. Sometimes, you have to take what you can get. Furthermore, most employees understand that if they do have to leave the office early for an appointment, they will make up for lost time before or after. In short, it really should not be an issue wha…

What is the value in enforcing who gets to have a cup of coffee in the office? The only potential answer to that question is for a toxic manager to be able to flex his muscles and enforce his sense of authority for literally no reason other than to do just that. This time, we have a manager who did not like how his employee offered interview candidates a cup of coffee, as they were not present in the office for “whole day events.” So, he went ahead and enforced this absolutely bogus rule.