Imagine your boss getting your entire team together and then casually asking all of you to take a massive pay cut. It's possible that you've been in a similar situation, where you have been encouraged to “take one for the team,” so to speak. But here's the truth: taking a pay cut is far from taking one for the team. It's taking one for the boss, who likely has not been asked to do the same. In this specific instance, how could you be taking one for the team if the entire team is getting hurt by…

It's easy to feel like your boss is always watching over you like a hawk, and nine times out of ten, they have more important things to be doing than monitoring your every move. However, every so often, you may find yourself in a sticky situation where your greatest suspicions have been confirmed, and you are stuck in one of those toxic work environments that everyone writes about on the internet these days. When this happens, the key is to immediately start thinking about ways to protect yours…

Socializing with one's coworkers is important, but why does it have to take up so much of one's personal time? Sure, these events are typically not in the office. They might be at a bar, a restaurant, or the boss's home, which is ten times nicer than anything you could ever afford. The reality of the matter is that regardless of location, you're still networking with your coworkers. You're still on the job. It doesn't matter if food and drink are on the company because your time is actively bei…

Every office has an infuriating coworker, and they can really be the difference between a perfectly average day at work and the worst day of your life. This week, we have a variety of difficult team members that range from the entitled to the chaotic. The entitled ones tend to boss you around even when they are just slightly senior according to the company hierarchy. The chaotic ones, however, can be even worse, as these stories will show. Sometimes, you actually befriend your chaotic coworker,…

Here's a rule of thumb: try not to unjustly fire someone with the specialized skills you so desperately need. That's what this manager learned the hard way. She hired a video content creator to be a one-man team for all of the social videos for an entire university. Despite numerous attempts to convey to his manager that the KPIs she and the director had set were unfair, this employee was not listened to in the slightest. In fact, his manager was convinced she could get someone better to finish…

No one enjoys feeling watched at work. Sure, your manager is meant to monitor your progress and your ability to complete tasks and responsibilities on time. That being said, installing spyware to track things like idle time on one's work laptop for even the shortest of breaks is a bit excessive, to say the least. This employee was in the middle of a Teams meeting when he was prompted by a pop-up on his work laptop to answer why he stepped away from his computer. His managers claimed they had no…

Let this story serve as a friendly reminder that giving two weeks is a courtesy, not a requirement. If you do end up quitting without giving two weeks, that does not mean you are relinquishing any other prior rights as an employee. To translate to this specific scenario, your boss cannot dock your final pay because of your choice to quit on the spot. In this instance, we have a fast food employee who used to work at a very well-known establishment famous for its donuts (if you catch our drift).…

Duplicitous managers may praise you one moment and then come up with every excuse under the sun to not give you a raise the next. We've all had managers like this. You know, the ones who don't seem to understand that giving someone a raise means that they have been performing their primary responsibilities well. It does not mean going above and beyond and doing extra, unpaid labor. That wouldn't necessarily be a raise, then. It would be overdue compensation for responsibilities that are already…

Spending up to or more than 40 hours a week in the same workplace environment is bound to lead to the occasional embarrassing moment. Whether it's tripping and falling, spilling coffee everywhere, having a bad bathroom moment, or even a Freudian slip, embarrassing moments are here to stay in life so we might as well embrace their presence in the office. These moments scar us for life even when they are forgettable to pretty much everyone else. For instance, I remember getting up from my desk to…

Every new boss likes to demonstrate their particular way of doing things to their team, but blindly enforcing those rules can lead to unexpected consequences. If you're new to any company, whether you're in a position of power or if you're in an entry-level position, you have to take time to learn and adjust the current system before making suggestions that would radically change things for everyone else. Sure, new voices can be instrumental for productive change, but it's pretty self-involved…

Let's talk about unnecessary dress codes. Sure, there are certain jobs where the clothing you wear is important. Healthcare workers and firefighters are a couple of professions that come to mind. Uniforms can signify that the person who is about to perform a job is the right person to be doing it. However, in most workplace environments, uniforms are less necessary and more performative. For instance, do all finance bros need to wear a jacket and tie for their jobs? Absolutely not. It should al…

Getting frustrated at a coworker's promotion is not unusual in the workplace. We're only human, and if we feel ever so slightly envious, that's understandable. However, allowing those jealous feelings to take over and cause a major interruption to everyone else's workflow is nothing more than an act of supreme selfishness, even if you were qualified for said promotion. This Karen took it too far when she didn't like the fact that her coworker, who managed the volunteer department at a small mun…

Candidates make egregious mistakes during job interviews all the time and face the consequences, but what about the unprofessional recruiters and hiring managers who deserve to be called out? Let's all remember the fact that an interview is a two-way street. Not only are you trying to present yourself as the right fit for a given role, but they should be presenting themselves as the right for you as a potential employer. So often the latter part of this dynamic gets lost as a result of social h…

It's a common misconception that cutting overtime hours can be a structurally sound decision for a company. This boss told a call center manager that management was no longer allowed to work overtime. Now despite this new bogus policy, he didn't say anything about the employees that report to management. At the end of every day, this manager tends to check up on his team to help them wrap up their calls and get them out of work on time. This often results in him having to stay after for a littl…

It's crucial to draw boundaries between life and work, no matter how hard your employer tries to overstep said boundaries. This employee made a simple request for a company phone to use for weekend calls, since it was starting to become quite common that he needed to take work calls outside of normal work hours. His boss denied the severity of the situation and refused to give him the phone. Well, since answering these work calls during unpaid hours was really an act of generosity, the employee…

Everyone has their pet peeve when it comes to the behavior of your coworkers. Some common attributes of coworkers are, of course, endearing. There's the one who is always too cold and has a sweater on even if it's 80 degrees out. There's the one who has a funny yawn that's easy to imitate. And there's the owner of the cute office dog everyone loves. Then, there's the repeated behavior that can drive you mad. For instance, there are the people who think they appear more professional than they ar…