There are strict bosses and then there are bosses who make outlandish demands that simply shouldn't be allowed. I've had my fair share of difficult managers over the years. You know, the kinds that call you on a Saturday night about something that really is not urgent whatsoever. When this kind of situation occurs, it is usually a test to see if you will, in fact, answer, and if you do, this communicates all the wrong things to your boss. It gives them the sense that they have full control over…

Imagine getting away with this kind of corporate sorcery! We know that most companies that have since gone through the whole “return to office” process are pretty strict about in-person policies. Often what happens in a corporate environment is a gradual return to in-person work. It might start at a couple of days a week, but it also may gradually increase to a set period of mandatory days in a largely vacant office environment. Remember: it's all about the “culture.” Just kidding, it's all abo…

It's not the best idea in the workplace to claim responsibility when you don't know the first thing about what you're doing. I'm all for the concept of “fake it till you make it," but within reason, and in this case, this administrative assistant was very much not within reason. One of the first jobs I ever had involved teaching subject matter to high school students and preparing them for college-level material. I primarily worked on reading comprehension, grammar, and SAT/ACT-level math. Howe…

They say you're supposed to work hard for the money, but there is a special satisfaction that comes with not working hard for as much money as possible. Now, personally speaking, I am not slick enough to pull off something like this. I have too much “rule follower” energy in me to be able to create a plan that pays me as much as possible for doing as little work as possible. Blame it on how I behaved as a student in school or blame it on millennial anxiety! Regardless, I just don't have the aud…

Never forget that when it comes to your working agreement, you have to get everything in writing. I'm not one to be cynical about everyone that I work for, but I will always at the very least protect myself, and yes, I have learned this the hard way. This is especially true for jobs where the workload is inconsistent, such as a freelance position. If you want to be promised some semblance of stability with the workflow, you have to lay all your cards on the table from the get-go. It's not that…

You always have to know what you're buying! After all, it's only fair, and sometimes (most of the time), what is advertised is not what you're actually purchasing. These former employees of various industries shared their secrets based on their experiences, which they offered to the wild world of the Internet via this r/AskReddit thread. Some of the fields represented include the food, restaurant, tech, insurance, and music industries.

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…

There are so many red flags to look out for in corporate culture these days, but having to produce a sick note in order to work from home for more than two days has to be at the top of the list. In this case, we have a sick employee who had to go to the hospital numerous times for a rare cold/flu that was not easy for the doctors to diagnose. Obviously, we know what you're thinking. This illness sounds like your worst nightmare or the beginning of a horror movie. Instead, the horror story reall…

We're nowhere near the Holidays, and yet we already have employers being awful about time off on Christmas. Here, we have a single parent who works as a dietary aide at a medical facility. We trust her when she says this is not exactly an environment she is comfortable bringing her kid to work in on any day, especially Christmas. When she recently learned that the daycare where she sends her kid would be closed on Christmas, and she realized she had no other alternative but to request time off,…

This employee may have had enough with his company, but in the end, his toxic boss had no one to blame but himself. After all, it was the boss that went on a ridiculous rant in the first place. He gave an intern a hard time for asking to leave early because she was going to have to put down her cat at the vet's office. The boss had absolutely no remorse for her situation and decided to yell at her because he thought he could get away with it. This Redditor saw the encounter in plain sight and s…

Applying for jobs is never a fun time, but there are a few rules people don't really talk about that will make the application process slightly more bearable. For instance, if you're one of those people constantly clicking “Easy Apply” on LinkedIn or Indeed, you're not making anything easier for yourself. The first job search hack on this list provides a far more direct solution: apply directly on the company website. You would think this is self-explanatory, but so many of t

There are countless ways to disrespect a prospective job candidate. Not that this is behavior that we are trying to condone here at FAIL Blog, but we have seen the full range of what HR representatives, recruiters, and hiring managers are capable of during the job screening and interview processes. First, there are all the fake euphemisms like “matching the face to the resume,” a phrase that was used by this hiring manager and countless others. Really, this “phase” of the process is ethically q…

All employers should know by now not to mess with the company sick day policy. Here, we have a horrible boss who decided that every employee who called in sick needed to physically show up to the office first to hand in a note from their physician. A phone call wouldn't even suffice. Clearly, this boss didn't have any trust in his employees and also didn't fully comprehend the risk of having infected folks show up and potentially getting more employees sick. Essentially, this dude was either as…

There are definitely better ways of justifying your employee's lack of a fair raise. This boss decided that the best way to justify the decision was to say that essentially everyone is underpaid at the company. In other words, she was saying that the entire company cheats its employees. Not only is that a completely irresponsible thing to say both for the employee's sake and for the company's, but also it gives the impression that there is absolutely no hope for the employee in his pursuit of a…

There is something to be said for listening to your employees, even when they are on their way out. Perhaps they actually have the company's best interest at heart. Unfortunately, some employers are too proud or too self-absorbed to get over the fact that someone under them might actually have a better suggestion for you and for the team you run. This thread was posted to Reddit's r/pettyrevenge by u/flib_bib , who worked in management at an international school and spent much of his employment…

Not only did this boss have absolutely no right to question his employee's decision to call in sick, but also he made things even worse by trying to make a joke out of it. If you've ever been someone's manager, you would know that while having a sense of humor can lighten the tension, having a bad sense of humor can produce the complete opposite effect. This thread was posted to Reddit by u/ShiftyPom , who worked for a small family-run business and had recently been working overtime for several…