Grinch-like behavior

"As for me, not only did I get a promotion a few weeks later, but my spreadsheet became a bit of an office legend."

Sometimes, the only way to prove that you're a valuable employee is by showing and not telling. After all, most folks need to see things to believe them, and this employee had spent the better part of the last five years at their company automating systems so that tasks were far easier to complete for everyone involved, including their technologically challenged coworkers. However, clearly, their value was underseen, unnoticed, and not reflected in their salary. After an office Karen decided th…

Sometimes, there is only so much poor treatment one can take. It is an unfortunate reality that in certain workplace environments, employees have to expect a certain level of vigilance from management that can, at times, border on micromanaging or even callous. However, the greatest indicator that a workplace is run by decent folks is how they treat their employees when they are going through hardship and need support. In this instance, we have an employee who was in the midst of a health scare…

Applying for jobs is always a brutal process, and most candidates need all the help they can get. That's why it's especially upsetting that this former employee who was recently let go received a savage reference from their former employer, who had made it seem like they were on good terms. Of course, if they weren't, the Redditor would never have listed their ex-boss as a reference in the first place. Let's also take this opportunity to remind ourselves how references can be useful and how the…

Some companies don't know what they got 'til it's gone.

Shoutout to all the good managers out there! It's far too common these days to hear about toxic management and the enforcement of bogus new policies that actively hurt employees while benefiting companies at large. So when we do come across a story where a decent manager defies these types of unnecessary rules and regulations in the name of protecting their more or less powerless employees, we have to be grateful for the few nice authority figures that are still out there. Here, we have a manag…

Playing pranks on your fellow employees is a dangerous game. First of all, there's the obvious: it's unprofessional behavior. That's a given, but of course, there's more nuance than that. Coworkers with so much time and energy on their hands to play pranks on others in the workplace might as well get the word “annoying” tattooed on their foreheads. Furthermore, you never know how your fellow employees will react to a prank. Perhaps they will explode in frustration and anger. Or, as was the case…

Employees should never be pressured to stay late, especially when they are not getting paid overtime to do so. Here, we have an overworked employee who became known around the office for refusing to give in to his toxic boss's requests. Even when he was pressured to stay late for unpaid work because of a last-minute assignment, the Redditor still packed his belongings and left at the end of the day. When his boss and coworkers caught wind of this pattern, they bequeathed the Redditor with the n…

New hires are almost always bound to mess something up during their first weeks on the job, but these folks made mistakes that simply could not be ignored. Of course, you cannot expect your new coworkers to get everything right on Day One. They have to adjust to a particular workplace's way of doing things, so it's only natural that they will do something incorrectly. Those kinds of mistakes can be easily forgiven because these newbies do not know any better. However, every so often, you come a…

No one enjoys getting assigned a new task at work right before the end of the day. The reality of the matter is that most tasks can wait until tomorrow at that point, and if it cannot, then that's on management for holding off on assigning said task for so long. This story serves as yet another example of how communication within a strict corporate hierarchy can lead to bad business. Here, we have an employee who was asked to complete a task at 4:50 pm that was evidently urgent. This would be f…

We all want and need an advocate in the workplace, someone to have our backs in case other coworkers or authority figures start taking us for granted. Of course, in an ideal world, that's what human resources should be, but let's be realistic for a second. Human resources is all about protecting the company at the end of the day. Sure, they might project an image of solidarity with employees but always be careful not to be fooled by this facade. Now, this manager was against their boss's reques…

Sure, confront the person fixing the problem instead of the problem itself. That makes sense!

Any employee who is only allowed to leave work early with managerial approval knows how great it is when that approval to dip out is granted. Yet somehow, there is always something or someone that gets in the way when those rare blissful moments do happen in the workplace. Here, we have an entitled Karen coworker who was 12 years older than this Redditor and who had a completely different job in the kitchen where they worked. In fact, the Redditor points out that this Karen left early from work…

"Normally, I’d do it my usual way—efficiently and with a bit of common sense."

The audacity of this assistant is insane and maybe a little iconic. Charlotte was a 50-year-old administrative assistant who reported to the CEO of a small company. The CFO was a 27-year-old, and Charlotte was clearly threatened by the age difference. When she was tasked with creating the organizational structure chart, she refused to acknowledge that the 27-year-old, who shared this Reddit thread, was senior to her. Apparently, the CEO refused to back the CFO when this hierarchical conundrum b…