Let this serve as our weekly reminder that bosses should be careful with their choice of words. Here, we have an employer who got increasingly frustrated with a piano technician for being under five minutes late on more than one occasion. Under five minutes should be considered negligible, but if an employer really feels that a conversation is necessary, there is a much better way of having it than what this dude ended up doing. He used vaguely threatening phrasing that almost begged to be chal…

Getting all your work done early should be rewarded, not chastised. However, in the professional working world, there's a reason why people always say one should never get too good at one's job. Otherwise, you will start getting more responsibilities and often without further compensation unless you fight for it. It turns out that efficiency and productivity are only encouraged to a certain degree. This employee learned that the hard way when they were fired on the spot for reportedly “standing…

No matter how kind your employer is… do not mistake them for your close friend. Perhaps you’ve created a rapport together over the years. Perhaps you two have hung out outside of work and shared details about your personal lives with one another. Still, there is a hierarchy in place, and when push comes to shove, your boss will enforce that sense of hierarchy when it suits them. When this Redditor shared with his boss that he would be resigning, he prepared both an official letter of resignatio…

The amount of work required of job applicants these days is starting to get out of hand. First, there’s the expectation that your resume needs to be adjusted and tailored specifically to the job for which you are applying. Why do applicants need to do this? No, it’s not to stand out and to prove that you’re the right person for the job. It’s to include specific phrases from the online job description in your personal resume in order to pass automatic job screenings. Of course, this requires mor…

Everyone get ready to wave your red flags because this hiring manager's application questions are pretty eyebrow-raising. If there is one thing this recruiter managed to do correctly, it's that he was at the very least transparent about how messed up the payment plan for this position was. However, that's as positive as one can be towards this guy after the ridiculous question he posed on this job application for a financial advisor position. Sometimes, when you're applying for jobs, certain de…

Who else loves when someone tries to punish you for their lack of a strong work ethic? This executive assistant did their fair share of work on a project before their planned vacation. In fact, they did not even have to pull all the files they did since it was not even their assignment, but they helped a few coworkers out of common courtesy. Still, just a day before their vacation was finally about to start, their coworker tried to convince them to cancel their day off because she found herself…

Every employee is entitled to use their set number of sick days for whatever reason they see fit, even if that reason is to audition for a very popular reality TV show. Sure, this is not exactly a morally justifiable excuse for calling in sick, but it is an iconic excuse. This employee recounted how their coworker not only called in sick to audition for The Bachelor but also how she didn't exactly cover it up very well. Their president's one big rule at the company was never to embarrass the or…

Don't you just love it when the new manager makes things exponentially worse for everyone else? It's a common mistake that these horrible bosses tend to make. They come in and immediately feel like they know a better solution to the current system. Without properly hearing out all the employees' voices, they decide it would be more impressive to flex their muscles and insist that their solution is the proper one. Well, time and time again when this happens, the new manager stumbles. Either the…

Calling your employees by their preferred name seems like the bare minimum regarding proper workplace treatment. It doesn't really get more disrespectful than ignoring someone's constant corrections. This Redditor's name ends with an -a but is constantly referred to by a similar-sounding name that ends with an -e. If this were perhaps their first few weeks on the job, then the mistakes would be understandable. But there's really no excuse for the mixups at this point, especially when the Origin…

Imagine not being allowed to grab water or coffee during your work break because for some inexplicable reason, it “confuses” people. This salaried employee was told by his Karen boss that hourly workers began to notice his trips to the break room and were asking questions about the frequency with which he must be clocking in and out. Rather than the boss informing these folks that he's a salaried employee and doesn't have to clock in and out to grab a coffee in the break room, she asked this Re…

Some people dread the idea of an exit interview, but this employee has been waiting for this moment for months. Ever since she realized she was stuck in a toxic work environment, she started to keep a running list of all the problematic moments so she had her receipts. This not only made the day-to-day slightly more bearable, but the list would also protect her from any trouble since she had literally all the dirt on her boss. This thread was posted to Reddit by kerripotter , and it sparked a t…

No employee can be “on” all the time. Everyone needs a break during the work day to recharge, zone out, and center

Whatever happened to “if it ain't broke, don't fix it?” If you're ever in a position where you are joining a company and leading a team that already is.a well-run machine, consider not enforcing your personal way of doing things onto everyone else. Unless the team genuinely agrees with your ideas to change the process, the only person who is really benefitting from this change is you. That is not a good enough reason to uphold the way a team does things. You have to adjust to their rhythm just…

Some bosses think that they have certain rights and privileges that they simply do not possess. This employee was entitled to their PTO time, they submitted their request months in advance, and their request was approved. Everything was good to go, flights were booked, and a much-needed vacation was planned. That is, until the boss decided last minute that he could reject those plans and go back on his word, all so another coworker could take off that same week. We understand losing two employe…

This workplace debacle pretty much epitomizes the idea that HR protects the employer, not the employees. When the evidence of wrongdoing is so definitive, it's hard to imagine the human resources department coming up with a justified reason to side with the boss. However, this team managed to side with her anyway. Here, we have an employee who caught her boss stealing her bag after work hours. Furthermore, the security cameras even captured the boss leaving the office with the employee's bag an…

It's easy to make enemies with startup bros. They're not exactly the most likable bunch of individuals. This so-called “CEO” spent way more energy stirring the pot with competitors than running an actual company, and it wound up biting him on the behind in the end. First, he lost a tech competition to an academic researcher and started sending a ton of mean-spirited messages. He even crashed the researcher's Zoom lecture to spam the comments. This was the final straw for the researcher, who dec…