toxic-workplace

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‘I genuinely feel like I’m watching a real-life Mean Girls spinoff play out in real time’: Employee notices his colleagues are constantly aggressively gossiping about everyone else, and they are also doing it to each other

I’ve read this kind of story many times from different angles, but something seems to happen around the quiet workers, or the quiet team members in general. I think it gets especially difficult in places like work because there are many employees, and managers often can’t keep track of everyone. The ones who get noticed are the ones who make themselves noticeable

Manager realizes he is losing a very valuable employee only after she leaves and asks for recommendations to identify “quiet performers” before they walk out: ‘Is it just asking better questions, or is there something structural that actually works?’

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I think this employee was very clever about how he pulled this off. Obviously, I don’t think the tactic is bulletproof, but it definitely worked for him. I also loved the figurine’s involvement and how, years later, it turned out to be a treasure for other reasons.

Man employs a very peculiar tactic involving a figurine to get both a raise and a bigger commission at work: ‘So for the next week and a half I randomly started removing things from my desk area (very whimsical) and finally that item’

I admit it: I have a complex relationship with ChatGPT, and by complex, I mean I use it to think through pretty much most of my decisions. I’m a writer, so I’m used to developing ideas through text in a couple of languages. I also write short stories, and every day I write in my diary; still, today, I asked ChatGPT for help with writing a WhatsApp message.

Employee starts prompting his boss as if she were an AI chatbot to get the responses he desires and it works: 'I try different prompts in my chat to see which wording of a question will give the affirming answer I want. I then bring up my decision to her'

Personally, if I were put in this situation, I wouldn't know what to do. What this employee did was far from perfect, but it was an honest mistake. Not everyone can plot the most perfect act of malicious compliance every time they're wronged, although I wish things worked that way.

Employee trains a very young colleague that then bosses him around: 'He had the audacity to try to yell at me and say, I will cut the files if they are correct. You need to do your job and make sure that I have the right measurements. I lost it'

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Sometimes our managers are so spaced out that they don’t notice their employees are having an awful time working at their companies. You might even resign without another job secured and block them everywhere, and they still wouldn’t notice.

29-year-old employee leaves his job as a specialist at a small planning and design firm and his ex-boss instists on him leaving a review on a popular local job review site: 'He wanted a review? Fine. Let's comply'

It's funny how we act around timid personalities. We project all kinds of dark character traits when, in reality, we don’t know anything about them precisely because they are so reserved. I’m glad this employee found out about her coworker’s real personality in the best way possible. Her finding out he wasn’t so evil after all wasn’t that shocking

Work "enemy" turns out to be the only one to have employee's back when he needed it, worked 6-8 extra unpaid hours for him and refuses to accept a gift in retribution: 'I approached him about it and he told me basically he was busy and not to bother him'

Sometimes being good at something doesn't guarantee people will notice it. You might be the best at what you do, but people are definitely more likely to see what's overtly shown to them.

Calm employee discovers his quiet competence made his good work invisible: 'People who get noticed are the ones who create urgency, send 14 Slack messages, act stressed, then get praised for solving the same issue they made everyone aware of'

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70-year-old employee is interviewed for a higher-paying position only for it to be given to an employee 40-years-younger: 'It’s not like I didn’t know the reason I wasn’t chosen'

People taking the most twisted road ever to find out about something will forever fascinate me. This sounds like a spy story from a TV series, and I really hope he finds Spanish interesting for reasons other than understanding when his coworkers speak in private, because all that effort being wasted on it is ludicrous.

Spiteful employee spent two years learning spanish to hear what his coworkers were saying about him during lunch and was confused when he found out what it was: 'I wanted to crawl under my desk and evaporate.They weren't mocking me'

It’s funny how managers sometimes become these angry beasts that nobody can satisfy. The position itself might demand that of somebody. Some handle it better than others, of course, and in my opinion, the job only brings good and bad personality traits you ALREADY HAD into the light. So if you become an irrational monster, you were already one to begin with.

Angry manager states that server is expected to always arrive 30 minutes before scheduled work time and that is not considered extra-hours: '2 families needs to be sat down and I as the main server wasn’t here ”on time“ to attend them'

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It’s funny to think that anyone around you could be living a double life without you knowing. It’s funny and somewhat paranoid. This fake remote worker is directly harming no one by keeping his lie alive; the only ones being harmed seem to be him, his dirty conscience, and his savings.

Man pretends to have a remote job for two years while he has actually been unemployed: 'I’ve somehow maintained this entire fake identity of being a “busy remote worker.” I schedule fake meetings on my calendar so i have an out for certain family events.'

Growing up is, in part, understanding that just because some rules are ridiculous, it doesn’t mean we should turn the world upside down to change them. A fight about leaving five minutes early from your job shouldn’t prompt an extensive moral debate. Maybe it’s not okay to think in should-or-shouldn’t terms, in the end, this is just my opinion.

Manager tells very efficient employee that she sould stop leaving five minutes early because "optics matter": 'I asked if there was a problem with my output and he said no. asked if i was missing anything and he said no. just said it doesn't look good'

Maybe this doesn’t happen to everyone, but it surely does happen to a lot of us. One day, you get your dream job, or your dream partner, or some very good opportunity, and sadly, things start to happen to you, and you can't perform at your best. The worst possible outcome is that you get fired or lose the opportunity; hopefully, something less bad happens, and you can learn from the experience and not let your sabotaging urges win.

Employee gets fired from his dream job because took 5 holidays in his first month and wonders if there's anything he can do to reverse it: 'It’s just a bad month. But I don’t know what to do. They are saying this will be a final decision.'

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When we pay for something, the transaction is clear: I give you money, you give me what I paid for. With gifts, something more elusive happens: For some people, receiving something as a gift creates a sense of entitlement that masks an underlying dependence on what was given to them. Some people defend themselves from that feeling of dependency by treating what was given to them as something they were owed.

University library employee reports increasing student entitlement towards loaned laptops since 2020: 'I've had more than one patron demand I get them a different laptop because the one I grabbed from the cabinet didn't look nice enough'

Back when I was in high school, I was terrified of something like this happening to me, the classical story: the boys make a bet to see who can ask the ugliest girl out, and it turns out I’m the oblivious girl thinking she has a chance with the high school heartthrob. Well, this story doesn’t involve that kind of heartbreak, but it does involve someone giving a long, controlled performance to get the information they wanted.

Employee pretends to be friendly with coworker for months only to extract important information about the workplace: 'The friendship part might have been real at first, but somewhere along the way it started feeling more like a project to him'