Saying something dismissive to try and prove your superiority is bound to backfire when those you thought you had under your boot comply with the meaning—but not spirit—of your words. This is malicious compliance, and if you've spent some time here or on the popular Reddit sub that gave these stories a rise in popularity, then you know of it all too well. Heck—if you've spent some time in a toxic workplace under a tyrannical boss, you've probably watched one of these stories unfold. This Reddit…

This IT worker was tired of being insulted for no reason at all.

Some executives are all about sales, insisting that profits will increase exponentially if they sign on more and more clients. They offer the greased-up salespeople absurd bonuses for signing new clients, at whatever the cost, without bothering to make sure that those contracts are actually going to be serviceable at those rates—or profitable in the long term. And, let me tell you, you don't know pain until you've worked at the servicing end of a company that has made this mistake, impossibly t…

We might expect that experience, performance, and time in a role would lead us to an increased take-home pay… and that we might be earning more than the college graduate the company just hired—who has no experience and is still wet behind the ears. But, changes in company hiring policy resulting from fluctuations in the demands of the job market could very well mean that new hires are earning far more than you. Companies are often reluctant to increase the cost of existing labor—even in times o…

The real question here is who had it coming: the boss or the employee?

Giving someone instructions that you don't actually want them to carry out is foolish and bound to make you look like one when they follow through with your commands. It's crazy how common power-tripping bosses use this tactic, thinking their power is absolute over their subordinates. They risk everything on a single ego-fuelled order, daring their workers to call their bluff, only to be surprised when they do. This worker shared their experience working for a boss who frequently would wield th…

One has to wonder if the boss was willing to take the same pay cut!

When you're doing great at your job, taking on extra duties, and performing admirably, the last thing you expect is to be replaced as a cost-saving measure—especially by your boss's (presumably unqualified) daughter. But, this can happen when your profession is a necessity that your bosses don't understand… and there are certainly some old hats hanging around in various institutions who still don't quite “get” the point of social media marketing. It's akin to the common adage about the catch-22…

A job interview is a two-way street: you're testing the waters to see if you want to work there just as much as they're trying to feel you out and see if they want to hire you. Interviewers and candidates often forget this fact, being so used to the power imbalance offered by the employment markets of the last twenty years and the general desperation unemployed candidates experience. But it's important for both parties to act with respect and extend professional courtesies to one another; while…

Employees working in sales commissions will tell you that the environment is pretty intense, and with good reason; you often come across workers who will do anything to get ahead. Such as this employee, who noticed that a relatively new coworker of hers was about to close a massive sale, and swooped right in to grab the customer for herself. The coworker in question, OP, caught her red-handed, and immediately told her as nicely as he could, to back off. She assured him, as snakes often do, that…

Finance is probably one of the least “metal” things out there. In fact, finance workers are probably a direct antithesis of rock and roll singers.

You can always judge the strength of someone's character by their willingness to accept, acknowledge, and correct their own mistakes. Similarly, a manager blaming their worker for organizational failure above the worker's pay grade says much about their leadership. It's completely fair for a worker to expect that everything is taken care of when they have followed the instructed process. Reprimanding that worker—via poorly structured text messages—for the ensuing lack of communication between t…

You know you must be particularly bad at your job when your Daddy is best buds with the CEO and you still can’t help but get fired. That’s what happened to this Redditor’s coworker, who was hired with next to no experience yet found a way to boss literally everyone around her and take credit for their work. One day, OP wrote up a report and handed it to her, only to watch her immediately head directly into the CEO’s office and give it to him, all while acting like it was her report. Well, you c…

People are really split on this one, folks.

There's nothing worse than being uncomfortable at work; that's why you'll never catch me in a suit and tie. That and the fact that copywriting isn't really the right field for dressing to the nines. So I'll rephrase: That's one of the reasons why you'll never catch me in a suit and tie. Imagine being told that you can't do something because “the policy” or SOP only to come to find that it's not actually a written rule at all. The hilarious thing that happens here is how quickly something gets c…

People love to stick to policy just as long as it benefits them and their ends. It's surprising how quickly an unchangeable, steadfast rule will change just as soon as it no longer serves the powers that be. This is extremely common in workplaces where workers are told that something must be so because “it's policy” or “the process.” Like wearing sandals to work