Every employee needs to draw their boundaries with coworkers. Sometimes, you get along with folks well enough that you're more than fine hanging out outside the office. However, other employees prefer a strict separation between work and life, and regardless of how other people think or feel about it, that decision needs to be respected. Here , we have an employee who had to draw their own boundaries within the work day itself. After a year of spending lunch with coworkers in the break room, he…

Let this story serve as a friendly reminder to always remember what policies your boss can and cannot enforce. Here, we have a salaried employee at a call center whose hours are 10:00 am to 6:00 pm as they were expressly written in her contract, and yet her boss thought he could make his employees work late. This was not simply on one occasion; he was doing this regularly. In fact, he ended up trying to enforce a brand new policy that stated that employees would be reprimanded if they did not s…

Sometimes, employers do not do themselves any favors. If they want their employees to work hard and to continue to apply themselves with the hopes of a raise or a promotion, it's probably not a great idea to let them know that this is a fallacy and that pay increases at the company have absolutely nothing to do with quality, performance, and merit. On the other hand, perhaps this was the best piece of knowledge for this employee to gain in order to jumpstart the process of looking elsewhere for…

Stealing someone's lunch at work is one of the most obvious signs that some people really do never grow out of middle school behavior. Thankfully, this employee, who also happened to be a former chef, knew how to get even with the problematic coworker in his place of work. First of all, the former chef was, unfortunately, an easy target for the lunch thief, considering how elaborate and over-the-top their lunches tended to be. However, despite valid suspicions, the employee still had no officia…

Your potential partner's line of work is essential to your compatibility, regardless of whether or not people like to admit it. Sure, in theory, any two people should be able to make their relationship work if they get along. But let's be real here: if your partner works a job where you end up seeing far too little of them, love may not, in fact, conquer all. These Redditors shared the various forms of employment they feel are red flags for them, and as many folks in the comments section sugges…

Sometimes, bosses just decide out of nowhere that they don't like an employee. It's not based on work ethic. It's not based on morale or personality. They simply have chosen to have an enemy in the workplace to make matters more interesting and cutthroat for them. If you're unlucky, you may end up becoming that employee for your boss. When this happens, as it did to this Redditor , you have to keep reminding yourself that it's not you. Furthermore, if this treatment starts to get in the way of…

Some jobs seem like great opportunities in theory, but in practice, things can go awry pretty quickly. Here , we have a social media strategist who was hired by a boutique dentist's office and was tasked with making video content for his new boss. However, after requesting a W2 on day one, his new employer kept delaying drawing up any paperwork. It became crystal clear to the new hire that this was not going to work out, as he was putting in over 40 hours a week and still had not had the opport…

Look, if a work event is mandatory, then employers need to be transparent about it. Time is valuable for everyone, and saying that employees are “strongly encouraged” to participate in an extracurricular activity does not exactly mean that it's required. The only way in which employers could possibly think those concepts mean the same thing is if they have a backward sense of authority and control over their subordinates. Here , we have an employee who received an email about a training course…

Karma always finds those who deserve it.

"So they're paying your rent to act as a workplace?"

This employee was meant to feel like she made a mistake for considering the possibility of working somewhere else. That's how you know she's stuck in a messed-up work environment. It's probably for the best if she does, in fact, leave. However, she certainly should not give into the pressure to hand in a resignation letter. If her boss wants to fire her, then they need to fire her. The employee should not help make the process easier for her boss. Why did the boss pressure the employee to resig…

Sometimes the red flags do not become obvious from the get-go, but once they're waving, they become impossible to ignore. Here, we have a guy who landed a tutoring gig that was seemingly too good to be true. The hours perfectly complemented his second job, the rate was good, and he was promised to be placed in a school district with a decent commute to his other workplace. Well, it turns out that it really was all too good to be true, as the Redditor ended up getting fewer hours than what was p…

Micromanagers who want to see and approve every little thing are likely to regret that choice sooner rather than later. Here , we have a boss who disapproves of industry standards and ended up having to deal with the consequences of pressuring employees to comply with her outdated wishes. First, these industry standards were mandatory training programs that employees had to take every three years. It didn't matter if she felt they were pointless. She had to approve of them, but somehow, her wor…

It's always shocking how many bosses think they can get away with shady behavior in this day and age. Employees are more empowered than ever, and when they feel like they're getting manipulated, it's not exactly hard to document and collect evidence in the digital age. Here, we have a boss who clearly hired all of his workers as 1099 contractors rather than full-time salaried employees in order to circumnavigate taxation. Despite their freelance status, these workers were putting in over 80 hou…

"You don't interrupt your enemy when they're making a mistake."

Whatever happened to boundaries? In this day and age, it's so easy to respond to an email or message from your boss outside of work hours. Sometimes, there is an emergency and you have to engage. Hopefully, you're getting paid for those all-hands-on-deck moments. However, if your boss is the kind of person who needs to know where you are at all times, that's a different story. Here, we have an employee who is always timely and almost never late, yet their boss seems to be paranoid about their t…