Imagine being such a micromanager that you feel the need to enforce what music your employees can listen to while they work. As I am sure you are all well aware, music is one of the few things that can provide momentum and levity through the difficult monotony of the workday. What's more, the employees in this scenario are construction workers. They have to do tough manual labor, oftentimes in the heat, day in and day out. If they want to listen to music on a stereo while they work, they should…

This employee has been watching too much Grey’s Anatomy . After discovering that her intern was having an office romance with a senior associate, she thought that the best way to handle the scenario and to “stay out of it” was to go around confronting both parties and starting more drama. The best part is how folks in the comments section were quick to call out the flaws in her logic about “pretty privilege,” a phrase she used when confronting her intern. People accused the associate of being j…

This one goes out to all the people-pleasers out there. If you’re someone who consistently de-prioritizes your own needs in favor of what is best for someone else, you may have found yourself in a similar work-related conundrum as this employee. She recently had her first full-time position at a startup and was quickly taking on far too many tasks and responsibilities after the person who trained her quit without much warning. It was not long before the employee started experiencing a serious c…

One would think that a manager would make careful judgment calls after a group of high-performing employees quit. This is the opportunity to do some serious self-reflection about why they felt the need to leave and what changes can be implemented so that more hard-working, well-trained folks don't leave high and dry. Unfortunately, in order to make smart judgment calls in these scenarios, these managers need to develop an ounce of self-awareness and honesty so they can realistically admit where…

It seems that transparency has been replaced by shady behavior. these days. This has especially become true when it comes to job interviews. We're accustomed to this lack of transparency in job advertisements, not that it should be the norm. You know what we're talking about: those common vague phrases like “fast-paced work environment," “competitive salary,” and many more that are either immediate red flags or questions that must be addressed during the first interview. Here, we have a Reddito…

Every business has a different hierarchical structure that is exclusive to it. The account provided in the story below comes from a former student. The original poster (OP) was a university student majoring in English. During her time as a student, she launched the department newsletter and helped with the editing and publication of the annual literary journal. She significantly improved the newsletter and the magazine, but since she was still viewed as a junior editor, she was expected to perf…

Imagine your boss having this amount of entitlement and audacity to claim that they deserve your first class upgrade. This employee , unfortunately, found themselves on the same flight as their boss after a business trip. The two were originally meant to be seated together, until the employee received a first class upgrade because, although the company booked the original ticket, the employee often flies with this airline and uses their credit card. However, that was not enough of an explanatio…

Going back on a promise is not exactly how one maintains loyalty at a company. This employer made his own bed when he offered a new hire more money than the loyal employee who was promised a raise and promotion for the longest time. Perhaps this toxic boss was under the impression that no one was going to find out. Well, considering the fact that this employee splits responsibilities with their manager and is the only person with access to the same exact company information, the idea that he wo…

Sometimes, employees who have been so profoundly mistreated have no other choice but to quit in spectacular fashion. Of course, the ideal situation would be to leave on amicable terms. A clean and friendly exit can benefit the reputation of both the company and the former employee moving forward. However, one has to be treated with dignity and respect in order to return that favor to one's employers. If that social contract has been ignored, then workers should feel no obligation to their bosse…

No one needs that much paperwork! This admin worker relayed a story from earlier in their career when a snarky Karen coworker started to complain about “missing documents.” She would ultimately come to regret that she ever made a complaint in the first place. Essentially, it was the Redditor's job to follow a document distribution matrix model to ensure that all departments within their oil terminal company received the necessary paperwork regarding Bills of Lading. Now, the Redditor had been w…

Providing customer service is never an easy task for a number of reasons. The hardest part is the fact that you cannot predict who you'll run into or what type of attitude they're going to have. The story below is an account of a frustrated employee. The original poster (OP), who is employed in retail, was hit with threats over a $1.63 charge. But rather than standing with OP and protecting the worker from the enraged client, management decided to stick by the client and reprimand OP for suppos…

Sometimes, no excuse is better than a lame excuse. Everyone deserves the right to take a break with no questions asked. Unfortunately for the workers of the world, that can be very hard to do when you have a demanding and nosey manager. These employees made the mistake of trying to fabricate valid reasons and coming up short. It's definitely better to say nothing at all if the only “reason” you can come up with is the grown-up version of your dog eating your homework. Luckily, those ridiculous…

Have you ever had a coworker who seemingly will stop at nothing to get you fired? Before we get into this story of how an employee managed to save themselves from getting unfairly dismissed by instead getting their work nemesis fired first, let's unpack how these kinds of work rivalries happen. Most of the time, like most elements of a work environment, it all comes from the top down. If the system is built upon a foundation of unhealthy competition, that will almost never fare well for employe…

In this day and age, we don't expect toxic workplace environments to get away with wildly outdated behavior anymore, and yet as much as we'd like to think that progress has been made, unkind and unfair treatment still does happen all the time. Here, we have a young female employee who was on the brink of getting married when the VP of her company organized a disciplinary meeting threatening to fire her if she didn't pull it together at work. Of course, there was no concrete evidence that she wa…

Some bosses care more about enforcing ridiculous policies than assessing whether or not said policies are efficient. How many times have you found yourself in a work situation when the easy solution is staring right in front of you but you can't say anything because of your temperamental and particular boss? This truck driver had to deal with a silly new rule about scanning tons of extra paperwork to corporate when all he really needed to do was scan a few signed pages. Of course, despite voici…

Employees who regularly work expected overtime as part of the job come to rely on that money to earn their living. Time is money and money is time, right? So what happens when employers can't seem to afford that overtime payment but somehow maintain the expectations that employees should be completing that extra work? Well, if the employees are empowered enough, then they should let their bosses know the simple and fair truth: if employees must say goodbye to that money, then their employees mu…