Have you ever entered a workplace, friend group, or any social group and been warned to watch out for one particular member? It's an unfortunate aspect of our social nature; we always need a group or individual to be “othered” to feel like we're “in." While it's important to keep an eye out for red flags and not make yourself too vulnerable to possible exploitative behavior from these people (if what people say is true), it's just as important to form your own opinions. You might find that this…

Leave is as much a part of working as the work itself. It's important to have the opportunity to step away from your daily demands once in a while and take an extended time to relax or spend time with your friends and family. Workers who don't have this chance are more likely to face burnout and a general lack of motivation; workers who do will generally be more motivated and more productive, thanks to an improved work-life balance.

This boss must have attended the "Michael Scott School of Business Management" because this is a joke taken right out of his playbook and, just like Michael Scott, he let this joke go on for way too long. This employee wasn't having any of it and decided to file grievances against the boss. This thread was posted to Reddit's r/antiwork subreddit on the evening of April Fool's Day. The poster u/--Savathun-- told the story of the cruel prank that their boss pulled by telling them, in a way that s…

Everyone watch out!.. The fun police are on patrol. We all expect to have to maintain some degree of professionally at work, but we're all still human beings, and part of being human is wanting to—you know… enjoy things. We're already trading a significant portion of our existence for the means to eat and keep a roof over our heads, so is that really too much to ask?

Some people think that their continued manipulative or abusive behavior will go unchecked. Often, they've been getting away with it for so long that why would they have any expectation otherwise? Well, whether it's finally writing an attitude check that's too big to cash or simply pure karmic justice… it catches up with you eventually. This horrible manager finally got her just deserts for her continued harassment and micromanaging of a team member. The team member had joined the company in a l…

With more experience comes more opportunities and better pay… Unless you're a contractor, who was ghosted by a client at the start of the pandemic that has suddenly rematerialized and requested your services once again. You might expect that you'd be receiving at least the rate that you were on previously—although it might be foolish to make this assumption without getting it in writing—and return to working at that rate. That's what happened when this healthcare contractor, u/Kind-Designer-576…

Being a delivery driver isn't an easy job. Sure, you might get to cruise around in your car while listening to your favorite tunes, but that's where the fun stops. The other (significant) part of the job involves going onto a stranger's property. A stranger who was, for some reason, incapable of making or retrieving their own food—with this reason usually being varying levels of intoxication or antisocial nature. This exchange usually occurs at night, in the dark, leading to already heightened…

If an employer wants to charge you money for anything to do with starting your new role… it's a scam, not a job interview. You would do your best to get up and run—fast, and as far away as possible—metaphorically… but maybe also literally.

When you are working in a toxic place, nothing is ever easy—that especially includes quitting. You either quit burning all the bridges behind you or you grit your teeth and try to leave in a way that keeps your professional status, even though your toxic managers and coworkers are making it super difficult. One IT employee needed to quit their toxic job, so they did just that. However, their last two week there were worst than heII. This was a long saga (see Part 1 and Part two ) about quitting…

Working at a restaurant as a server on a busy night makes you rethink your life choices. Not only do you run about 15 miles back-and-fourth over the curse of the night, endlessly going from the hostess stand to the kitchen, but you're almost always treated poorly by the customers, the kitchen is raging with stress, and nobody is happy. To put it lightly, it's a war zone. One depraved server experienced the worst of the worst one evening when his restaurant was not only slammed with giant groups…

Chasing a singular metric with reckless abandon will never be good for your business and, depending on which singular metric you choose to chase, can have a range of disastrous results. Let's go with an example: Imagine you work for a company that services multiple clients on an ongoing contract basis. The price of each contract is determined based on the time it will take a technician to attend the site and carry out routine checks on scheduled maintenance—with this being estimated based on th…

Workplaces seem to have this idea that younger workers will be just fine being underpaid for their work. They're young! They have no mortgage and have “relatively little” expenses compared to us mature adults! But when you're living in a city where the rent and cost of living are well outside of the wage that you're earning, trying to make a start on the career you've waited so long to begin, it feels like anything, but like you have the "no expenses" your older coworkers are expecting—especial…

If you have to claim that you are or aren't something, it's incredibly likely that you aren't or are that thing. It's like having that one friend who tells you that they hate drama, yet whenever drama happens, they're right there in the thick of it. So, when your boss tells you that they aren't demanding while they're in the middle of being demanding, it's likely their ego is just deflecting. This discussion came to the forefront when an employee received a text from their boss asking them to c…

Expecting your workers to attend hour-long meetings on their day off without receiving any compensation, let alone acknowledgment, is effectively a theft of wages. So to turn around and accuse those same workers of theft for claiming that time is quite outrageous.

Many business owners underestimate their worker's contribution to the company's success, instead thinking of themselves as deserving all the credit. After all, it's their company, so they clearly have all the answers—right?.. Wrong. You're not always going to be able to come up with all the right answers yourself, even if it's your business. A leader's strength may simply be that they're skilled at building a strong team and recognizing when an individual has a particular strength or skill that…

It's incredibly frustrating when someone in your workplace gets away with downright obscene behavior, and no one is doing a thing about it. You might think that that's what the HR department is for, but in a lot of organizations, they're content to sit on their hands and let the worst offenders get away with anything but murder—just as long as they don't have to deal with any conflict or rocking boats. As a manager, this can present an incredibly difficult problem; you can be as accommodating a…