When it comes to working from home, employees can have different views. Some find that they can focus much better, get more things done, and save time during the day when they don't have to commute. However, others may find it challenging to work from home due to distractions from other things such as pets and household chores. With most workplaces switching back to in-person work after having a remote environment during the pandemic, it raises the question of which is better. Some employers fi…

It feels like a common scene, doesn't it? Watching folks breeze into high-paying jobs effortlessly while the rest of us scramble for opportunities that seem just out of reach. It's the age-old story of the power of networking, where the people you know often overshadow your education and skills. It's especially upsetting to see jobs with high salaries go to those whose experience doesn't seem to line up. Imagine seeing someone with a background in English land a tech position, all thanks...

Divulging personal aspects about yourself in the workplace can be a pathway to forming stronger bonds and close-knit relationships—or it can be used against you the next time your performance review comes around. The reality is that your work time is for work, and your own time is—well, your own. But, in a modern “always online” world that's fueled by instant communication and where some employers want to squeeze their workers for every last drop of productivity, this line becomes increasingly…

The working arrangement is a relatively simple one: You provide your time and skills to your employer, and they provide you with a paycheck. Management likes to snazz this up and conceive unnecessary complications that weave a longer, meandering line between these two endpoints, but no matter how large of a labyrinth they build, those two endpoints remain in the same place. Things like being told you and your coworkers are a “family” “crew” or “partners," or the use of any other euphemisms to a…

Filling in for your boss can be an enlightening experience and open you up to the opportunity for new growth, learning, and perspective. It shows you all of the administrative things that your boss might handle that help shape their own approach to things and that, while they have more oversight, they might not have as much insight into every detail you handle in your role. Usually, this will be done as a favor to your boss, assuring them that at least someone is looking out for their role and…

A job interview is just as much for a candidate to see if they want to work for a company as it is for a company to see if they want the candidate to work for them. The application and interview process can be so stressful and intensive for a candidate that this often gets overlooked, with candidates who are too desperate or eager to please get themselves into exploitative situations after missing extremely obvious red flags during interviews. Let us be brutally honest here, most of the time, a…

While it's often said that the early bird gets the worm, for some reason—in the workplace—it's often the loudest bird who gets the worm. While yelling at worms isn't necessarily a great career move, it stands to reason that one should always advocate for themselves and their work whenever possible. After all, everyone's going to be doing the same thing, and if you don't add your voice to the worm-yelling narrative, the rhetoric may turn against you—or at least out of your favor. It's a bird-eat…

Making your workers prove themselves by jumping through hoops in order to get a raise—like a monkey, giraffe, or any other suitable hoop-jumping animal—is a surefire way to ensure your monkey starts looking elsewhere for a new gig where there aren't any hoop-jumping requirements. In that same vein, it has often been said that your work (and your monkey's work) speaks for itself. That is true… until you corner your boss about a discussion about a long overdue raise. Suddenly, the work you've don…

Your emergency contact is intended to be just that—for emergencies. Its intended purpose really isn't so that your boss and coworkers can call and tell on you for playing hookey from work like they're a teacher reaching out to an unruly child's parent.

The human brain has a tendency to cherry-pick relevant details and information that support decisions we've already made and opinions that we've already formed. Confirmation bias is a real and relevant thing, especially in the world of ubiquitous information. No longer do we have to be a specialist in a topic in order to access the information that was once only readily available to us. But do we have the skills, experience, and training to interpret that information, or are we merely overstati…

There's some dubiousness to the truth behind this post, and, let's be honest—as with anything you read online—there often is. But this thread sparked an important fervor of discussion around something I think is an important topic: How much information about your personal life do you owe your employer? If you're taking a sick day—do they need to know why? If you're leaving your position—do they need to know why? The answer, in any case, is no. Your employer doesn't need to know more than the ex…

Extreme couponing is an interesting hobby that serves as a great past-time for house spouses who need a break from the tiring work of pitching the latest MLM fad to old acquaintances. It also makes for some pretty mediocre television that makes for a passable watch when you're drifting in a fever dream and too sick to change the channel. It does not, however, make for a good means of operating a business. And, yet, many managers and business owners out there employ it as a strategy, paying no h…

If you're working a full-time job that doesn't pay you enough to make ends meet, why on earth are you working that job? Better yet, how are they justifying paying you less than the basic living wage? Then when you eventually have to go and take up a second job to make up for the shortfall, how dare they go and make an issue about it, harping on about “loyalty” as if you owe them an ounce of it. This was the matter at hand when a user on Reddit's r/antiwork subreddit community shared a highly pe…

The bad part about an unpaid lunch break is there's a whole hour in the middle of your day that you're not getting paid for, meaning you're stuck at work for that much longer before you finally get to escape the prison and go home. On the other hand, the great part about an unpaid lunch break is there's a whole hour in the middle of your day that you get to yourself to eat your lunch, get out for a walk, and worry about other things in life outside of your to-do list and your boss's whims. Of c…

Some people are just mean, through to the core. Having one of these people as your boss is always going to be a bad time as they're going to use you as a verbal punching bag, taking their rage out on you repeatedly, time and time again, in order to fuel their unstable, diminishing ego. These bosses will make a point of making a point by going off at someone publicly—and often—as if doing so makes them somehow more important than the person they're screaming at, rather than making everyone aroun…

It's important to be good at your job as this helps you to establish and maintain good standing with your employer as well as key clients and ensures that you develop a good long-standing relationship within your industry.