You're going to get things wrong, and that's just a simple truth. There's no way you're going to get through this life without making a simple mistake. Owning that mistake, however, is a skill and one not a lot of people seem to possess—especially when it's your boss. This database admin worked on a team that had a requirement for an on-call rotation. If you've ever been on call, you probably know where this is going… Everything about the on-call system worked well, and the team even had its ow…

With so much information accessible at the tips of our fingers, it's easy for anyone to think that they're an expert. Without realizing it, they're missing the context, experience, and knowledge of the framework that's used to properly define the information they think they're an authority in—all things that an actual expert would know and possess. Of course, when you're delivering a service to clients, they're going to want to do things their way. But, as the customer, it's important to know w…

During the course of your career, it's generally thought that going above and beyond is often associated with greater reward… at least eventually. However, it's also possible that you'll end up working for people who will just take advantage of your willingness to do extra work and provide extra value to their company without extra pay. This workshop laborer helped in the production and manufacture of sheds for use on clients' farms and other similar business uses. They helped with cleaning, ma…

This worker worked in a draining middle management position in a care facility that was overseen by a “micromanaging dinosaur” of a boss who demanded strict adherence to rules—even the nonsensical and arbitrary ones they made up—and relishing in the chance at catching workers out for not following them. If you're getting an image of Nurse Ratchet from One Flew Over a Cuckoo's Nest in your mind, you're probably on the right track… At one point, the worker was forbidden from interacting with clie…

Nobody likes any idea as much as they like their own. And nobody likes their own ideas more than upper management. They'll pick a course, no matter how ill-informed or ill-advised that course is, and steer into it full steam ahead. And, yet, still, there is something admirable, at least, in that kind of confidence; no matter how foolhardy it might sometimes be, that attitude is probably how they got where they are in the first place—that or it's their parents' company. Still, sometimes, as a bu…

Often in the workplace, the reclusive and introverted workers will find themselves disadvantaged—no matter how productive they are—with none of the clout and relationship status to cash in and help them when things go wrong or misunderstandings occur. Unfortunately, this situations usually involve some inability to talk their way out of a nonsensical request from management—the strong-headed manager having already made up their mind before they walked in the door that their "strange" quiet subo…

Volunteering your time to an organization remains exactly that: volunteer work. You're not being compensated for your time, so you'd hope that your contributions would at least be appreciated and that you'd be treated respectfully during your time there. Still, organizations that rely heavily on volunteer work can have the tendency to—well, forget this—and take the unpaid hours of their dedicated volunteers for granted, treating them as if they were subordinates instead. After all, where there…

When you get overly worked up about your job, it's important to remember it's just a job; it's not like someone's life is at stake or anything… Of course, this logic doesn't really apply if you're a Cardiothoracic surgeon in the middle of an operation because—well, someone's life is literally at stake. Other forms of employment with the same level of gravitas also need not heed this advice. Still, there's no use crying over cut onions—if you can help it… and there's no use getting overly worked…

This web designer was responsible for managing and maintaining a collection of websites that their organization maintained for clients, but their organization had a particularly strange policy where requests from clients always needed to be considered with their boss telling them that they couldn't say no to requests, regardless of whether or not the requests actually made any sense, were actually good ideas“features” or would bog down and ruin the performance and interface of the web sites. Gr…

When you're young, you have all the ideologies about how you're going to move to the big city and live in lofted apartments while you hang out in coffee shops and bars with your friends and all laugh about how carefree your lives are… Oh, and you're working in humanitarian aid and making a difference in your work, too. As things progress you come to ind that you've instead found yourself in a corporate job that you despise, working as a means to an end, all your money is going to rent and if yo…

New managers accidentally create more inefficiency while trying to reduce it—a match made in heaven. Of course, it doesn't help that their workers are more than happy to go along with their awful plans and process changes to show them just how stupid those policies are. Oftentimes, these changes are just quickly swept under the rug and never mentioned again, with very little repercussion ever eventuating for the members of management who made the blunder. On the flip side, you know for certain…

Ahh, retail… a fine industry where middle manglement regularly tries to shove a dirt sandwich down your throat while whispering sweetly to you it's actually honey. The story shared in this post is a tale as old as time in retail, where management will happily tell you with a smile that the company's official policy is that the customer comes first… but that the unofficial policy is that making sure staff never claim or report overtime also comes first. So, then, what happens when you're working…

When someone ruins what could have otherwise been a great job for you, there's no better feeling than helping them on their way to unemployment as well. This worker made the tough decision to leave a job they loved due to the unbearable attitudes of the workgroup's executive directors, who had a propensity for taking credit for others' work and rewarding themselves for doing so while deriding those workers who had actually done the work for them. After being accused of underperformance in what…

You're always told that you should be friendly with team members—but not too friendly. Despite encouraging team bonding and after-hours unpaid recreational activities with your team, organizations have a tendency to get a little weird about things if you get too close or if things get too recreational . This, of course, doesn't apply in the service industry for some reason, where it's generally expected that staff will almost certainly engage in an interpersonal free-for-all. Still, this parano…

Being charged with the responsibility of a section of a business usually means that it's implied that you'll hold that section's interests at a level of most importance and not jeopardize them over petty slights and egotistical battles with your subordinates and external parties. Yet, some people can't help themselves and let their ego get involved in every possible decision, finding themselves battling for superiority at every step of the way rather than managing the task they've been employed…

Health and Safety is no joke—though often made into one by one of those weird things in workplace culture that is handled with complete polarity depending on the organization you work for. If you work for a “cowboy” small business owner whose organization's growth has far outpaced the professionalism of its structure, one where the owner is used to taking risks that place themselves in danger, relishing these moments with machismo and bravado, bragging about them for years afterward. They now f…