We've all dreamed of quitting a job in dramatic fashion The myth of the hard-nosed boss: a harsh take-no-prisoners leadership style with the “greater good” and the learning of the team in mind. The issue is far too many leaders think they're living up to this mythology when in reality they're treading over the fine line This worker made a splash, quite literally, when they quit their job after suffering one insult and one impolite demand too many from their toxic boss.

It's often said that anyone at a comedy show is fair game, but even then, there's a limit to what constitutes “fair.” Even if you're up on a stage, you can't expect to just go around saying what you want without any consequence. If you go after the person who is basically responsible for whether or not you get the gig, you'd better do so tactfully and not

Giving full credit for something to the person who "finishes" it is generally a poor idea, as it completely discounts other contributors' efforts. You see this with things like sales where the person to “finalize” the deal gets credit for the sale against their figures, regardless of whether or not they were the one to work on it originally. Really, absolute policies might be easy and cut and clean, but they create nightmares down the line whenever there are situations that aren't as black and…

Efficiency is usually a prized quality, especially when someone's time is costing you a lot of money. In fact, when you work on a contract basis your clients are usually accusing you of wasting time or for charging time that wasn't worked or worked “appropriately” enough for the project. It's unusual to have the client accusing you of working too quickly and demanding that you take your time on something—unless the job is being charged at a flat rate and they're concerned about the quality of t…

Working retail is a hectic and endless stream of customer interactions that balance on a knife's edge, with any one of them threatening to teeter off into a full-blown customer meltdown with possibly little to no cause. It's a way of living that leaves you emotionally drained and completely exasperated, while weekends end up giving you just enough time to self-isolate and prepare for your next shift. Meanwhile, despite claiming to have the customer's best interest at heart, upper management mak…

If you do your job too well, you're simply going to make everyone else look bad by comparison. Instead of earning yourself the praise you deserve, you actually just wind up putting a target on your back while everyone quietly wishes you'd just disappear and stop making all of their jobs harder by setting the bar so high. Usually, your boss won't just come right out and tell you to stop working so hard or being so competent, saying the quiet part out loud would only make them and the team look w…

It really is something to marvel at how managers can repeatedly forget the importance of a human touch when it comes to dealing with clients. Hokey business theory and overconfidence are no match for good relationships and experience at your side. Yet, time and time again, new managers come marching on the scene, insecure about their place in their new role—maybe due to their lack of experience in the industry—overcompensating for that by making broad, sweeping changes, ignoring the pleas very…

A double-edged sword cuts both ways, and you could probably get a paper cut from a double-sided print job, too. Cutting costs might seem like a good idea, but really, you're probably just going to slice right through other important things like customer satisfaction and, by extension, your company's profit. After all, as the old saying goes…You gotta spend money to make money. Overly inflexible policies are almost certainly a double-edged sword. When you demand rigid adherence to rules, leaving…

Is it really even petty revenge when you revoke your recently ex-employers' access to your personal software that you paid for and were only using for your work out of goodwill? At that point, you're just reclaiming what was rightfully yours, to begin with, and since the company had been effectively leasing your software license, you might as well go ahead and send them a bill for however long they had been using it, too . It's not your fault if they can't properly invest in the resources neede…

When maintaining million-dollar machines is the singular focus of your work, you'd hope that your manager would leave well enough alone and trust you to know how to do your thing. Alas, when it comes to new management, leaving well enough alone is something that is never in the playbook, a “one-size-fits-all” approach taking precedence over logical reason. This machine operator worked at an aerospace manufacturing company, executing an efficient routine by starting work early to ensure that mac…

Many times in life you should be careful what you wish for. Especially in business, foolish ultimatums that you think your subordinates won't be able to rise to may only inspire them to call your bluff and look elsewhere for employment. Being underappreciated in your work really is frustrating, especially since it usually goes hand in hand with being underpaid. Employers often will downplay your contributions, whether consciously or subconsciously, instead attributing the company's success to t…

The best way to explain to your boss why a certain policy doesn't work? Show, don't tell! Here, we have an employer who falsely accused the folks on his team of abusing the company's sick day policy with no substantial evidence that anyone was actually doing so. It was probably the classic managerial way of trying to solve a productivity issue that likely has more to do with their own managerial style and a lack of a proper number of team members than anything else. Now, if any employee got sic…

You don't know a good thing until it's gone: a phrase that is applicable to so many areas of life. And it fits quite neatly in the sense of employers This media designer slowly found themselves, over time, burdened with more and more responsibilities that were unrelated to their own actual role, over time eventually taking on the equivalent roles of “at least” four people. Finding themselves on the hook for their own materials and equipment as if they were a contractor despite, you know, being…

Every coworker has their preferred way of working, and part of collaborating in the workplace requires both parties to readjust in order to get the job done. This hotel maintenance worker wanted to be called when any little thing went wrong, even if it meant being called all the time for simpler tasks that other coworkers could rectify without him. This, of course, only made the work day more difficult and more time-consuming for the maintenance worker, but that's supposedly what he wanted. Now…

More often than not, when someone isn't pulling their weight on the team, you'll find that your team leader is remiss and unlikely to do anything about it. Preferring to let their weight be shouldered rather than attract the attention of the higher powers. See, it stands to reason that, in most organizations, no attention is the best attention; as soon as the powers that be set their sights on your team, it can be impossible to shake it off, with their increasing scrutiny and weight bearing dow…

It's surprising how many businesses seem to be able to continue to persist despite the fact that a light gust would blow them over, being consistently and continuously mismanaged to the point where one single mishap would cause them to cease to exist. This employee worked for a horrendously mismanaged manufacturing company that was seemingly on the verge of collapse. The management team that had employed them was suddenly fired soon after they were hired, which caused them to be understandably…