It's ironic how the cubicle was the symbol of working-class oppression in the 80s, 90s, and 00s, with countless references in popular culture using it to establish the character's insignificant overlooked place in society. The cheap grey carpet and the temporariness of the fabrication reflected how the organizations viewed their lowest productive workers—too expendable to bother placing in an ordinary office.

Being overworked and understaffed, working long hours at odd hours, is no way to live your life. Still, many of us are doing so in order to eke out a living in this wild world. It can even seem manageable while you're in it, grinding out the hours to keep up with an ever-increasing workload to keep the bossman happy while seasonal demand runs its course or to cover for that vacant role that they've yet to see fit to fill. The reality is, by trying to do the right thing and keep everyone happy,…

It's crucial to draw boundaries between life and work, no matter how hard your employer tries to overstep said boundaries. This employee made a simple request for a company phone to use for weekend calls, since it was starting to become quite common that he needed to take work calls outside of normal work hours. His boss denied the severity of the situation and refused to give him the phone. Well, since answering these work calls during unpaid hours was really an act of generosity, the employee…

Trying to mess with an employee's time off is a risky game. These bosses claimed that they understood when their employee requested to have Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off because of extreme burnout. Not only did these two supervisors deny the request, but also they tried to get this guy to cover an extra shift. It was as if the entire burnout conversation went in one ear and out the other, as if it did not matter. When the Redditor tried to reason with his supervisors, he had mentioned his…

Good childcare is hard to find… and it doesn't come cheap. It's reached the point where many families are now weighing up the costs of childcare and finding that it actually doesn't make sense for one spouse to work when their entire salary is going to the childcare costs incurred by their absence. Even for families that can afford it, filling the gaps between childcare providers is particularly challenging, creating a mess of busy schedules and further complicating workplace obligations. For t…

When you're in charge, it's pretty important that you follow your own rules, drinking the Kool-Aid that you've set out for everyone else to drink. Anything else would be hypocritical at best, causing dissension and demotivating those you're supposed to be leading and generally just setting a bad example. Conversely, being consistent and fair in your leadership helps foster a culture of accountability; by holding yourself to the same standards you've set for everyone else, you demonstrate the in…

Oftentimes in our lives, a weary, exasperated manager with sagging eyes will give us an order, desperate for us to follow it without asking questions. Depending on the dynamic of our relationship with that manager and the nature of the request, we might be more than happy to follow their direction—or we may, instead, choose to follow the literal meaning of that direction but not necessarily the intended purpose of the direction. This “malicious compliance” to their request will help balance the…

Don't you just love it when the new manager makes things exponentially worse for everyone else? It's a common mistake that these horrible bosses tend to make. They come in and immediately feel like they know a better solution to the current system. Without properly hearing out all the employees' voices, they decide it would be more impressive to flex their muscles and insist that their solution is the proper one. Well, time and time again when this happens, the new manager stumbles. Either the…

Time, in a sense, is a resource that we spend doing different things, which is why when we talk about “spending time” on something, there's a literal sense to it. Through the sheer course of its slow march, the way we spend our time through the things we do, the things we think about, and the way we prioritize our responsibilities and personal interests goes on to shape who we become, what we know and what skills we possess. It might be a facile generalization, but for those familiar, I like to…

It's hard to escape the conversation surrounding AI and the growing likelihood that we may soon find our jobs replaced by it. Yet, while some have attempted it, most seem to be falling short of success. While AI is proven to be effective at handling superfluous and repetitive work, it doesn't yet understand the subtlety and nuance of specific tasks, often lacking necessary details or fabricating information and then confidently reporting it as fact. So, at the very least, even where there is ef…

"The customer is always right" is an attitude that is purveyed throughout customer service... People will love to remind you at this point that one full attribution of the original quote is also reported as being “The customer is always right in matters of taste” meaning that or that customer service representatives should seek “to satisfy the customer regardless of whether the customer is right or wrong.” Both lend to the idea that the customer is not necessarily right about all things, just a…

Whatever happened to “if it ain't broke, don't fix it?” If you're ever in a position where you are joining a company and leading a team that already is.a well-run machine, consider not enforcing your personal way of doing things onto everyone else. Unless the team genuinely agrees with your ideas to change the process, the only person who is really benefitting from this change is you. That is not a good enough reason to uphold the way a team does things. You have to adjust to their rhythm just…

Oftentimes, a little push is the only thing it takes to topple the facade of power presented by someone abusing it. They want you to think there's nothing you can do to circumvent their authority, but they forget that they're just managing an IT department at a medical center, and their authority really isn't all that far-reaching at all. So that one little push (or notifying their boss) is all it takes to reveal the man behind the curtain. This IT worker was responsible for issuing equipment t…

Who doesn't love when a manager's strict and unnecessary rules get called out in front of senior management in the most humiliating way possible? We guess that the manager didn't love it, but clearly, everyone else on this software developer's team enjoyed this comeuppance. This manager, Dave, came waltzing in and insisted that all software developers adhere to a strict 9-5 work schedule with minimal breaks. The Redditor explained how this was not ideal for the team's productivity, given that c…

One of the most respected ways to lead is from the front. Of course, you may be the first one to catch an arrow or a spear to the throat—dooming everyone who was relying on your command and is now floundering, leaderless. But, if you pull it off and make it through the battle unscathed you can sure as heck bet that the troops will love you far more than they would had you been in your command tent at the back of the field. The difference here and the limitation of this anecdote is that there ar…

Some managers make such ridiculous demands that one has to wonder if they are trying to make their employees quit. Sometimes, that is the case, and other times, it's just that these managers have egos and enjoy engaging in power dynamics. If this description fits your manager, our advice would be to get out while you still can. Here, we have a barista whose manager would insist on having a coffee made for her at the end of every shift after everything in the store had been cleaned up and finish…