Joining the workforce for the first time is a surreal experience. You start off bright-eyed and filled with wonder about what the world might have in store for you… ready to give it your all, dreaming of the drastic contributions you're going to make to society. But, the more time you spend working, the more the wonderous color drains from the dream, leaving behind a sad, beige, and grey world that looks like every house-flipping millennial's home renovation.

We often talk about the horrible bosses of the world who have no regard for their employees, but as much as it pains us to admit, the reverse can be true as well. In fact, forget the disregard for your boss because more often than not, being disrespectful at work affects your coworkers and everyone in your office environment as well. Some of these stories range from a lack of hygiene to a literal hoarder. We have employees who refuse to do the bare minimum and employees who go out of their way…

In case it hasn't been clear, workplace culture is undergoing a serious facelift these days. The question is how everyone responds to these (in some cases, very necessary and long overdue) changes. Here, we have a supervisor who specifically told the receptionist staff to never fetch coffee for salesmen at the office, as they are more than capable of making their own beverages. However, you can't enforce these policies and then not have your employees' backs when they follow through. That's wha…

People work jobs to get paid—it's as plain and simple as that. It's not something we're doing out of goodwill because we care so much about our boss that we want to fatten his wallet up for him. While our bosses might wish that this was the case, the arrangement of employment is based on a simple transaction: The worker's time and skills are provided in exchange for a consistent paycheck.

Every toxic workplace has a problematic employee or two, and everyone is secretly wondering why they're still working at the company. Especially after all the nonsense they have pulled over the years. Perhaps they know the big boss at the top. Perhaps they're even related to them (nepo baby alert!). Perhaps no one at the managerial level is aware of some of the craziness these terrible coworkers have gotten away with over the years. You are smart enough to stay out of it and just observe all th…

As the slow march of time presses ever onward, it's not uncommon for change to occur—in fact, it's unavoidable. Small incremental shifts in policy and perception mount and build up into larger changes. Sometimes, you won't even realize how far things have gone until you take a look back at the winding road back to where things used to be. While these changes are usually for the better, sometimes things work their way into normalization that takes us back a step or two. We might not even realize…

Before streaming services existed, we had movie rental chains . Going to rent a video or DVD was a whole endeavor. In my family, we'd often do the usual Sunday morning activities, then go grocery shopping, and then stop at the video store near us to pick out a movie for that night. This was a big treat every time! Whether we picked a Disney movie or an old comedy flick, it truly was fun for the whole family. If they didn't go out of business before I was old enough to work there, I know I would…

The inconsistency of eyewitness testimony is something that is often discussed, owing to the fact that the mere recollection of an event changes the original memory that we had stored in ways that can cause us to convince ourselves that we remember something that never really happened. Beware of being so wholly convinced that you're unmistakably right about something. You should always leave room for the fact that you might have made some margin of error. After all, that's what a “mistake” is b…

Employers can find shady ways to send messages. In this case, their method was not only shady but also unethical. Furthermore, the employee may have grounds to dispute this sudden change because of their medical issues. To the employers out there who are hoping to put an end to working remotely, believe it or not, some of these remote employees have valid accommodations that must be honored. Why enforce these changes when you might end up with a lawsuit on your hands? This thread was posted to…

This boss had no idea what he was doing, and the hordes of hungry customers don't care about poor management, they just want food. There are lots of industries where people are low-paid and treated poorly. Food service is perhaps the hardest of these. Unlike retail, your customers are guaranteed to be hungry. That means they're going to be less patient and eager to tell you about any mistakes you're making. They really don't care about the employees or anything else, because all they want is th…

Getting time off work is often needlessly complicated, so many employers are skeptical of employees when they call out or request sick leave, believing them to be “just faking it” in order to get a day off. This attitude is prevalent within retail and service industry employers, which presents problems since employees are interacting with other people and even handling food. Most commonly employers will require sick workers to get a sick note from a doctor, even for a simple flu, requiring empl…

It's important to have your coworkers' backs in case something ridiculously unjust like this happens. Of course, this kind of unity among employees can be rare depending on the workplace environment, but if I was suddenly fired for being 20 minutes late despite an otherwise perfect attendance record and excellent punctuality, I would hope that my coworkers would stand up for me. This thread was posted to Reddit by u/No_StopItStepbro , who along with his fellow employees devised a plan to collec…

Working a bad job can be literally bad for your health, with chronic stress from being overworked and mistreated causing all sorts of untold medical issues.

Coworkers who hold grudges need to get over it and get a life. It's as simple as that. Most folks who spend the majority of their emotional energy in the workplace stewing and thinking about vengeance are bound to get some of that negative energy thrown back in their faces. This thread was posted to Reddit's r/MaliciousCompliance subreddit by u/No-Scallion5434 , an employee who works in insurance billing. OP learned three years into the job that during her second week at work, she asked her cow…

There are a lot of things that could happen during the interview process that might make you lose faith in it. You'll find yourself completing endless applications that you'll never hear back from, getting ghosted after first-round interviews, even completing three rounds of interviews during which the interviewer insists you tell the owner of your current company that you intend to leave, only to ghost you for a month before confirming that they went another candidate; you might even successfu…

This is the story of a group of lawyers who messed up really badly at their jobs, and it's such a satisfying read. U/Villageidiot1984 shared their favorite legal goof, which just so happens to be for their family member , a lawyer at a law firm. Being a lawyer seems like an incredibly difficult job. For example, you have to read so many papers and facts, and then remember them while you're defending your client. You'll work long hours before a case. You've got to be able to speak in front of a…