We all have that one coworker...

The restaurant industry is known for being fickle; if a few coworkers call in sick, you're gonna find yourself in a bit of a pickle… that is, as a manager. But as someone in a management position, that is your problem; not the other employees' issue. In this case, OP's boss initially approved their vacation but quickly backpedaled when it became apparent that they had granted time off to too many other employees, meaning that now they were short-staffed. Tough luck, as OP was already on their v…

People have a habit of deflecting their own problems onto other people. If you own a business and don't schedule or hire enough people for a holiday weekend, that's probably your own fault—and your own problem to resolve. Still, it's pretty common for business owners and managers to turn around and blame workers for not being available at the last minute when they already have plans. This worker shared their experience on Reddit's r/antiwork subreddit, sharing screenshots of an exchange that oc…

As human beings, we all develop interesting ticks and facets of our personalities that can manifest into very strange behavior. Often our desire to feel “good” and avoidance of feeling “bad” can cause us to make a series of consecutive decisions that see us walking too far down a particular path and becoming something we might never have anticipated. Take "Disney Adults" or any fandom as a prime example of this. You get exposed to something at some point in your life, say, Disney media and it m…

If you sense red flags on the first day, you should know that things are unlikely to improve.

Every so often, we come across a satisfying story about a boss getting what he deserved! Sometimes, you have to be willing to walk away in order to truly make your point known. This thread was posted to Reddit's r/MaliciousCompliance subreddit by an employee who shared that after messing up over a year ago on the job, his boss was still threatening to fire him constantly. It got so bad that the Redditor went ahead and applied to a much better company. When he got the position, he first felt gui…

When someone has done you wrong, the best thing to do is to walk the other way with your head still held high… but it's certainly more satisfying to scorch the earth behind you as you go. When faced with the bullying behavior of their Karen boss, this IT guy realized he had enough and quit, seeking greener pastures—but, he also decided to (metaphorically) set fire to the building on the way out the door, scheduling a mass company-wide email to be sent from his boss's email address that exposed…

One of the worst parts about working in the service industry or retail is “blackout” dates—where no one is able to take days off—these always line up with precisely the days you'd want to take off. Holidays, long weekends, and anytime between Christmas and New Years—pretty much any time you might want to see family or friends (who are all off work.) These have all been deemed as days where all hands are needed on deck due to high volumes of trade. But the worst part about blackout dates?.. Hypo…

This must be a particularly messy office.

Call centers often demand employees hit a certain number of calls per day, even when that isn't the actual goal of the company. In this case, OP was working at a call center for a collection agency, whose main target was to collect debts, generating revenue for the company. OP was doing really well, but sometimes they missed the daily target, and managers would dwell on their call count, instead of taking a look at the numbers OP was generating for the company. OP found out that the company was…

Some people want to have their cake and eat it too. But it's really not so much about the cake itself as it is the control over that cake; they want the cake to submit to their authority and stop questioning it all the darn time. The thing is, this cake-haver probably isn't qualified to tell the cake what to do, which is why they're so darn insecure in the first place… I don't really know where this is going or what this metaphor is supposed to mean, but people aren't cake—and you shouldn't try…

"You don't know what you've got till it's gone!"

Must have been a really rough week!

If we're taking bets for the worst thing a boss has ever done, my money is on this; using someone else's tragedy for your own gain is a specific type of evil with no moral restitution. Somewhere in a locked room, this boss has a portrait of himself with a curled, deformed hand and demonic visage. This heartbreaking workplace story was shared on Reddit't r/antiwork subreddit, with the original poster sharing how her former boss had scammed her coworkers into giving him money, which was supposed…

When management fails to step up and do what is required of them to create a change in an employee's behavior, you bet it won't go unnoticed, even if by the employee themselves. In this case, an employee we'll call Ivan was the type of hopeless that not even a boot camp could fix, and the only employee more hopeless than him was his own boss, who we'll call Karen. Ivan was called into a disciplinary hearing by HR along with OP, Karen, and a few other employees after having 50 complaints filed a…

It's always important to be polite to the customer service worker who is handling your request, even if that request involves negotiating a tricky situation, chances are you'll get a better result if you treat that person like an actual human being. Usually, the sheer bureaucratic inertia of a large corporation or a government entity will mean that if you're rude to the wrong worker, you're going to be stuck in bureaucratic purgatory for a frustratingly long period of time. Or, worse, they may…