It's always frustrating when someone refuses to uphold the most basic common courtesies. We're all in this together—well, at least we should be—so showing basic courtesy is the very least that you can do, even to a complete stranger. It's small acts of kindness like this and reciprocity that make society tick; should you refuse to participate, you might find the karmic pendulum swinging right back at you. When this office worker witnessed a delivery driver getting into the elevator at his offic…

People will gatekeep the most insanely petty things in order to feel even a semblance of purpose and power. Name a hobby, sport, community, or industry—and I promise you that there are a number of people there who will make it as challenging as possible for you to join, contribute, or succeed in a way that they perceive might threaten their supposed authority. We're territorial beasts, after all, with many of us being fueled by our ego's lust for significance, prominence, and recognition. Consi…

Being taught not to steal other people's things is a really important lesson to learn at a young age. The older you are when you learn this lesson, the more serious the consequences. For instance, if you go around stealing other people's sandwiches at the age of 9 years old, it seems a suitable punishment that one of those sandwiches might end up being hotter than the blazes of the burning sun itself. I feel like this is the best result if your parents, mentors, and teachers have somehow failed…

Sharin' is carin', Karen!

A guest at a hotel couldn't believe the way the front desk clerk was talking to her. She thought it was rude — so she tried to get the employee fired. There's that old saying that goes, “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar,” meaning you should be nice to people in order to get what you want. It's that simple, and it works a lot of the time! People who work in customer service are far more familiar with the kinds of customers who are quick to anger, and this hotel guest is a great examp…

$14/hr for a medical professional whose job is saving other people's lives? If that's not cause for concern, I don't know what is.

If you need a story of poetic justice, you've come to the right place. There's nothing like staying true to your morals and it benefiting you in the end. As if the universal karmic energy knew you deserved justice. There are many stories like that if you just know where to look— like Reddit ! A woman recently got her poetic justice after struggling at her law firm. She was a hard worker and made sure she always did her very best. She was aiming to make partner one day. Finally, it started to lo…

Your emergency contact is intended to be just that—for emergencies. Its intended purpose really isn't so that your boss and coworkers can call and tell on you for playing hookey from work like they're a teacher reaching out to an unruly child's parent.

When it comes to their boss's odd behavior, this person writes that they “just figured it out” after five years. As a manager, you have tons of responsibilities. It's can be a lot of pressure — you have to answer to your own bosses while managing a bunch of people. You have to know how to prioritize, picking the most important tasks and getting to those first. And you also have to be cautious what you say to the employees who work underneath you. In the comments, several people noted that as a…

This boss thought she knew how to run weekend shifts , but she was mistaken. In most lines of work, weekends are the busiest days of the week. School is out and many office workers have weekends off , leading customers to stream into business places. At this OP's place of work, they had a boss who clearly didn't think through her plans. As u/Oncewasaworker writes, their boss Karen was hired through some vague relationship to someone in the company. Despite her role as a manager, she seemed to l…

This boss thought she was getting away with sneaking around, but the entire office already knew her secrets. One basic rules of adult life is to avoid dating those you work with. There are billions of people in the world, so why would you want to date someone who you work with all day? It can lead to awkward power dynamics. Even if the relationship works really well, any cutesy behavior between the couple is sure to make the rest of the workplace uncomfortable. This boss seems like she was “use…

The fallacy about the idea of certain jobs being classified or unclassified as “skilled labor” is that every job requires different skills and experience in order to be done effectively. You go to your local coffee shop of choice because the barista makes a better and more consistent cup of coffee than you could ever hope to. You probably go back to that shop, too, because that barista's particular consistency and skill stand head and shoulders above even the other specialized baristas in the c…

Starting a new job is never easy… there's so much unknown and uncertainty before you even step foot in the door on your first day, and it's easy to let that stress get to you. Once you step foot in the door, even if you've worked in the industry for years, there are always new processes and procedures to be followed, and different approaches and understandings achieve the same thing in a slightly different way. There are new relationships to start, first impressions to be made, and egos to soot…

Let's be honest; despite all the grief that middle managers get, surviving in that role is no easy task. You constantly and consistently receive downward pressure from owners and upper management to implement changes and pass on cost-saving measures that you know aren't going to work. To top this off, you only really ever have two choices—provide feedback to upper management; while this absorbs the stress and pressure, keeping it from being passed on to your subordinates, it rocks the boat and…

They always say they can't give you a raise but nine times out of ten, the truth is they can. This employee had to jump through hoops in order to get a 0.75-cent hourly raise. Despite finally achieving this small win, he knew that he was worth more, as most employees are. So naturally, he started looking for other work and eventually received a job offer that paid $2 more per hour than his current position. Once he brought this fact to the attention of his manager with the intention of quitting…

These people shared the biggest and funniest ways they've ever messed up at work . Maybe they didn't find it funny at the time, but looking back on your mistakes can be hilarious. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes, and some are much more serious than others. U/headtotoe asked people to tell about the worst mistakes they've ever made in the workplace. After a little bit of pushing from commenters, the OP shared the mistake that led them to ask the question. They wrote that at their data entry jo…