She's a tad too much!

People need to learn how to say no. It's important and even therapeutic. Having a conversation where someone asks you something and you respond no, and your reasoning is a GOOD conversation. You don't have to say yes to any dumb offer that life throws at you. You are allowed and entitled to say no, even without giving an explanation. A question isn't a demand. It is a possibility that you are the one in charge to determine if you want to accept or deny. Nobody can force you to accept. You have every single right to simply say NO.

So, next time you get hit with some weird request that you hate and want to deny, do it! Nobody can force you to do ANYTHING. Say no, own your response, and be free from what other people dictate for your life. Be the one who handles the direction of your life. Choose wisely, however you want. Don't be like the people in the story below. Don't doubt. Just say what you really think about the offering someone just offered you. Say that you do not want to do it, and that's it. Once you do, you will realize what it is to be free. And also how saying no is not really a big deal. You are entitled to that! 

I'm sensitive to the smell of stinky hands.

Nobody wants to be a micromanaging coworker. It's one thing to be a micromanaging manager. It's not an ideal management style, but at least their employees are managed by the person who is supposed to manage them, not by someone else. When you're an equal to your coworker, you should not be going around telling them what to do about basically anything. If they smell bad, you should tell HR so they can address it professionally. If they're just plain annoying, there is very little you can say in the workplace that can actually fix that problem. If they're bad at their job, it's not like you can fire them! You might feel uncomfortable telling your manager that they aren't picking up the slack, because maybe that's not your call to make. The best thing you can do is just be friendly with your coworker and hope that they aren't a total disaster. 

Sometimes there are things that need to be addressed with your coworker that aren't as easy as asking them to pick up a shift for you. They might be saying a lot of unprofessional things that make the workplace uncomfortable. They might talk so much about unimportant things in your open-concept office that it's impossible for you to focus on the work that actually needs to get done. In cases like these, I can't emphasize enough how important it is to talk to HR. I know people say HR is there to protect the company, not the employees, but I highly doubt an HR professional will fire someone for mentioning a coworker who smells so bad they can't focus on work. If anything, they're probably not the only ones complaining about this issue if it's as bad as they say. The employee in this story desperately needs to talk to HR about his coworker, who wants him to stop washing his hands with scented soap because she is sensitive to the smell. 

We all cope with rejection in ridiculous ways

Maybe this is a hot take, but not everything we believe needs to be true. If we hold a belief that reinforces our self-esteem and doesn't harm anyone, is it really that bad?

I was talking about this the other day with a friend; she was telling me about this guy she dated who accused her of 'being afraid of love' when she left him, a thing that, according to my friend, wasn't true (otherwise I wouldn't be telling you this to make a point).

And she was reflecting on the kind of things we tell ourselves when somebody rejects us, only to keep our self-esteem intact while we process what we just lost. Those things can range from 'she (or he) is afraid of love', 'she loves me, but she doesn't consciously know it', 'he is going through a lot right now, and that's why he didn't fall in love ', or 'I was the one who got away'.

To me, as long as we're not trying to convince the other person of our narrative, or bothering them in any way or form, it's not that horrible to have a somewhat false belief or a petty outlook on some things.

Most of the time, as the initial sting fades away, we can casually accept that the other person didn't want us that much, and that's it.

Plus, 'The one that got away' is a controversial concept because most of the time, if we have someone who got away, we've mainly kept them as a fantasy, and we don't actually know if being with them in real life is as fantastic as we imagine. The fantasy creates the allure.

Either way, this Redditor has a completely different opinion on the topic, so let's read it! I also want to know what you think.

Everybody makes mistakes, they are truly measured by how they deal with the aftermath.

Judging someone because of a mistake they made is not really fair. You can't expect people to never make any mistakes. We are all humans, and a misstep here and there is bound to happen to every single one of us. How we view mistakes, learn from them, and try to fix them is what others should judge.

When someone is unable even to recognize their fault, we tend to criticize them for it. Grown adults should be able to look a mistake in the eye and admit they are to blame for it. Furthermore, we expect people to do what they can to fix the problem they caused by making the mistake. Even if they fail, it's the thought that matters; it is the attempt to right a wrong that proves that people can do better.

Which is why, when the HR agency in the story below made a mistake, the employee wasn't quick to judge them for it and waited to see how they would handle the aftermath.

It all started when this employee put in a time-off request for July and noticed that it took a long time for it to be acknowledged. Still, since the employee had enough documentation for the vacation request, they took the time off with their boss's approval and returned to work immediately after. However, the day the employee came back, they noticed that their card wasn't working, and no one could figure out the issue. Checking their email, the employee found out that they had been fired because HR forgot to enter their time off in the system, which led the agency to believe the employee was simply missing days of work without approval. 

With no one able to address the mistake, the employee had to pack up and leave. However, it wasn't long before the agency called them to own up to their mistake and asked them to come back to work. Should the employee comply, or is that mistake too grave to forgive? Scroll down to find out more.

Should a boss have a say in how an employee spends their lunch break?

While time that is off the clock is technically the employee's own, there is no denying that there are probably going to be some limits on how they can spend lunch. Most employers are going to frown at somebody who takes longer than they are supposed to, and they probably shouldn't be doing anything that is going to affect their ability to work when they come back from their break. 

That being said, work life and the corporate world in particular are full of rules about how employees should act and present themselves if they want to succeed, and a lot of them are not all that sensible or fair. Office politics goes far deeper than just avoiding any massive drama; it seeps into every aspect of a role, even the stuff that feels like it shouldn't matter. 

This is something that can be a struggle to adapt to for those who do not have a lot of experience with it. However, the nature of the business is that they are probably going to learn has some serious consequences. It is just the way that corporate life works.

At 23, she's paying grown-up rent without getting the grown-up freedom.

This girl is in a tight spot… no question she reached out to the community in r/Advice to see if someone can help her figure out her at-home living situation. According to her statement, she's 23 years old, working a full-time job of 40 hours a week, and makes a little over 2k every month. Her parents are charging her $1,200 every single month so she can live at home… that's an insane amount of money for her salary and for still living at her house.

Now, the issue here is that she really wants to move out, but because of how high the rent is, she can barely save any money.

She not only pays that huge amount of rent, but also has her car payment, insurance, phone bill, and she has to buy groceries for the house twice a week. Up until now, she had managed to save only $300, and we all know that's not enough for anything… not a deposit and nothing really to access an apartment.

If you ask me, I think the bigger issue is with the parents, honestly.

To begin with, what's the point of charging your kids that big amount of money? I'm not sure what they're doing with the money, but they are literally holding her daughther back in life. They know they are charging her more than half her salary and still expect her to pay even more money. This looks like they are retaining her and enabling her to get her own place. 

At the same time, I'm not sure what the relationship is between them. Maybe it would be a solution for her to talk to them about lowering the amount of rent until she can save enough for a deposit and finally move out. Some Redditors suggested that she could move to a shared house or apartment and rent one room. At least to get out of the house and be able to save more money. That sounds like a good idea to me!

Becoming a first-time mom is a hard job as it is; they don't need us to put more pressure on them.

Motherhood is one of those jobs that last a lifetime. Once someone becomes a mother, there's no turning back. It's a full-time job that will last forever; no quitting, no getting fired. It's one big adjustment to make 

Labor and raising a child are hard enough on their own, and all moms need their family's support to make everything a little bit easier. It's a very confusing and vulnerable time. They are adjusting to their new lives as much as the newborn babies, and they can surely benefit from the other women in the family's experiences. Of course, every mom and every baby is different, so they'll need to find their own way to do things and their own routine. We can't always know what is best for them, but we try to help as much as we can. What we don't know for sure is that they don't need us critiquing them, making snarky comments, or making them feel bad. 

Sadly, a mother-in-law didn't show enough empathy to her daughter-in-law at the moment of having her first baby. They had never had the best of relationships, and the mother-in-law never thought that the woman her son chose was good enough for him. She was never openly antagonistic, just passive-aggressive and a pot-stirrer. When it was time for the son and his wife to have their first baby, the mother-in-law asked to be in the delivery room with them, and she was allowed. However, as soon as the contractions started, she approached her daughter-in-law and said: "I just want to make sure the baby's actually my son's." The young woman was baffled, and since she didn't want to make a scandal, she simply looked at the nurse, who understood the job and took the mother-in-law out of the delivery room. Now, the family is saying the son's wife can't take a joke and that it wasn't such a big deal. She doesn't feel that way, and fortunately, her husband supports her one hundred percent. 

Is this story really proof you can't trust any coworker?

Workplaces aren't like any other place; if you have a nasty fallout with a friend from the gym, you can easily switch gyms. If you have a fallout with one of your bosses or coworkers, it's much harder to avoid them, and the fight comes with the anxiety of your income being at risk; ultimately, your survival ends up entangled in the work drama.

When we have a rigid belief system, and something happens in our life that reinforces those beliefs, we tend to write it off as the ultimate proof we needed to justify the way we're living.

I personally don't believe relationships in life should be so formulaic. A lot of people (myself included) have found amazing, lifelong friendships at the workplace.

You should definitely learn to spot behavioral red flags in people, in any place, not just at work, but that doesn't mean distrusting everyone; there are good people out there!

After reading this story, I was left with the impression that this employee already had trust issues, and this particular situation she went through only confirmed her bias, but the conclusion she drew from it is not the only one you can get to, in my opinion.

Maybe this experience isn't telling her to stop trusting coworkers, but telling her to stop trusting shady people.

When this 28-year-old employee asked her boss to communicate his requests and criticisms more clearly and directly, defining duties and performance expectations, it started an escalating series of conversations that resulted in them walking out on the job. Now she thinks she was fired, but her boss is saying she resigned. Either way, the abrupt dismissal was especially confusing given her boss's previous praise of her professionalism, personality, and performance.

The kids may not be alright.

Older people have almost always despaired of the younger generation in one way or another. Now that internet culture has amplified everything to do with generational differences, though, things seem to have been taken to another level. First, the millennials got all the judgment for being obsessed with what happened on their phones (never mind the fact that Gen X and Boomers came to be even worse than them in this matter). Then Gen Z promised to be the first fully 'digital native' generation, and we got to see the effects of being raised on brainrot in real time. Now, Gen Alpha is an amplification of that.

We were all just kids once, and no doubt about it, everybody has acted kind of stupid in their time because of their age and lack of experience. However, it is important to show a willingness to learn and grow out of that. While this always comes more easily to some people than others, some are getting worried that the latest generations of teens and young adults are not interested in going in that direction. There is a difference between being inexperienced and just being totally inept.

You win some, you lose some, and usually that's fine. Then there are the food-lottery losses. Those that wait until you have planned an entire dinner, gone grocery shopping, lugged every bag home, washed your hands, tied back your hair, and started developing main character energy for your own cooking show.

When the grocery store gives you a decent avocado instead of a tiny green cannonball, the delivery order arrives with all its parts, or your leftovers have not developed a fluffy, furry personality overnight. These are small victories, and we take them where we can get them.

But when you're halfway through the recipe and the universe reveals that the bacon is 99% fat, or the chocolate you planned on melting for a cake is, for some reason, a powder. I, for one, would make the nearest food thermometer blow its cap just from the temperatures inside of me rising.

Was she right to tell him what's going on with his money?

Inheritance is one of those things that is not frequently discussed in polite society, and for good reasons. It's kind of a morbid reality that young people can come into a great sum of money after the passing of their grandparents or parents. No aging person wants their kids and grandkids to be waiting around for them to pass away, hungry to get a piece of the fortune they've been building up over the years. Putting a monetary value on your relationship with your familial elders eats away at your soul. It's best to try to enjoy the time you have with your elders for as long as you can, because once they're gone, you'll finally know that their presence was worth more than all the money in the world. 

If you come from a family without generational wealth, you might feel bitter about people who are able to finance their entire life on windfalls from inheritance. After all, someone who gets $2M from an eccentric uncle didn't work hard to achieve their riches. Even if they had a close relationship with their late family member, that's not tantamount to doing the work required to make $2M from nothing. Inheritance only really benefits the people who were set up to succeed in society from the day they were born. A ton of people who receive inheritances had their college tuition paid for by their parents, grew up upper-middle class, and would've been well-off financially even without receiving life-changing amounts of money from a loved one beyond the grave. 

Sometimes, people are jealous of the money that someone receives under horrible circumstances. The kids in this story just lost their parents, and even though their aunt is taking care of them, it seems like she might be after their money. What do you think?

Sometimes you have to make a big effort for something that you want.

There is this new trend of not forcing people to do things that they don't want to, which is excellent, but also if it's something that they NEED to do. We, humans, have obligations, things that we don't want to do at all, but we have to. Life is like that. You have to do things you don't want to, and you have to deal with it. You can't cry your way out of it or say no. That isn't an option. So you just do it and deal with it internally, as nobody cares if you want to do the thing or not. They just care that you do it. That is what it is like being an adult.

In the story below, we encounter a girl who I actually feel sorry for. She doesn't want to learn how to drive a car. She's afraid of it. Unfortunately, she has no way out of learning, as she needs to if she's going to move to her aunt's house. She HAS to learn. Even if she's afraid, even if she doesn't want to. She has time and resources to do so, but she can't wrap her head around it. And I get it. It's hard. But the only way that she gets to live with her aunt is by learning to drive. So she needs to weigh the choices and see if this fear is going to dictate her life or if she will.

She has another option, one she doesn't like. She can move to another family member's house. It's not ideal, and it would be better for her to live with her aunt. But that decision is completely up to her. Either she learns and gets what she wants, or she doesn't and deals with the consequences of it. She has to make that choice, not her fear, not her family. She has. And I'm sure that if she tries, she's going to succeed. So let's hope she ends up learning and living where she wants. 

An office managerial rom-com couldn't be better for the office culture

Look, if your managers have rose-tinted glasses on, trust me, you're gonna have a blast at your job, and it won't matter if your performance isn't the best; they'll be prone to forgiving you, so make sure you protect (and even encourage) any secret romance that might be flourishing in the higher spheres right now.

Also, with that, be prepared for their first fight and how all that negative energy will be transmitted to you. It will likely be a '500 Days of Summer' situation, but well, I wouldn't wish that upon my worst enemy, so I hope it's not.

Either way, it's funny that it's even happening; at least to me, some gossip to discuss with my teammates over long, boring work hours while sippin' on some disgusting coffee is the best thing that can happen. Plus, we can watch it live! And it's supposed to be secret! I mean, could it get any better? A soap opera director couldn't have written a juicier plot, and honestly, I kinda wish I was the protagonist.

Are we all thirdwheeling right now, or is it just me? Gosh, when is it going to be my turn? I'm waiting for my boss to hire a cute guy; that's my excuse. Having an office crush is the most effective motivation there is to put in the extra work, if you know what I mean. I'd be showing up with a full face of makeup at 7 am sharp, for sure.

Of course, there is the minor detail that this employee can't even ask a basic question because the two lovebirds are very distracted, loving each other, but isn't it better? Maybe he can even leave work early, and no one would tell, lol.

Desperate times call for desperate measures

I don't know if you've ever been there, but when you suddenly need money, everything becomes an opportunity to get it. That jacket that's been sitting in your closet for ages? Fair enough, it's time to (desperately) sell it. That present you didn't like? It's about time to return it.

It's not easy to be in a desperate economic situation, but in any case, that's not your friend's responsibility; you shouldn't make them 'pay' for that. There might not even be a problem asking them for the money if you need someone to lend it to you, but I don't think they should give you money just because the store refused to give it to you and only gave you store credit.

On the one hand, it's incredibly ungrateful and, dare I say, distasteful, but on the other hand, it just makes no sense.  

Is it normal to expect this from a friend who kindly gifted you something? Wouldn't it be better to just ask for the money if you need it than to make it about a gift? Is the gifter friend beeing too nice about it?

Looking for a job doesn't mean that you deserve the position.

If you were actively looking for a particular job in your field and around your city and you didn't realize there was an opening that perfectly fit your expectations, then you aren't looking the correct way at all. If I had a friend who had become a colleague, as we studied the same and we dedicate our lives to the same thing, and they got a job that is close to where I live, so now they would move closer, I would be thrilled. Your friend and colleague, whom you like (that's why he is your friend), is moving closer to you and got the job he wanted. If you aren't happy for him, then you seem more like a hater than an actual friend.

Friends get happy for their friends' achievements. But not u/Throwaway130491. He got jealous over her friend getting a great job. And what makes everything worse is that he started to blame other things, not to admit that the problem he has with his friend staying at his place is actually the fact that he is jealous that he got a job he thinks he deserves just because he needs it. Being out of a job is hard, and you can be having a particularly hard time with it. But that doesn't mean that you can be out of your mind. A job is a job. A friendship is more than that. There will be other openings.

What gets me the most about this situation is the fact that this person is sure that if his friend had told him about the job, then he would have gotten it. That is an assumption, not a fact. When you are looking for a job, you are the one in charge of getting the interviews, not your friends. Especially when they are also looking for opportunities. So take the L and move on. The friend is going to live closer, and this person is only thinking of what would have been but never will be. 

This has to be one of the most annoying things somebody can ask you

You are lying there, feeling just fine; you are finally relaxed after a long week of stress and drama. Suddenly, out of the blue, your boyfriend comes and asks you the most low-key insulting question, without you signaling anything in particular, and maybe while you were even feeling pretty: 'Are you ok?' 'You seem tired or stressed.' 'You look sick'.

Are you kidding me? You're left there, unable to snap back because they weren't being outwardly violent, but also feeling bad because the remarks were low-key insulting about your appearance or demeanor.

One time is ok; I can understand it. My face might not be looking its best, but constantly? Come on.

Looking at it from the outside, the boyfriend obviously has a personal issue or anxiety that he's trying to project onto her. The thing is, when you are in a relationship that works like this, it's very easy to get confused and to start asking yourself whether you might be the problem

Let's be clear: not every issue is solved solely by breaking up; there are a million things you can try before, but breaking up should always be on the table.

Nobody should try to put up with everything; some things are simply off the table and are the other person's problems, and they should solve them by themselves.

How hard can it be to follow a recipe?

All it takes is some basic reading comprehension and the ability to follow basic instructions. It's not like you even have to read the overly long personal anecdote at the top of the recipe blog, or even do that much critical thinking. All that a simple, well-written recipe needs is for the cook to pay attention long enough to get the critical parts right.

Sure, everybody who has ever cooked something has made their mistakes when trying to whip up a meal. It is only natural to get distracted, skip a crucial ingredient or step, and be left wondering why you ever trusted yourself to make this particular food at all. 

However, perspective is everything when it comes to the ups and downs of learning to make a meal. If you ever want to get better, you have to be humble and own the mistake. It happens to everyone! While it can be frustrating, it isn't worth being angry about it for too long, and if it is a problem with the recipe, you can move on to a new one.

We might think that this is basic common sense, but you wouldn't always think that to read the comment sections of recipes online. There always seems to be one outlier who insists that they did nothing wrong and somehow, they made something disgustingly inedible. It might be something to do with the weird substitution they decided on, but who is to know? If only they made it obvious to us.

 

What would it take for you to storm out of someone's wedding?

Weddings can be pressure cookers. They're expensive, big events that take a lot of personalities and egos and put them into one room. If there is tension in the family already, weddings can exacerbate it. This is why we hear so many stories of families going at it on someone's big day. This story was no exception. Sometimes you just don't get along with your in-laws. For whatever reason, you got off on the wrong foot, and it feels impossible to recover from. You wish you could set aside your differences for the sake of family harmony, but that seems impossible. You don't want to have to put up with someone who doesn't have a lot of respect for you, and you shouldn't have to. But what happens during family events when you're all expected to be there? Do you just swallow your true feelings for the sake of keeping the peace or do you let it all out and face the consequences? 

In a situation like this, it's not just the two of you who are in an argument that it affects. It affects the whole family. When you're trying to come together to have a nice time, all it takes is one person to ruin it for everyone. At a wedding, it's undoubtedly the happy couple's day. Whatever they say goes, and if you're going to get in the way of that, you should probably leave. But what if your leaving the event has a lot more effect on the rest of the party? Is it better to stay and be miserable or leave and risk making a big scene? If you can't be mature about something, then it's better to leave it where it is. Having a blowout argument with the bride on her wedding day is not in great taste, so the woman in this story probably did the right thing by leaving. Her family didn't think so, though. Keep reading for all the details of the story and decide what you think about it.

I'm starting to believe some managers simply don't like us and will find any reason to make it our responsibility

It's really not that hard to believe; it's just like with teachers: it's not that you failed the exam because you didn't study and spent your afternoons playing Xbox; it's because they didn't like you! No, but seriously, how do you justify writing up somebody who arrives 5 minutes early every day?

This can change depending on the culture, but pretty much universally, being late is arriving AFTER the time you're supposed to start. This employee not only arrives on time, but she's also arriving early, so how can the manager keep a straight face while telling her what he told her? That's why I say he might be coming up with a random excuse just to push her to quit. Those things happen.

She posted this in the subreddit /AmIOverreacting. Do you think that's the case?