Call me old-fashioned, or archaic, but I need to keep the people in my life firmly within their respective categories. Call me a categorizer.
So this story makes me uncomfortable on about four different levels. Office romance is already messy, but this one comes wrapped in a power imbalance, workplace favoritism, and a side of unpaid emotional labor.

Boss hires a secretary, starts acting like the office is a bar with fluorescent lighting, and before long, the whole place is watching late-night drinks, visible love bites, and affection-showing sessions in the same space where people sort orders. When staff raise concerns, the response is not to clean things up, it is to quietly fire half the team and promote the secretary to running operations.

The newly promoted favorite starts shifting attention to a coworker who has already been told there is nothing going on between her and the boss. Lines blur, a few more affection-showing sessions happen, feelings get tangled, and then the ladder suddenly looks a lot steeper. Raises only come after threats to quit. Extra responsibilities come with no real training. Meanwhile, the woman who walked in as support staff now gets overtime to sit and chat with leadership, first pick of good projects, and zero pressure to help when things fall behind.

This warehouse employee was labeled "difficult" by his manager after he pointed out serious safety concerns.

Of course, if this were a healthy workplace environment in which the safety of employees was prioritized over everything else, then this worker would be praised for having come forward with legitimate issues. After all, the blocked exits and broken equipment that clearly were ever-present in this place of work should have been examined, and the worker should have been commended for raising his voice in support of safer conditions for everyone.

Instead, his manager chose to write the employee up in his file for being difficult and essentially insubordinate. It just goes to show that it's so much easier for upper management to reprimand an employee for raising valid concerns rather than actually take a closer look at the legitimacy of those concerns. When this manager should have been trying to rectify the situation in a way that would be beneficial to his employees, he instead opted to ignore the concerns and condescend.

Now, here's a form of petty revenge that we can get behind. If you were a kid who grew up treasuring your 50+ page sticker book, then this colorful story is for you! There's just something about those whimsical, sticky-backed images that brought us kids so much joy…and who says that thrill, or use, needs to be limited to ten-year-olds? Maybe stickers can serve a purpose far beyond filling flip-file pages or decorating the apple upon our laptops…Perhaps they could become the perfect 'weapon' in a major act of petty revenge? 

This man would know, as the perpetrator of this sticky crime… Just days before this driver was getting ready to sell his pretty beat-up Chevy Aveo, he was sitting in a parking lot. Within a matter of minutes, a woman drove up to the parking spot next to him (though some could have sworn she was aiming directly for his parking spot) and ended up denting his car's passenger side…But before he could confront her, she ran off, refusing to take accountability. So instead of keying her car, he came up with a much more unique form of revenge…and started collecting piles of the ugliest 50-cent stickers from some old machine, that he'd use to decorate her car as a declaration of thanks… 

If you are currently in the job market looking to get hired, just remember that an interview goes both ways. They are seeing if you are a good fit for the job, and YOU are also seeing if the job is a good fit for you. So when this person laughed so hard in a job interview that she left hoping to not get an offer, we actually applaud it. 

 

This person had been unemployed and searching for a job for two months already. When they were offered an interview from a company that has a 2.1 rating on Glassdoor, they knew it was most likely not going to be a good fit, but it's still good to practice your interview skills. Plus, who knows, maybe they would actually end up being chill! Spoiler alert: They did NOT end up being chill in the slightest. This entitled "company" had the audacity to offer a minimum wage job that demanded almost 80 hours out of your week. You also would have to pay $700 a month for your own health insurance "benefit" (Do you see any benefit there?), and do "mandatory overtime" every Saturday that did not give overtime payment… Like, girl, what?? The math ain't mathin'…

 

What would you do if a company was saying red flag after red flag during your job interview? Would you have also laughed out loud in their faces? We sure hope so. 

Every workplace is different, every office has its own look and facilities, but one thing must exist in every single workplace, no matter what: A fridge.

It doesn't matter what you do for work, or where you do it, if you are there full-time, for 8 hours a day, then you are entitled to lunch. And in order for you to each lunch, you must have somewhere cold to preserve your food. It is the bare minimum for a workplace to have a decent area for employees to take a break, and that includes a fridge.

The warehouse workers in the story below are not exempt from this basic workplace condition, and yet they have found themselves without a fridge at work. Why? because their boss went ahead and sold their fridge, without so much as a word to them about it.

So when these employees came to work one morning, they saw their fridge being taken away, and when they asked their boss about a replacement, he came up with a few conditions that proved that he does not intend to get his workers what they rightfully deserve.

Every so often, karma has its way of doing the work for you.

This bartender found himself regularly dealing with an entitled customer, who would put everyone through one complaint after another only to never show gratitude. She never even tipped her servers despite constantly dining at this establishment during her weekly routine.

Unfortunately, she would end up getting the same treatment from her bartender where she least expected it… outside of the restaurant.

This all happened without planning on the bartender's part, but in this tight-knit community, people were bound to run into each other constantly. This turn of events was, in some ways, inevitable, which just goes to show that this entitled customer should never have chosen to make enemies with this guy in the first place.

One day, he ran into her at her place of work, which was at the local mall. When she made the mistake of giving him far more change than he deserved, the bartender was on his way to do the right thing and return the extra money, until she decided to show her true colors once again. That outburst made him change his mind…

Losing is often just 'borrowing' with minimal care and consideration involved…Well at least that's how this man sees it! His neighbor's daily hobby seems to be walking on over to his side of the fence, requesting new items to borrow. Except his definition of borrowing has forgotten the part when one returns the items. So yes, as you'd expect, there are a lot of awkward morning 'hello, do you still have my screwdriver back there?'

I guess that's the price you pay when you know that your neighbor can't keep your tools safe, lending them to other people without your permission, yet you still lend it to them! It might just be showing them that you don't really care about whether or not they treat your belongings like precious gold, or some of Tuesday night's left-over Pad Thai…But that's a boundary for him to decide on…And the boundary he has chosen seems to be in the form of petty revenge…many people's go-to! 

Whatever happened to the concept of trusting your employees to get their work done at their own pace?

There were glimpses of productivity within workplace environments over the past several years, as workers began to demand more autonomy and flexibility in order to fulfill their responsibilities while maintaining a healthier work-life balance. Of course, several industries and companies were resistant to this cultural shift, but in 2020, those adjustments were deemed necessary.

However, in the years that followed, a steady cultural regression ensued. That certainly was the case for this fully remote employee, who always excelled and exceeded when it came to his work responsibilities. Still, he desired a sense of flexibility to be able to meet those goals without going insane.

That distance, trust, and respect from upper management fell apart after they decided to enforce a new system that tracked mouse and keyboard activity for remote employees. Let's just say that this method of monitoring employees was not well-received.

An irreplaceable employee was told that anyone could do his job, so after he was wrongfully fired, he let their biggest client in on his departure. As it turns out, this $75,000/month cash-cow client was unwilling to work with anyone else in the company, and decided that, since their man on the inside was leaving, so were they. 

As the employee walked out with his head held high, management shoved their foot in their mouths, rueing the day that they questioned the necessity of the hardest-working employee. Without him, they were in some deep water. 

Even if you move next to their quietest, most respectable neighbors in the whole world, you never know how long that peaceful existence will last. Any day, these perfect neighbors might decide they want to move, and in their place will arrive the neighbors everyone fears–a loud, young family.

In fact, the exact thing happened to my family last year. For years, they lived next to a lovely, elderly couple who never made a sound. Until the couple decided to move closer to their kids, and sold their house to a family with three kids who never shut up. 

Seriously, while most kids spend their time at home, playing video games and scrolling through TikTok, these kids spend all their time kicking a ball at my parents' fence, and my parents are getting really tired of it.

You can never know when the same thing might happen to you and you will find yourself trading your perfect neighbors with neighbors who think they are entitled to roam freely in your backyard, like the neighbors in the story below. Keep scrolling to read what happened after they asked to use their neighbor's backyard as they pleased.

This retail manager penned a strongly worded note to her staffers, but perhaps she didn't think through the implications of telling them they could be "promoted to customer." 

It's no secret that the holiday season is a stressful one for retail workers at stores of all sizes. I know what you're thinking: of course it's stressful when everyone is piled in to get their gifts before the holidays. Yes, customers are a huge part of why working retail is the worst. But in these modern days, and for the last few decades, there's been an outsized interest in getting customers to sign up for email programs. This is what the manager in this story is upset about, and the pressure that bosses like her place on employees is enormous. 

This manager seems to be under pressure from her boss, but the way she's insisting that her employees follow suit is rather off-putting! Commenters agreed that this style of communication wouldn't help anyone. Instead of threatening to promote their workers to customers, maybe they could make some kind of incentive program instead. Like, maybe you still need to get 5 sign-ups per shift, but if you get 50 sign-ups in a month, you get a gift card or something. That would probably never happen, knowing how stingy many owners are, but I just think it would work to raise morale and give the workers something to look forward to… rather than just daydreaming about the day they finally promote themselves to customer. 

Oh, good old nepotism. We can try to escape it, but it will most likely follow us wherever we go. We can't even pretend that it was a concept established with the evolution of the workplace…Nepotism is a concept that has been around since the cavemen had to choose who to share their hunt with. Whether we admit it to ourselves or not. We're not saying it's fair, in fact, we're saying quite the opposite. The more you notice a concept's presence within other elements of your life, the better you'll understand it, and hence find the best solutions to deal with it accordingly. 

This warehouse worker cannot ignore his coworker's work ethic, or in this case, lack thereof…He shows up late for work daily and barely lifts a finger, thinking his behaviour and chronic laziness should be excused, simply because he's the cousin of the regional manager…Let's calm down, he's not The Pope. When the other staff also began complaining about him, he decided to report it, filing a warning with HR. Having previously documented every move he made as proof…Let's just say this warehouse worker started reviewing his CV very soon after the regional manager called him in for a "little chat" regarding his favorite cousin. 

Getting fired from a job has a sense of uncertain finality to it, as if the known path you had been following out into the darkness has ended, and all around you is blackness with no certain way forward. Sure, your job wasn't always rewarding, your boss only cared about the money you were making him, and there wasn't really that much room for professional growth and personal development… But at least it was familiar and relatively comfortable. Although you can't see the pathway at the moment, before long you'll find your way.

When a company fires someone abruptly, it's portrayed as if some calculated decision is being made words like "fit" and "timing" get bandied about as if there is some kind of hard evidance supporting them. But the minute they start calling you for lost passwords and processes, and just generally trying to get you to explain your job to them, you have to start wondering why they thought they could get on without you in the first place. 

This worker experienced something like this when they found themselves suddenly fired unceremoniously right as their PTO was set to start. A process that seemed calm and calculated during their dismissal changed rather quickly once they started receiving the frantic messages, not even 24 hours afterward, asking them to return their equipment. It's a bit like that ex calling you late at night, a few days later, to get you to help them move some furniture. 

Here's the thing: if the owner of your ex-employer contacts you trying to schedule an urgent meeting, you really should just ignore it. While you might hope that they've had some revelation that they need you after all, it's more than likely that they'll find one last way to blame you for their problems one last time. 

You'd think that they would have thought about all of this beforehand, and at this point, the (now ex) employee had already left for their vacation they had already planned, so their ex-employer would just have to wait.

This receptionist at a veterinary clinic was wondering where her coworker Janelle had been disappearing to after clocking in every morning.

It turns out that Janelle liked to do her morning makeup while on the clock. After showing face briefly upon arrival, she would return to her car and spend the next 45 minutes to an hour applying foundation and doing her lashes. 

This would not necessarily be a problem if activity was not busy, but it turns out that at this local clinic, the busiest times are during those early hours in the morning. 

Between scheduling appointments and dealing with patients directly, it's not exactly an easy job for one receptionist to do on their own. That's why the manager requires two folks to work behind the front desk at any given time.

This author was now handling all those front desk duties and essentially two jobs at once while Janelle was wasting time in her car applying a fresh face.

It got to the point where the author couldn't take it anymore and decided to confront her manager about Janelle's daily disappearances. Unfortunately, her manager's response was not exactly the kind of reaction she was hoping for…

This manager basically pulled out the old you are not obsessed enough with your job speech and expected it to land like helpful feedback instead of a walking red flag. The contract engineer shows up, does the work, hits what needs to be hit, and gets told the issue is not competence, it is that everything feels like just doing tasks. What the manager actually wants is someone who breathes rebar, dreams in deadlines, and treats every project like a personality trait.

From the worker's side, it is a lot simpler. The job is fine. The rent needs paying. The brain, however, is mostly busy with Kendo competitions and a cosplay deadline in six months. Work gets a reasonable amount of energy. Sword fighting and crafting angel armor get the rest. That balance makes sense in any universe where people are allowed to be three-dimensional and not simply a company-branded hoodie with a pulse.

Trying to return a dish is not a pleasant act for most people, but some people just get a kick from arguing with customer service, any and all kinds. But this one act takes the cake, or more specifically, has the cake and eats it too, because marching back in with a third of the box and a speech about standards turns the whole thing into performance art. A small local chain owner covers a shift, serves the food, and then gets told over the phone that the boneless are burned beyond saving, all while remembering exactly what left the kitchen.

From there it turns into the usual hungry theater. Customer walks in with a container that looks empty in spirit if not in fact, swears only one tragic piece was tasted, then launches into a monologue about how the girlfriend could not eat a single bite. The owner points at the obvious math on the plate and suddenly the story gets shaky. Hard to sell the idea that nobody could touch the food when most of it is clearly already digested.

Some people will take, take, then take again if it means they don't have to exercise the part of their brain that's capable of critical thinking. In some cases, these individuals lack the ability to do so from the outset. That's why it's important to lead with kindness, even when you think that someone is trying to purposely slight you.

Take your neighbors, for example. There needs to be some level of trust established between you and them. Assuming someone is out to get you is a rookie mistake; this leads to unnecessary tension that could have been cleared up with a simple note or text message, allowing everyone some clarity as a result.

That being said… It's challenging to write off repeated behavior. When you feel like you can't confront, say, a new neighbor, for example, you have to ask someone who is in charge of your property (if that isn't already you).

The new neighbor in the story below has been using another resident's garbage bin, so much so that the resident cannot fit their own trash in the container. How do you reconcile someone dominating a space that is reserved for you? Scroll to read the full story below.

I have never keyed anyone's car, but I've definitely met people who deserve it, as I am sure everyone has. Some people, especially drivers, simply need to learn a lesson that will teach them road etiquette, and if you have a key, it can be hard to avoid using it as a lesson tool.

But even though I have met people who deserve it, it doesn't mean I should key their car, right?

The resident in the story below didn't even deserve it, but they still got their car keyed. It happened after a stranger parked their car in their private parking spot, which forced the resident to block that car as they parked in their other spot. When they got to their car the morning after, their car was completely keyed. 

This led the resident to call a tow truck to remove the strange car, but that was not the last this resident heard from the vandalizing thief. The person behind it even had the audacity to blame the resident for blocking and towing their car, as if the resident was the one in the wrong…

Scroll down to read the rest of the story.

When this rental car customer tried to return his vehicle, the employees were unhelpful — and they tried to make him keep this expensive car for another extra day. 

If you've ever rented a car, you know that these things come with a lot of paperwork and red tape. You reserve a car, but when you get to the rental location, sometimes they don't even have that car for you. If you thought you were getting a certain car, whoops, they don't have it, and now you're in an ancient car that smells musty and looks like it hasn't been driven in years. Once you actually do get out on the road, you have to be aware that you're paying a few cents per mile to drive this thing. And maybe you've heard that advice about photographing the whole car before you ever drive it out of the lot. Apparently, some rental locations will try to falsely claim that their customers dirtied up the car, or got a scratch on the fender, just because they know the customer can't prove otherwise. It's a whole hassle!

This person encountered some rather unhelpful employees, and you can be the judge about whether or not this guy did the right thing. Check out the full story below!

It's always amusing when bosses act surprised when their employees call then out on their nonsense.

In this instance, we have an employee at an engineering job who was already earning significantly less than the average worker at his level. Still, he was relatively new to the workforce and needed the experience, so he stayed at the company. At the end of each year, he received a standard raise that tended to reflect the rising cost of living in his area and then some.

This year, however, the company decided to manipulate their standard cost of living increase and keep the author's salary at what was technically minimum wage. That was the final straw for this guy, who proceeded to march right into his boss's office to confront him on his lack of an expected raise.