It's like they're trying to get their employees to quit!

If I were a manager and I wanted to encourage my employees to quit so I didn't have to fire them, there are a couple of things I would do right away. I would make sure they have extremely high expectations placed on them that even the most hard-working employee couldn't meet without hours of unpaid overtime. I would cut their hours so they cannot make a living wage, even if they beg and beg to be put on the schedule more often. If those things don't work, there are plenty of other ways to get people to want to quit! Luckily for my coworkers, I'm not an evil person, and I wouldn't do either of those things, even if someone asked me to. I think it's so cowardly to cut somebody's hours and hope they quit instead of just firing them like you want to. Sure, you might have to pay out unemployment or severance packages, but at least you can sleep at night knowing that you didn't intentionally cause someone else harm at the workplace. 

Unfortunately, the manager in this story doesn't have the same ethics. One worker posted to r/antiwork to share his story of his manager putting employees in a genuinely dangerous situation while trying to force them out of the workplace. While commenters gave him good advice as to how to deal with this situation, it's hard not to be sad about the fact that this is even legal.

Never underestimate the power of being nice to your server.

Anyone with common sense can understand that jobs that involve serving the general public can be pretty tough, mainly because of the people who seem to have no common sense whatsoever. What is even worse is those who clearly know better, but decide not to behave better because of whatever petty vendetta they happen to have going on.

For those who work in hospitality, healthcare, or customer service, it is usually just a part of their work that they have no choice but to deal with. When the customer is always right, taking too strong a stand against their behavior can put a much-needed job on the line.

However, there are times when the opportunity presents itself to safely teach a customer a lesson. While it might not make them learn in the long run, it is satisfying to bring these kinds of people down a peg. At the very least, the employee may not have to deal with the delight of their custom again. In hospitality in particular, it is wise to remember that the service that a customer receives is a privilege and not a right.

Those dreadful family gatherings where everyone is suddenly interested in your love life

I don't know if it's just me, but I'm always on this side of family gatherings, and I have to say It's genuinely soul-crushing, and it's something that has to stop.

It's enough to have an entire society telling you what you should or shouldn't have accomplished by a certain age; we don't need our closest family members repeating the message.

Quite frankly, the message itself is dated. In the best-case scenario, the person receiving it genuinely doesn't want a partner or isn't looking for one, so the comment lands on deaf ears. But what happens when someone who is actively looking for a partner and can't find it has to listen to something like that?

Whatever happened to being kind? Do those people really think they are helping us find a partner by rushing us or saying that we can't do it because we're not pretty enough or are not trying hard enough?

I don't think commenting on anyone's relationship status is a good thing if it's not something the person being questioned generated themselves.

There is nothing worse than feeling lonely and rejected in the place you should feel protected and cherished. We all have our failings and our pains, and if we really see someone struggling in an area of their lives, we should try to find a way to help them, not mock them for 'failing', really.

Also, 'failing' for who? Who installed those standards and time limits in the first place? I'm not going to say she should 'cut everyone off', because I know that's extreme, but what would you do in her situation? Because I know trying to be strong isn't enough; those comments hurt even if you have the healthiest self-esteem.

The best part of being a boss is blaming your mistakes on your employees. Isn't that great?

Think about it. You have a few employees under your wing who take your instructions and follow your lead when it comes to getting work done in your department. For all intents and purposes, they must listen to everything you say and work accordingly. What a fun power trip, are we right?

Not to mention, having people working for you means that you can throw them under the bus whenever you feel like it: missed a deadline? Blame it on the new hire. Sent a client the wrong document? Tell them you weren't even the one to make the document. Are you behind on all your tasks? Report to HR that it's some random employee's fault. You cannot go wrong if everyone thinks you did nothing wrong. And if your employees try to claim otherwise, well, it's their word against yours, and you are the boss.

If we were to step inside this boss's mind, we imagine his thoughts would sound something like what is said above. He had no problem disappearing for over 6 weeks with no explanation to his employees, and then blaming the team's poor performance on one of his top employees. Since he works remotely, the only one who actually noticed his absence was this employee, and while the poor worker tried to hold the fort while the boss was gone, they still received a warning from HR accusing them of a lack of productivity.

Obviously, the one who dropped the ball is the boss, but the employee would have to work really hard to prove they are not the one to blame. It takes a lot of work to get HR to take an employee's side over management's side, which means the employee could use all the evidence and documentation they can find. Will they be able to pull it off? Keep reading to learn.

What obligations do you have for someone you hired?

Most would say that since you got the person the job, you don't owe them anything afterwards. But if you know the person outside of work, you might feel differently.

Let's back up a little.

Imagine you work in a job you actually enjoy, with people you truly like and doing something that you really care about. Now, imagine a friend asks you to help another friend of theirs get hired at your workplace, so you do your best to help. You make the connections, you talk this person up, and you get them hired. So far, so good.

But since this person is just a friend of a friend, you might not know how they actually function in a workplace, and since you got them a job, you are about to find out. Turns out, they are not the best employee out there. They are lazy, have an issue with consistency, and often get distracted. Still, they manage to keep their job at your workplace for 4 years before their mistakes become too much for the company to deal with.

This leads you to find out that this friend of a friend, who has also been your employee for the past 4 years, is getting fired in a few days. Which leads you to question: Do you have a certain obligation to warn them beforehand, or should you just let it play out and stay away from the drama as much as possible?

While it makes sense for you to feel responsible for this worker, giving them a heads up might actually lead to more trouble, which is why most of the commenters on r/managers advised the manager to keep quiet and not warn this friend of a friend about their upcoming departure from the company. 

Saving money by avoiding food isn't an okay practice when you have guests.

Technically, it wouldn't be okay either if you were the only one starving, but at least you wouldn't be forcing other people to join you on the ride.

Maybe the couple could've told everyone who was invited that this is what they were going to be dealing with. Evidently, they knew that saying it out loud would've caused controversy, so they didn't. Maybe if they had told everybody, nobody would've even shown up to the party, and they knew that.

It's not that your friends only love you for what you can serve them, but it's normal that after 6 hours of dancing, they are hungry and they might want to leave to eat something (pizza).

I mean, they were clearly willing to pay for their food, so maybe they could've charged for it; at least they could have made that option available.

In situations like these, we see that for many people it's more important to organize the event and take pictures than to actually enjoy the party or entertain their guests. What's it all for in the end? For Instagram?

Anyway, let's read the story and conclude for ourselves whether the guest is exaggerating or this is a case of ridiculous priorities. Would you have done the same?

Maybe don't plan your financial choices with somebody else's money.

Something that is not exactly common in other countries that aren't the U.S. is getting to choose how much money and what of your things goes to whom. In most countries, if you pass away, your children get your inheritance. Maybe you can add somebody else to your will, but you cannot get your children out of your testament, at least not without proof that they don't deserve it. I think that getting to choose who gets what is great. It gives the person who has the money and property the right to give them to the person they want to, the person they think deserves it, not just who the law decides. But I also understand how it can be problematic.

If you don't have a good relationship with your children, it's not that weird not wanting them to =get your money when you are out of this world. You can think they don't deserve it. After all, those things that someone will call inheritance are your things. You worked hard for them. Nobody else. So maybe you should have the right to decide who you want to keep them with one day. I also understand that maybe you weren't close to your parents, or at least not as close as your siblings. And getting removed from their will because of it and favoring your sibling may be really hard for someone. Is not even about the money. Is about how displaced you may feel in that case.

We could discuss several things about the story. Like the fact that the father is expecting their child to keep a secret from their sibling about something of utter importance. But I think the worst part of all this is actually how the sibling is planning how they will use the money once they receive it, even though the parent is still alive. I think that no one should be making financial decisions with money that isn't theirs. And even less to be assuming that they owe an inheritance just because they are family. I would suggest this sibling concentrate on what they have instead of waiting for some money that is never going to come their way. 

Picture a company that treats office space like a budget airline. Everyone gets assigned a seat until they don't.

Then passengers fight over overhead bins and tray tables while first class stays empty. The executives keep their private offices. Those offices sit vacant most days because leadership apparently does not need to follow the same attendance policy they designed.

There's no fun that's as fun as mandatory fun. Especially when you have serious personal concerns that you can't help but let your mind wander off to. When the last thing you want to be doing is spending your evenings putting on a performance tor your boss and coworkers.

Really, the words like "compulsory," "mandatory," or even "obligatory" should never be used to describe "fun" unless there's an "is not" in there somewhere.

Maybe not everything is a right or wrong situation.

I love finding stories that make people disagree about who is wrong and who is right. We usually read about clients throwing temper tantrums in stores, or entitled coworkers who use other employees for their benefit. In those stories is always so obvious who is right and who is wrong. Maybe someone will disagree, but they are usually unanimous in their opinions. I like finding stories like the one from u/thatonestrangekid where we can discuss different points of view about a simple situation.

Just to get a brief summary, what happened is that a group of friends usually hangs out at a house to play Dungeons and Dragons. The DND (for short) Master is the one who hosts. He told everyone what time to be there and everything. One couple that was invited to the gathering got there 15 minutes early. They knocked three times before the master got out the door. He was severely angry at this, as they had arrived too early and he was still getting ready. After that event, every other time they gathered, this master would send very explicit messages reminding the attendees that they had to arrive on time, not before. Now the couple thinks that all the messages are a little too much for just one time they were early.

Now, we can say a lot of things about this. First that comes to mind is that if you are early, you shouldn't be knocking on the door multiple times. If you are early, knock one time and go wait in your car if no one gets out. Secondly, the master is taking it a little too far. They were just 15 minutes early, not an hour. And lastly, even though I get that this is too much with all the messages, I think the couple still doesn't get that being very early is also not being on time. But what do you think? Is there someone wrong and someone right? What would you have done if people arrived too early to your gathering? Is being too early not being on time?  

I get the prepping for the apocalypse thing, but maybe just buy groceries for the stash AND normal use.

I get that couples get into arguments. It's part of the deal. Especially when you are living with someone, is common to have issues between each other. It's normal and even healthy. But how the people that are part of the relationship react to the problem is the real question. If it's a debate where they try to compromise and pay attention to what the other person has to say about the matter, then I think that the discussion is going to be great for the couple. But if they get defensive and start blaming the other person for everything that's wrong with the relationship, then maybe break up.

You don't have to have a boyfriend. If he's not treating you right or how you think you deserve, then maybe give up. You can talk and try to fix things. But if every discussion just creates a horrible environment where you feel sad and lonely, then you don't need to stay with that person. Relationships can end, and it's not the end of the world. Is normal to have issues. It's normal to stop loving, is normal to break up. It's a mess up to stay with someone even though they mistreat you and make you unhappy. You deserve better than that.

So maybe the story below is just about how a boyfriend is so obsessed with having a stash of food that he can't comprehend that her girlfriend wanted water, and as there wasn't any, she wanted to take one of the cases from the emergency stash. But I don't think that the problem is just that. I think the real issue is about the lack of understanding and the poor communication that this couple is facing. It's not about "the thing". It's about how the boyfriend dealt with it, and, in this case, it was awful. So maybe it's time to take a look at your relationship and evaluate whether you want to stay in it.

Everything offline is cool right now

This is so true. I mean, I got my job by applying online, but that's beside the point. Most of the jobs I got in my entire life were found outside the internet. And it's not because the internet didn't exist (I'm not that old, thanks). It's because the selection process becomes much easier when the people who are going to hire you see how you present yourself and interact beforehand.

Right now, companies have AIs reading through thousands of AI-made resumes, and it's much harder to be selected, even if you are the most qualified. 

This is only random Reddit advice, you can take it or leave it, but I think there is some truth to it. Of course, it doesn't work for every field. 

In some companies, you can't even get to the front desk without being stopped by security, so you'd have to slide your resume under the door and hope for the best, and that makes absolutely no sense. But for a lot of industries, applying in person still works just fine. 

To the 'in-person job applying' theory, I'd add that asking your friends and people you know about open positions you might be interested in has a much higher success rate at getting an interview than applying online.

I think this will be a tendency going forward; anything offline will be considered of much higher quality. 

If you can prove you wrote your resume without using AI, you will instantly be considered a genius. If you have enough social skills to introduce yourself at a company and leave your resume, you will make a great first impression.

It always works like that: things that become scarce become more valuable, more chic, more elegant. So if you're looking for a job right now, I wouldn't completely rule out applying online, of course, but I would definitely ask as many people as I can about open positions at their jobs, and I'd leave my resume in person everywhere I can, especially if it is a small business and the owners are there.

Hey, I and OP might be helping everyone get ahead of the curve here, right?

She just tried to do the correct thing and got fired!

Doing the right thing sometimes puts you in a worse position than doing something that you know is wrong. This story is crazy, and it got me thinking about all the times when people do the right thing, what they "have to do", and it ends up making things bad for them and not for the person that did the incorrect thing in the first place. This applies especially to work issues. There are millions of stories of employees going up to management to complain about some coworker behavior or their lack of work, and they end up getting a target on THEIR back instead of the coworker that was not doing their job correctly. Is this a thing of bad management? Is it just easier to blame the person that points out the issue instead of the person who causes it? Are the people in management hiding something?

I find it so sad the fact that stuff like this is always happening and nobody seems to care enough. You are putting your job more on the line by being a "snitch" than by behaving incorrectly. Your coworker may be stealing from the company, and when you point it out, people start to treat YOU differently. And I mean that in a bad way. They will isolate you and stop trusting you with anything. While they will steal, be friendly to the thief. Even the company will side with them under an invented principle such as "not wanting to cause drama".

It's awful how some managers and companies will prefer not confronting a theft over losing a good employee that was so loyal they even tell the truth about some coworker's suspicious or improper activity. That is what makes employees keep their mouths shut when things like this happen. It seems better not to get involved and just let it slip. Which, in the end, just causes irreparable damage to the company and the way employees perceive said company. I still think that it is the correct thing to be truthful and bring things like this to management. But I wouldn't blame somebody else for not doing it. 

If you fire an employee out of nowhere, then don't expect them to do you a favor. They don't owe the company ANYTHING!

If you got fired out of nowhere, and a couple of days later you were asked to help out the company by doing something only you know how. How would you react? I would ask if that task would be completed by me as an assistant or consultant and how much the pay would be. I don't think that even when a company mistreated and didn't care for you. I do believe that work connections can get you really far and that a cordial relationship with everyone who has employed you or been a coworker is not only useful but also preferred. Is important to be nice and take some advantage of the fact that you connect with people in your field.

After working 27 years in the same place, helping coworkers, and becoming the person everyone relied on, falling behind for one shift was apparently enough to turn those years of dedication into a very loud goodbye…

There're so many wrong things with the story posted by u/AndromedaRed9 that I don't know where to start. I'll say, though, congrats to this woman for staying at the same job for almost 30 years. That's a big accomplishment only a few people can say they have on their record. Sadly, after those long years of service, it's very hard to see that she will probably quit her job after the horrible way the manager treated her for falling behind on her shift while helping the new worker.

If you ask my own thoughts on this matter… well, sit down and grab a drink cause I'm about to start venting.

Firstly, was this a mistake? Meaning, she fell behind on her shift because she was there helping this man; was that a mistake that she had to avoid, considering her years of experience? After 27 years, I'm sure this was not the first time she had to help a new employee understand his responsibilities and walk him through them multiple times. For working in a factory, it sounds like it could be something pretty common. 

Now, maybe the company wanted to fire Janice, but didn't know how to do it. Mainly because she's been working there for a long time, so she knows EXACTLY how to get things done and how everything works. But also, after 27 years, it's a very expensive and complicated process to fire her… so maybe, by posting that horrible thing and talking nonsense about her, they make her quit rather than fire her… and BINGO, their problem is solved. 

Of course, this is awful behavior, and a very childish one, if you ask me. No way posting something that every single employee in the factory is going to get access to, talking horrible things about one of your most valuable employees, is something that I will approve. Sounds something very mean, immature, and just awful.

What is the point of keeping an employee who fails to do their job?

We are firm believers in giving someone a real, proper chance when they start a new job. We hate it when we hear of employees getting fired a week into a new role because they didn't live up to some unrealistic expectations from management. Getting good at a job requires proper guidance and hard work, which cannot happen in a matter of days. It takes time, patience, and effort from all parties involved.

That being said, there should be a time frame by which a new employee should be measured. While you can't expect an employee to become excellent at their job within a week, if they still struggle after two years, it might not be the right job for them. Keeping an employee for that long while they fail to meet expectations is as odd as firing someone as soon as they were hired. Give it time, sure, but too much time is also a real issue.

The manager who shared the story below on r/managers on Reddit has raised some questions regarding their inability to fire an employee who's been underperforming for the past two years. No matter what this manager did, the employee refused to get better at her job. She doesn't want to receive feedback; she hates being given tasks, and she fully knows this is damaging her place in the company, yet she doesn't care. 

Recently, she asked her manager to attend a training on critical thinking, which the company would have to fund. But why would they spend money on an employee who is basically one foot out of the door? She clearly isn't good at her job; why should her manager pay for more training?

But then again, if the manager doesn't want to give training a try, why didn't they fire the employee already? What is the point in keeping someone who can't and won't do better?

Sometimes you have to do some uncomfortable things to make yourself clear on your boundaries.

People will sometimes act as if they understood you when you explained a boundary, but then continue to act the way they were acting even though you explained it made you uncomfortable. Why is that? Are they dumb? Do they just not care? Are they bad people? I'm actually not really sure why this happens, but I know it is extremely frustrating. Sometimes the worst part about putting boundaries is not the conversation you have to have, but the fact that you have to reinstate them every two minutes because people aren't able to actually and fully understand them.

I hate the people that have this attitude of not really paying attention to you or what you say. Or maybe they do pay attention and just decide to do the complete opposite of what you asked for. I don't know. But this is especially frustrating when it happens at work or with coworkers. You have to see that people every single day, so if they don't stop doing that thing that bothers you, then it would mean that you will have to put up with that thing every single day, for years.

This story in u/JustNoCoworker is a great example of how to deal with this kind of person, especially when you have to work with them every day. The employee was tired of her coworker putting every work phone call in speaker mode in the office, as it made other people able to hear it and she felt like she wouldn't be able to speak freely. So she gave her coworker a taste of her own medicine. She decided to vent all these coworker office secrets so that everyone was able to hear them, and she would finally understand how she feels when she puts the phone calls on speaker mode. It worked. So good for her! So maybe this is the way to deal with people like this: a taste of their own medicine works like a charm. 

Working from home blurs the line between what is work and what is the employee's personal life. This skew in work-life balance can have knock-on effects on the rest of your life if you're not careful. But how do you handle these types of situations? 

Well, CCing an upper manager who has a handle on these types of things should do the trick. This does, of course, rely on there being some leader in the organization with their head screwed on straight. 

Why should he have to pay for everything? 

One thing I'll never understand about straight relationship dynamics is the expectation that the man always pays for everything. If I were in that dynamic on either side, I'd be so stressed out. If I had to pay for everything, I'd be eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for every meal in between dates, and hoping that I could save a little bit of money for retirement. If I were always being wined and dined, I would be stressed on my partner's behalf. After all, I don't want to be a princess who expects fancy dates all of the time! I don't want my partner to see me as a financial liability. 

I think it's important that each partner be considerate of the other's financial situation. You might think it's reasonable for your partner to take you out to dinner every single weekend, but it's probably not if they're making $50K. You don't have to do walks in the park for every date, but if you demand luxury and your partner can't afford that, it's not going to be good for your relationship in the long run. 

The boyfriend in this story makes a great salary, but he has very little to show for it because he's been providing a pretty comfortable life for his girlfriend for the past seven years. It's not like she makes no money. She makes $80K and has $50K in savings, but she still wants her boyfriend to pay for her son's sports, along with nearly everything else in the household. 

AI hasn't yet lived up to its promise of revolutionizing the workforce and replacing entire industries of workers. But that hasn't stopped eager managers everywhere from proposing doing exactly this. But just what exactly are they hoping to accomplish by hanging this over their employees' heads?

Nothing makes you feel good like hearing leadership actively disparaging your work. Or being cynical about achievements. This usually occurs when a leader feels insecure about their lack of productive knowledge. That or annual requests for raises

Especially when it is a new leader hired externally who, for some reason, feels a need to put down veteran staff. It's almost like they're insecure about their own lack of experience and feel a need to make that experience less important. Funny how that works.