What constitutes a good employee? Is it going above and beyond to make your workplace better, or is it dutifully following orders as fast as possible?

Once you have worked for enough managers in enough workplaces, you realize that doing the job properly is not necessarily what they look for in employees. Sure, they might want you to get the job done, but their standards are usually slightly… askew.

When they present you with an assignment that has a deadline, for example, they might not particularly care that the assignment is completed properly; all they care about is that it is finished by the deadline or before. You can tell them that the job can't be done in time if they want it actually done, but they won't care. 

This leads many employees to one important conclusion: they don't need to overwork themselves to actually do a good job. All they need is to follow the orders as plainly as possible and call it a day. Don't work hard; work smart, and you will find yourself awarded "best employee of the year".

The person who posted this story on Reddit was hired as a retail worker two months ago, and for those two months, they did everything to do their best. But one complaint after another, this worker realized that doing their best is not what their managers are looking for. They just want the job to appear done as fast as possible.

So, instead of restocking shelves and organizing everything so it would look good, they just shoved products onto shelves and dumped the rest into the warehouse. The worker stopped caring about old products being expired, they ignored shelves that looked like a disaster, and didn't mind the broken items anymore.

And all of a sudden, their manager started praising them for working faster… It is simply all part of the game. All you gotta do is learn how to play it.

The presence of ghosts

I'm not sure ghosting is an effective tactic, and it's not necessary to go to the extreme opposite and tell the person you dated only once what exact attributes they had that turned you off. To me, the best option is to say something along the lines of: 'I didn't feel the connection, but I had a great time; nice to meet you'. It's kind of rude to avoid communication like that and assume people will interpret your silence correctly, silence is a profoundly ambivalent signifier and people can interpret it as a 'delay in an ongoing communication' which would result in them waiting for you to reach out, or stepping in and contacting you again, or the ghosting could hurt their sensibilities and make them think they did something wrong. Of course, it's not one's responsibility what other people interpret from our silence, but it's always better to overextend ourselves a little, only in the name of 'aftercare'; it doesn't have to be too extensive; it's just a short, quick text that could be written by an AI. C'mon, it can't be easier.

Does making someone's present harder by helping them build a better future make you a bad person?

Nobody likes saying no to a family member you love, especially when money is involved. There's this unspoken expectation that if you can help, you should help. But financial support isn't always the same thing as real support, and I think people forget that. Sometimes, the kindest thing you can do for someone is refuse to become the reason they stay stuck.

In this case, the brother isn't refusing to help because he's selfish or because he wants to watch his sibling struggle. He's looking at the bigger picture. According to the post, there are entry-level jobs available that his brother is qualified for, but he doesn't want to take them. Handing over $1,000 might solve this month's rent, but what about next month's? Or the month after that? If nothing changes, this quickly stops being a loan and starts becoming an expectation.

There's a difference between helping someone who's fallen on hard times and helping someone avoid making a difficult but necessary decision. Most of us have taken jobs we weren't excited about just because bills don't wait for the perfect opportunity to come along. It isn't glamorous, and it certainly isn't anyone's dream, but being an adult sometimes means accepting that the ideal job can come later. Rent is due now.

What also stood out to me is how quickly the family turned the 24-year-old into the villain. It's always interesting when people volunteer someone else's wallet before opening their own. If they feel so strongly that the unemployed brother deserves financial help, they're more than welcome to contribute themselves. It's much easier to be generous when you're spending somebody else's money.

Ironically, refusing the loan could end up being the most supportive thing this brother ever does. A thousand dollars would buy temporary relief, but finding steady work would buy independence. That's a much more valuable gift, even if it doesn't feel like one in the moment. Setting boundaries doesn't mean you don't love someone; it means you're refusing to confuse love with enabling. Sometimes the people who care about us the most are the ones willing to have uncomfortable conversations rather than offer comfortable solutions. And judging by the comments, plenty of people on the internet agreed that this wasn't about withholding help; it was about encouraging someone to stand on their own two feet.

Companies have figured out that gratitude is cheaper than payroll. Six boxes of pizza for forty people costs about a hundred bucks and a mandatory lunch slot everyone still has to clock into

A raise costs actual money, forever, compounding, showing up on next year's budget too. So management does the math and picks the pizza every single time, then writes an email calling it appreciation.

It's hard to move in when someone else's mistakes cost you everything.

After spending more than a month preparing a major client campaign, an employee discovers the entire project has been deleted just one day before the final pitch. A coworker claims it was an accident, management brushes it off, and despite scrambling to rebuild everything overnight, the team loses the account. To make matters worse, that same coworker later gets the promotion they had both wanted.

I'll never understand those employees who mess up others' work so they can look good. In this case, Jenna deleted a very important file from the OP, about a project she had been working very hard on. I don't believe that it was accidental. I really don't. Especially when we later find out that she landed the promotion that both of them wanted. So I'm very sure Jenna did that on purpose so she could look good with the boss.

The worst part of all is that the manager didn't think about Jenna's behaviour whatsoever. Instead of finding out why she did it and why she has someone like that on her team, she wanted to find a solution for the problem as quickly as possible, since the very important meeting was the day after. I mean, I understand that first we need to fix the issue and later move on to the conflict of interest, but I'd never let that slip, and I'd have had Jenna interrogated. 

I'm sure that's the part that hurt the OP the most. Not feeling backed up in a situation like this. And, of course, I cannot imagine how she must have felt when she realized that Jenna got promoted. A promotion that the OP could have gotten if that presentation had gone well. That's just the most unfair thing ever.

What's the line between being considerate to your friends and letting them walk all over you? 

Everybody appreciates it when their friends do nice things for them. Everyone needs help sometimes, and friends are usually there to lend a hand when it's needed the most. Whether it be money issues, family issues, work issues, or whatever you can think of, good friends stick by your side and help you through life. 

A Reddit user posted on r/AmIOverreacting about a friend who tends to take advantage of her disposition to help. Sometimes when they go out to eat, this girl "forgets" her wallet, leaving her friend to pay the whole check, while promising to pay her back later, but never really does. It reached a point at which the friend started to feel irritated by that behavior and refused to pay for her this time. Of course, this girl got offended and said she was embarrassed by the whole situation, and the rest of the friend group supported her. 

It's really hard to deal with situations like this with your friends. You always want them to feel comfortable and supported by you, but "supporting them" doesn't necessarily mean financially. Even less so if they are not being considerate towards you. Taking advantage of a friend's generosity is never right, and it can be disloyal. 

Another thing that calls for attention is the fact that the other friends felt the need to interfere in a matter that was not related to them at all. On money issues, it's usually better not to give an opinion unless you're asked directly. And generally, if you're going to pick sides, try to do it fairly without making anyone feel guilty for something that isn't their fault. 

Keep scrolling to read the full story, and share - Is there anything either of these friends could have done differently? Besides paying what you're owed, that is. 

This "emergency" repair feels different when everyone has known about it for nearly 20 years.

A Washington homeowner was stunned to receive an $18,500 HOA assessment with only two months to pay. The charge was tied to major repairs for the community's water system, but the board later admitted it had known about the problem for 18 years. After years of fee increases and little communication, residents were threatened with liens and interest for nonpayment.

I'm not lying when I say I'm new to the whole HOA situation. Aside from living with my parents, I've been a tenant and have always dealt with my landlord directly. So, as you can expect, these types of stories astonish me, because it feels like a huge scam from top to bottom. And I think it most likely is. 

According to the OP, there has been a water plumbing issue, and the HOA wanted to get it fixed. So, essentially, they sent all the residents the invoice with the repair cost. Apparently, the water problem was an emergency, so everyone had to pay as soon as possible so the issue wouldn't get worse and end up flooding the whole complex. 

By now we have our first red flag: there was no discussion involving this issue, and the HOA demanded everyone pay ASAP. For the writer here, it would take him five years to be able to finish paying that huge amount of money, and that seemed impossible. So that's when he decided to take the bull by the horns and get deep into this issue. And what he discovered is going to end up in a huge lawsuit for the HOA.

Wouldn't it be great if, before you decided on a career, you had a chat with someone who works in the field you like to get a sneak peek of what it would be like?

This Reddit thread about a cabin crew employee insisting that people ask him questions about his career is amazing. Not only does he provide thorough answers to most questions, but he also offers tips for people getting into this field. All the information he shared could probably be found on the internet or learned through the job, but the fact that he opened up a space to discuss his career and to help aspiring people is great. That got me thinking, wouldn't it be great for teens and young adults to get access to things like this?

Imagine being in the last year of high school, doubting whether to follow your passion or not. Thinking, is it going to be how you imagine it, or is it going to turn out fine? What if you had someone you could ask? Places where people aspiring to a certain career can talk to people who already work in that field. This would not only lower the cases of career path change, but also give young adults the chance of getting a sneak peek of what their life would be like. 
I believe that some initiative on this should be done in schools. The exchange is a great way to help lost teenagers find their way into the adult world. Also, it would be a shame-free zone where they are allowed to ask everything they have doubts about, and professionals will be able to guide them and help them set up for that kind of career. 

In the meantime, I found it really interesting that, even though an exchange like this isn't exactly common, the internet is providing us a great space to have it. You can access talks and interviews of people who have been working for years in something that you want to pursue, and that is invaluable. I firmly encourage you to take advantage of that. Learn, ask, and start to know more about the field you want to get into. You won't regret it!
 

When does being a team player turn into being taken advantage of?

A recent master's graduate accepted a low-paying job to gain experience, only to be assigned the responsibilities of multiple coworkers without additional compensation. After being asked to take on sales duties without commission, she resigned immediately. Shortly after that, she discovered her employer had posted three separate job openings to replace the work she had been handling alone.

When I come across stories like this, it really helps me to put into perspective that some companies tend to exploit their employees. How can a manager expect a new hire to do the work of three separate people? Without increasing their salary. I don't know what was on their minds when they asked that.

What stands out the most to me is that the employee was actually nice and accepted the workload that was put in front of her. Of course, she demanded the compensation she thought was appropriate for her experience and amount of work, but before resigning, she did not complain and fulfilled her responsibilities. And, instead of rewarding that flexibility, management seemed to view it as an opportunity to keep adding more work without increasing her salary.

Now, imagine being this employee and, after quitting, realizing that the company posted three different positions for all the work she was doing, essentially confirming that the workload she had been carrying was never meant for one person in the first place. At this point, it becomes difficult to argue that they underestimate the amount of work involved. Sometimes the fastest way for a company to learn an employee's value is to watch them walk out the door.

The unavoidable friend

I don't think this is a matter of how social this friend is, really. I know that's a plausible theory, but some attitudes point to other underlying reasons for this friend's intrusiveness. Some people can't see the difference between not being invited to everything and being rejected as a person. Paradoxically, if you truly were being rejected, showing up at every place where you're unwelcome would make it even worse, so the abandonment-anxiety is clouding up the thought processes going on there. That said, I think there are many ways to deal with this issue, and not all of them involve cutting the friend off. Is it possible that cutting everyone who slightly annoys you off is becoming a massive trend?

Have you had your 5th cup of coffee yet today?

Wow, what a week it's been! I know it's only Tuesday… But I said what I said. I'm exhausted. Why does sitting at a desk all day typing stuff take so much out of me? I know I'm not the only one who feels this way. I wake up tired from a sleep that didn't seem to sleep, and I immediately have coffee. Food? Nope, no time. That's a lunch thing. Three cups of coffee? Yes, please. Now I can get my day cooking! The bad thing about that, however, is that by 3pm, I'm crashing. So I have another cup of coffee or two. And now I'm still tired, but much faster. Does that make sense? If I know anything about the internet, then I know that this makes sense to many people out there. I'm an online expert, so I know. 

What is an online expert? I am an expert on the internet. Not how it works or the science behind it, though I am a bit of a scientist myself. No, no. I'm talking about the best part of online, the laughs, the LOLs, the memes, baby! I can say with 100% confidence I have seen every meme ever to have been made. You can call that an outrageous statement, but I'm confident about it. My job is to sit here and scroll through memes all day, five days a week. I know some people still do that even when it's not their job, but it's actually in my job title, so I am the expert. Scroll through these bad boys and have a good LOL!

New management walking in and treating years of proven competence like an unverified rumor is one of the most reliable tragedy setups in office life. 

And this boss walked in like a general contractor who didn't build the house but immediately wants to inspect the wiring. 

Trial periods with nothing to actually test are their own genre of nonsense. It's the workplace equivalent of a cooking competition where the ingredient is air. Someone gets handed the keys for a stretch, nothing happens because there was nothing to happen, and somehow that counts as meaningful data. Real evaluations involve stakes. This is more like judging a lifeguard by having them watch an empty pool.

Then there's the magic trick of a "temporary" arrangement with zero end date. Anyone who's had a houseguest overstay a weekend knows how this works. Nothing says permanent quite like the word "indeterminate," which is corporate for "we'll figure out how to make this stick."

The best part is getting told to just come up with a better system yourself, as if the person being quietly nudged out the door is also supposed to be running HR's strategy meetings on the side. 

Altogether, this is less a growth opportunity and more a slow-motion game of musical chairs where someone keeps insisting the music never stopped.

Force majeure

This is the typical discordance that emerges when we think about a problem by looking at the bigger picture rather than its every detail. We'd like to think that upper management takes every part of the company into consideration when they make big decisions like laying people off, but sometimes they don't, and they just want to cut down expenses. About this story in particular, all I can say is that upper management might be taking things into consideration this employee doesn't know about, given he just got his position a few months ago. I'd give upper management the benefit of the doubt, but something sits bad with me.

Becoming a grandparent doesn't automatically create a close family bond. The bond between grandparents and their grandchildren is usually shaped by the relationship they maintain with their adult children. When that relationship is emotionally distant, the grandchildren are likely to grow distant from their grandparents as well. 

In today's Reddit story, a 29-year-old daughter has spent most of her life trying to earn attention from a father who has shown he will only engage in their relationship when it requires minimal effort on his part. Now that she has children of her own, she has every right to stop doing the emotional work for both of them. 

Her father lives a few hours away, but he has made little effort to have a relationship with her or her children. His distant behavior began around the birth of her first child, nearly two years ago. The daughter asked relatives to wait for the morning after the delivery before visiting… A pretty reasonable request for a new mother. But her father apparently had no understanding or empathy for her and called her selfish because he couldn't be present for the birth.

Since then, he has visited her oldest son just twice. He doesn't invite her daughter anywhere; he doesn't suggest plans or follow through on the visits he promises. Still, he complains that nobody includes him whenever he discovers his other daughters spend family time together. 

Now her second son is two months old, and his grandfather still hasn't met him. He keeps claiming that he will visit, then moves the date, then disappears. Now the daughter learned through her sister that he might be driving down that weekend, but he never called or asked whether the family would be available. In fact, she knows they won't be available, but at the same time she won't call him to warn him about it because she shouldn't manage a plan he never communicated to her. The daughter isn't responsible for preventing every inconvenience her father creates for himself. If he drives several hours and finds an empty house, that won't be something she did to him. It's a consequence of his poor communication and his negligence toward his family. 

If you have an unreasonable boss, do you comply with their requests or challenge them?

The most convenient move is to usually go along with anything your boss asks of you, even if it's inefficient. Bosses, however, oftentimes are not even sure about what they're asking or the kind of consequences their decisions may have. 

A Redditor u/Cherrykissymint has a boss who made her to do something that only made everything more complicated. She worked at a front desk, and people brought documents to her all day long. Since we all know bureaucracy works in mysterious ways, most of those forms had mistakes, so she took the time to help them correct them and send them in properly. However, her boss was annoyed by that, so he told her not to do it anymore. Why? Probably due to some micromanaging powertrip duties. Suddenly, the office was full of confused people standing there, occupying space and not knowing what to do. 

 Do bosses even know what they're employees are actually doing for work? They're hardly ever with them, so it's not easy for them to keep track of everything that happens in the office when they're away. It's not necessarily out of malice, but sometimes they might give instructions that do not work the way they expected. Sometimes you'll be able to state your reasons as to why that won't work, and they'll listen. Other times, you'll have to comply and let them see the results like you are gentle parenting. 

So, do you think bosses should listen to their employees more often?

What happens when someone gives away something that was never theirs?

Family disagreements can be difficult enough, but they become even messier when someone makes promises they have no right to make. After a father tells his grandson he can have his daughter's car without asking her first, she's left choosing between protecting a promise she made to her own son and disappointing a nephew who thought the gift was real.

We can totally relate to the OP here. I understand there was a family agreement in which she agreed to lend the Honda to her nephew once he had his licence because he was going to need transportation to get to college. Now, time passed, and she decided she was going to give the car to her son, since it sounded more appropriate and it's her car at the end of the day.

Things took a turn when the grandfather promised and told very explicitly to the nephew the car was going to be his. This left the woman thinking and feeling extremely bad because she ended up refusing it and saving the vehicle for her kid. Of course, and as we can expect, this unfolded a big family drama, causing her parents to blame her and look terrible.

It's obvious that family relationships are very complex, and since there are always a lot of feelings involved, it's very common to hurt someone without wanting to. So, even though the nephew was disappointed and sad, the woman did great in respecting her own decision and having the freedom to decide what to do with the vehicle. The grandpa overstepped and assumed things that weren't true, which eventually caused this whole drama dispute.

Every family can learn from a situation like this to respect private property and to ask before committing to something it will more likely not going to happen.

Entitlement or just a dumb assumption?

We see and read stories about guests expecting things that they have no reasonable belief to demand all the time. We always focus on how entitled they are or how incredible their request is. We see it as a one-time story, as one funny story about customer service. I think it's more than that. When this many stories appear all of a sudden, one question starts to resonate in your mind. "Where has this type of thing come from?" 

Let's face it, things have changed a lot in the past decade, and customer service has been affected by it. Before, people weren't this entitled, nor did they expect exceptions to be made for them rarely. What changed? Is it how the new generation has been raised? Maybe it's because of all the stories we see online of customers getting exactly what they want and inspiring others to do the same? Or maybe this is like a trend. People are trying it, and because managers approve it, giving them what they want, they continue to do so. So, in this case, it wouldn't be the guest's fault, but instead the manager's, by allowing the situation to escalate until the customer gets their ridiculous demand. 

All the stories, like the one below, make me think that there is no hope. Guests are entitled, and that is never going to change. But that doesn't have to be true. We still can make a change, demand that guests act like adults and accept when they are wrong. We can change the system, but for that we need better managers who have enough character to put up with customers and make them understand that the saying "the customer is always right" is, in fact, not true. The customer isn't always right. They are probably wrong. So bosses, please stand by your employees and set boundaries with the entitled customers who are not only ruining the business but also mistreating your staff. 
 

Have you ever fallen for the trap of someone else's fake sob story?

With the help of social media, these days people can share their sob stories for millions of people to see and get a lot from it. Every day, you can scroll through Instagram or TikTok and find people with massive debts, upcoming surgeries, and sick relatives who just need you to like and share their videos so they can afford whatever it is they need.

Now, we're not saying these people are faking their need for help; we have seen some wonderful stories of people's lives changing thanks to a GoFundMe and the support of strangers on the internet. But realistically speaking, not every story you hear online is true, and there are plenty of people who feel comfortable taking advantage of others' empathy for their personal gain. Knowing how to tell a real story from a fake one is the real challenge.

The neighbor whose story this is about didn't need the help of thousands of people on the internet to get what he wanted; all he needed was to get one person to buy his lies.

He wanted to get the parking space closest to the building's entrance, so he told the owner of the spot that he had a wheelchair-bound mother who would benefit a lot from a spot so close to the entrance. The resident who owned the spot believed the sob story, and even though she had a knee problem of her own that required the parking space, she agreed to give it up for the sake of the mother.

Except, after the parking spot was transferred, the resident noticed that she didn't see any wheelchair-bound mother in sight. The only person she saw using the spot was the neighbor's girlfriend, who seemed pretty happy about this new arrangement. 

It didn't take long for the resident to confront the neighbor about his lies, and it took even less time to turn to the building's management and get the parking spot back….

Which flaws should we accept as normal?

I don't think limitations are problematic per se. Maybe you have a boyfriend who can't help you with laundry because he hates doing laundry and has hated it all his life, and maybe you can deal with that, and it's not the end of the world. Maybe that same boyfriend loves doing the dishes, and you hate it, and you divide house tasks accordingly.  The problem arises when your partner's inability to collaborate goes much deeper or creates bigger problems because you don't feel there's enough equilibrium going on. The problem in this relationship doesn't seem to be chores themselves, but specifically when those chores require calling someone else for help, and I think that touches on bigger issues and themes.

When is it just a childish mistake, and when is it plain disrespect?

Raising teenagers is one of the most difficult parts of being a parent. They're not old enough to make their own choices, and not young enough to bow their heads after being told off when they do something wrong. When they cross a boundary, it is much more difficult to correct them than younger children. 

When someone else finds themselves in need of setting a boundary, it can be twice as hard if they don't have the parents' support. A user on Reddit shared on r/AITAH  that his cousin's teenage daughter showed a complete lack of respect for his rules. He told her she was not allowed to eat inside his truck, since he wanted to keep it clean. The girl disregarded his rules completely, telling him he couldn't tell her what to do. To teach the girl a lesson, he stopped the truck, made her get down, and walk the 10 minutes left to her home. The family disagreed with his decision and told him he exaggerated. 

On the one hand, it is understandable that a parent feels protective of their child, especially if they think they were in danger. On the other hand, it is also true that every individual has the right to set specific boundaries over their property, and parents should teach their children to respect those boundaries and private property. At some point, teenagers need to be held accountable for their mistakes; not everything can be solved by saying "she/he is just a kid." Every kid and teenager needs to learn the importance of respect and taking responsibility for their actions. Mom and Dad can't come to the rescue all the time, and to live within the limits of society as responsible adults, it is fundamental to know when the rules should not be challenged. 

Do you think the truck owner could have done something differently, or that the parents should teach their daughter respect? Keep scrolling to read the full story and decide.