Every restaurant worker has at least one customer interaction that they'll never be able to get out of their head. Some are positive interactions, like having a regular who overtips, or a customer who goes out of their way to tell their manager how helpful the employee was. These positive interactions are always welcome, because many customers treat service workers like they're beneath them. 

Working as a server is just a job, but some customers treat these workers as if they're second-class citizens just because of their role. If the meal takes a long time to come out, the customer won't hesitate to snap at the waiter. Others refuse to talk to the waiter except to bark out their meal orders. And others just like to mess with their waiter's heads, like one restaurant patron who withheld a tip while making direct eye contact with his waiter. It's as if they forget that there's a human being with feelings underneath that uniform. They'd treat them much more nicely if they met them outside of work hours! 

Next up, read about these ultra-satisfying moments where retail workers got to tell their worst customers that they were the manager, like one employee who shared, "When she called corporate to complain about me, she also got me."

It's always shocking how many bosses think they can get away with shady behavior in this day and age. Employees are more empowered than ever, and when they feel like they're getting manipulated, it's not exactly hard to document and collect evidence in the digital age.

Here, we have a boss who clearly hired all of his workers as 1099 contractors rather than full-time salaried employees in order to circumnavigate taxation. Despite their freelance status, these workers were putting in over 80 hours of labor each week and were even subjected to booking their own hotels (and in some cases, sleeping in their cars) for work trips. Not exactly the employer of the year here! Thankfully, this Redditor had enough of this treatment and began the process of filing a report with the department of labor to see if they do, in fact, qualify for W2 forms.

Keep scrolling below for the full story and for similar situations from other folks in the comments section. This is clearly a more common practice than anyone would imagine. For more tales of workplace drama, here is the story of a boss who required far too many text updates.

If you've ever worked in retail, you know the struggle of dealing with that one customer. You know, the one who always has a complaint, never waits patiently and somehow manages to make every shopping trip into a full-blown scene. For this employee, that customer was this entitled Karen who made it her mission to cause chaos to him and his coworkers every time she walked into the store. She'd yell, she'd argue, and she'd make everyone's day a whole lot worse. Just because she could.

But fate has a funny way of coming full circle. One day, while stopping at a gas station, the employee was stunned to see none other than Karen herself behind the cash register. The tables had turned, and he knew exactly what he had to do. Channeling all the pent-up anger from her previous outbursts, he gave her a taste of her own medicine at her own work this time—making a scene, complaining over nothing, and giving her the same attitude she had dished out for so long. 

Flexibility begets flexibility, and a little understanding goes a long way. There's no sense in being overly rigid about rules when they don't serve to benefit anyone and make things worse for everyone overall. 

This worker enjoyed a flexible working arrangement until they were singled out by their boss and made to work 9 to 5 each day instead of 8 to 4 as they had been working. Frustrated at these new restrictions and at the erosion of the work-life balance that that flexibility had allowed them to enjoy, they decide to adhere strictly to their boss's instruction that they work 9 to 5 each day… beginning work no earlier than 9 AM and leaving right at the tick of the clock to 5 AM. This escalated, and they, along with their coworker who was in a similar situation, began working as slowly as possible, ensuring that they always had something they were working on under the watchful eye of their micromanaging boss but getting far less work done than they had when they were granted more flexibility.

Ew, no one wants to go swimming in a green pool. It happens to every pool owner at some point: you go a few days without adding chlorine, and one morning you awaken to a pool full of bright green algae. The good news is that it's often an easy fix: you just need to shock the pool with some chlorine, or find a pool maintenance person to do it for you. But this person, u/Otherwise_Hunt7296, realized that their green pool problem might take a bit longer to solve than they'd planned. 

It's all due to this person's HOA, or homeowner's association. If you've ever had to deal with an HOA, you know that they're not often helpful to regular people. Instead, they thrive on handing out huge fines and taking their sweet time to fix important problems. The people who live here pay for that pool, and I'm sure they'd like to go swimming in the summer. Instead of a simple fix, the issue is stuck in an email thread, as this resident shared. Commenters gave them some helpful advice though, as you can check out below. 

Up next, read about some of the most outrageous reasons couples chose to split up and get divorced, like one dude who "divorced his wife… because she would sleep with a nightlight." 

Some folks refuse to admit that they aren't always in the right. This type of behavior is common in the workplace, where overachievers and know-it-alls get to bask in all of their arrogant glory. 

If you've worked with this kind of person before, you know that they'll eventually get their comeuppance. It might happen in the form of a write-up, or possibly a meeting with Human Resources. Maybe, just maybe, you'll lead the crusade to show this coworker that arrogance won't get you far in the workplace. That's what the original poster (OP) of this Reddit story did by simply taking a backseat while he let his scientist coworker do all the dirty work.

If you're not much of a science person, don't fret. The gist of this story is that a know-it-all senior scientist is adamant that he doesn't need such lowly lab technicians double-checking his work, even though that's basic workplace protocol. When the OP tries to correct the scientist, his help is denied. In the end, the scientist gets exactly what he deserved—and a write-up by management, for good measure.

In every scenario, there can be more than one way to do things correctly, especially when it comes to work. Not everyone, even if they have the same role, does everything in the exact same way, and that is completely reasonable. Every employee finds their own rhythm and methods to do their job, and as long as the job gets done well, there shouldn't be any problems.

When a new hire comes in, it makes sense that they would turn to their coworkers for guidance, but it is not a necessity. If they feel like they have control over the work, there is no reason why they should not be allowed to try. This is what the new hire (OP, original poster) in this Reddit story expected out of her coworkers. That was until one of her coworkers decided she was meant to be training OP, and was upset when OP said she was doing fine on her own.

Keep scrolling to read the rest of the story. After that, click here for a story of an entitled family who caused their flight to be delayed.

Every worker has to set boundaries somewhere, and for this server, her boundaries are all about the dog. 

On her very first day at a restaurant, the new server set 3-4 large bags down in a corner of the kitchen where employees leave their things hidden from customers' view. She had just clocked in and was beginning her orientation when a coworker discovered her dog in one of those bags. She had mentioned nothing about needing her to dog to be with her at all times during the interview process, and it turns out she did not have authorization to have a service animal with her either. It was all a personal preference and not one she thought to mention to her boss beforehand. Her manager, of course, confronted her about this, specifically that it would be unsafe to have a dog in the kitchen. Let's just say the server did not handle this confrontation well. Good luck to her!

For more stories like this, check out this post about entitled customers. 

This factory setup engineer normally arrived to work at 3 AM to prep the floor for a day's work, but new management seemed to think that they knew how to do his job better than he did. However, to capitalize on a foolish act of managerial naivety, the worker maliciously complied and bled out millions of dollars of production value to prove a point.

Micromanagers rarely know what's good for them. Blissfully unaware that 90% of their employees are much more productive without middle management breathing down their necks, they rudely install themselves onto every facet of the workplace, effectively kneecapping all productivity from the ground up. So when a new manager tried to tell this employee how to do his job, he complied with a smile on his face knowing that he would have a satisfying 'I told you so' moment. 

Read on to enjoy the fruits of this man's sassiness after he effectively got management off his back, setting his own rules about his schedule by making them eat the cost of their mistakes. After this, here's another work-related procrastination tool–a collection of cringey corporate jargon that'll make any employee squirm in their ergonomic chair. 

When you're planning the biggest event of your life, what is possibly a once-in-a-lifetime event, it's important to make sure you actually get to the planning part of it and not just leave essential parts to chance… this, coming from someone who is notoriously poor at planning beyond the end of the week. 

If you want to go on a trip that is going to require you to take time off work, you should probably make sure you request the time off work first so that you're not stuck with an already booked trip and not able to leave your job to take it. This, of course, is common sense to most of us, but you'd be surprised how many people leave it until the last minute.

However, there are things in life that will require our absence from work that can't be accounted for. Maybe the coworker had to push her wedding up due to the failing health of a family member or something. That might be giving her too much benefit of the doubt, but in situations such as this, you'd hope that people—especially the employer—would be understanding and accommodating. 

But if it's really just down to good ol' poor planning, it's important to remember that "A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on others." It's a hard lesson to learn, but there's a reason why this phrase is so popular.

This employee had already had their trip booked to see their family for some time; they were surprised when their coworker approached them, asking them to cancel so that she could take her honeymoon. While sympathetic to the predicament the coworker was in, the employee declined but, in doing so, earned the wrath of their coworkers. 

With everyone determined that they must be wrong for their refusal, the employee turned to this online community to see whether or not they were in the wrong. Community members reassured them that they had more than a leg to stand on in the comments, declaring that the coworker simply should have planned better.

Pettiness knows no bounds when it comes to a relationship gone sour. Just ask the thousands of people who replied to u/EasyReveal2752's question: "What's the pettiest thing you've ever done after a breakup?" 

When some people break up, all bets are off. Any loving feelings go right out the window! Instead of trying to plan for a future together, both people are out for revenge. Well, these people got their comeuppance in ways big and small. 

One person who's absolutely diabolical hid 12 different random noise-generating devices around his ex's home. He even hid them in some furniture! Even if the ex moves, she'll still spend every waking moment trying to figure out where the mystery noise is coming from. A different person thought it'd be a good idea to try and one-up his ex just by getting a way larger TV than her (and it certainly did get under her skin). After all, if you date for a long time, you know everything about your former significant other, including all of their most personal likes and dislikes. 

Up next, this consultant was adamant that she wouldn't take any fashion advice from her coworker… too bad she was "unwilling to listen." 

Francis Ford Coppola is preoccupied with time. The passage of it, the halting of it, even its cyclical nature through the repetition of events in history. The 85-year-old legendary filmmaker's relationship with time is on full display in his latest film, the self-funded, PR-crisis-ridden "Megalopolis." Unfortunately, a lack of self-awareness on the part of the script and its author leads to an often nonsensical and unclear narrative that ultimately clouds Coppola's often-dizzying, grand ideals about empires, utopia, and man's place in them. Ironically, this leaves the viewer wondering how Coppola's place in cinema history will be affected. 

The marketing team has already tried to position "Megalopolis" as misunderstood and ahead of its time. They may be right about the misunderstood part; it's difficult to understand something that is largely incomprehensible. As for the "ahead of its time" narrative, again, time is certainly a factor here, but "Megalopolis" is too confused about itself to be prescient. Perhaps what's so remarkable about this divisive film is that you have some folks (notably, the team behind the film) calling it ahead of its time and others accusing the director and his creation of being out of touch. Only this film that is so concerned with and confounded by the concept of time could manage to receive both of these extreme interpretations.

The final say is up to each filmgoer, but one thing is clear: Coppola and the film's marketing campaign seem to be going out of their way to convince audiences that "Megalopolis" is a bold vision that people will look back on fondly. However, virtually every attempt to position the film as such has managed to instead bolster the argument that "Megalopolis" is one spectacular "swing and a miss." Let's take a look at how the film's rocky development, uncompromising vision, and baffling promotional tactics have all failed to convey the filmmaker's supposed intent.

via BoliviaInteligente on Unsplash

In the span of just a few years, we've gone from barely understanding what AI does to seeing it used everywhere. 

Your inbox is likely chock-full of companies bragging about their latest AI updates. On photo editing sites, AI generation is touted on the home page. X, formerly known as Twitter, has an AI named "Grok," while Google has the cutesy "Gemini." They want you to talk to these artificial beings, ask them questions, and even let them be your personal assistant. But should you?

It doesn't stop there: Restaurants are advertising their food with AI-generated photos. Clothing sites are showing off their AI-powered models for fashion, creating custom-tailored feeds for shoppers as they scroll (as if data harvesting isn't already tailoring our feeds with enough specificity). Maybe you've even gotten a few AI-written texts or emails from people in your life. There's no telling what AI will do next, so let's take a look at some of the strangely creative ways that AI is embedding itself in internet culture. 

Sometimes, the best way to capture a social phenomenon is with a good old-fashioned chart. That's likely what your teacher said in elementary school, but the same sentiment remains true as an adult. 

For many of us, pie charts were the most effective way to understand the parts that make up a whole in most scenarios. The nerds among us are likely to agree, but the truth of the matter is that pie charts can cover more than just math and science. Here, we have a collection of funny pie charts that range in subject matter from what people often ask you as a tall person (hint: it's all some variation of "look how much you've grown!") to what time of year people are likely go to the gym (hint: it follows a certain annual end-of-the-year holiday) to what men look for in their shampoo (hint: it's not very involved). 

Keep scrolling below for these funny pie-chart memes. For more, check out these funny exam mishaps.

When will people learn that they shouldn't take and open packages that don't belong to them, let alone donate the contents of the package to a thrift store?

You never know who you're living next to, and there are a lot of people out there who are on the lookout for your belongings. Even if UPS has delivered your package to someone else by mistake by mistake, you'd think the first thing your neighbor would do is leave it at your doorstep. That's what good neighbors do, right? Well, the mother in this story clearly lives next to a rather audacious person.

This mom was excited to dress her son up as Draco Malfoy for a pumpkin patch outing and ordered all of the materials needed for the costume online. Half of the costume arrived in one package safely at her doorstep. The other package containing the rest of the costume was delivered to her next-door neighbor. The mom then calls her apartment complex office, which confirms that the neighbor not only received and opened the package but kept a part of the costume for herself and donated the rest to Goodwill.

The neighbor attempts to reimburse her, but the mom cannot believe the entitlement. Scroll below to get the full story. Additionally, you can read some of the comments from equally frustrated Redditors.

It's been increasingly common for companies, driven by the pursuit of continuous exponential profit, to cut costs in areas that seem expensive on paper but are really essential to basic operations that would be far more expensive were they to go sideways. Spurned on by the promise of larger bonuses, executives and their fellow bean counters will cut and cut until they finally make one incision near-comical disaster. 

Of course, although it seems that this behavior has been prevalent in recent memory, as in this story that this worker shared from earlier days of their career…

This employee worked in the contracts department of a major software company, which they refer to as "MidSoft Inc." Continual foolish decisions that thought of nothing but the bottom line and cost-cutting measures, driven by the ravenous interests of private equity investors,  reduced the company's senior development team from 12 to one soldier, "Sam." While the ledger might have looked better for a time, the immeasurable loss of institutional knowledge and literal lifetimes of experience would go unaccounted for.

That was until Sam was also sent packing right before the company acquired a major new contract. However, when they started looking around, wondering who was able to handle the integration necessary for the deal, soon the realization dawned that Sam had been the last remaining developer with the necessary expertise for this particular and essential task. What unfolded was quite predictable: they needed Sam back, and Sam was going to make them pay… Teaching them a lesson in hubris—in the most corporate sense.

Divorce lawyers have heard every reason in the book for why couples have decided to call it quits. It's different for every person—the final straw for one married couple could be something major or something very minor. U/dankph went to the r/AskReddit community to collect some intriguing stories, with divorce lawyers, divorcees, and family members all chiming into tell the story of the most outrageous divorces they've ever encountered. 

Living with someone before marriage is a fantastic idea for many people. That way, you won't wind up like the guy from the title of this article, who divorced his wife because she needed to sleep with a nightlight, while he needed a completely darkened room to get any sleep. If only they'd thought of this before spending thousands on a wedding and legally binding themselves together…There's always next time, I suppose! 

Another couple broke up because one of them kept playing video games too much. Once again, if they lived together, the spouse would realize if their partner liked to spend their entire weekend gaming. At least in that person's new place, they'll have plenty of room to build a gaming den for one. 

After you check out these excellent break up stories, read about these people who had some tough days at work, like one person who revealed they "Just lost thousands of dollars worth of product at work. Most likely getting fired."

When you're on the job, you don't want random strangers, customers or not, breathing down your neck while you're trying to get your work done. There is, in fact, such a thing as personal space.

Though this is a universal concept, some folks don't understand that you actually know your job better than they do. You see this a lot with entitled Karens. They actively seek your services out, but show zero signs of trust and follow you around like a little puppy, ridiculing and critiquing everything you do. Unfortunately, this Reddit story is no different. The good thing is, that the original poster (OP) and the star of the story gives this Karen exactly what she asked for. In the OP's words: "I can be petty."

This pest control worker was hired to spray 40ft of pesticides throughout the woman's home and yard. While he was covering the interior of the home, Karen micromanages and berates him the entire time. Once he gets to the yard, he starts spraying away. Karen yells at him, telling him he must be spraying 40ft, as advertised. In a classic case of malicious compliance, the pest control worker grabs his tape measure and gets precise—just like Karen wanted. Scroll below to read the entire story.

There are many moments in humanity while living in a society that makes you question our existence. Some questions are spiritual and existential, while others make you want to bang your head on a wall. For example, when you work in the service industry and the place is obviously closed, with a big sign that says "CLOSED" and you still have customers trying to get inside. Like, in what world do you think that "closed" means something else to you and only you? Those are some top-tier Karens, male and female. You can't just walk into an obviously closed place and act like you own the place and not be a Karen. The entitlement just oozes off of you like stank from a dumpster. Many employees have stories of this exact thing happening that really makes it seem like there are WAY too many Karens like this out there. See some of the most ludicrous ones below! 

Whatever happened to boundaries? 

In this day and age, it's so easy to respond to an email or message from your boss outside of work hours. Sometimes, there is an emergency and you have to engage. Hopefully, you're getting paid for those all-hands-on-deck moments. However, if your boss is the kind of person who needs to know where you are at all times, that's a different story. Here, we have an employee who is always timely and almost never late, yet their boss seems to be paranoid about their timeliness and is now insisting upon being notified of their whereabouts constantly before they arrive at the office. Thankfully, the employee had enough confidence to recognize that this was a massive overstep. In fact, it turns out that the whole reason behind the boss's paranoia is that she wanted to avoid being late to her second job (yes, the employee's boss has a second job).

For more stories like this, take a look at this one about a horrible boss who enforced 14-hour Zoom calls for his remote employees.