Do you abide by the 24-hour leftovers rule at your house? 

Leftovers, if left unattended, are fair game after a certain amount of time. Food has a natural expiration date on it and, if you're like me, you grew up in a family that didn't waste food or throw it away until it was growing a ptetri dish of mold spores or smelled like a rotting mess. Food is meant to be eaten, not wasted. 

A college student knows that lesson better than anyone, especially when they're living on their own for the first time and spending money on exorbitant groceries like a real-life adult. Adulting is hard that way, one minute you're eating out of your mom and dad's fridge, and the next you're counting quarters in the Vons line and taking that avocado out of the conveyor belt to stay under your grocery budget. In that kind of household, food absolutely 100% cannot go to waste. 

This 18-year-old was learning about life the hard way, and as if by magic, one evening, a DoorDash order was mistakenly dropped off on their doorstep. After being visited by the food delivery fairy, this college student posted all over local neighborhood chatrooms, hoping to find the original orderer of the food, but as the chalupa smell wafted through their house, their strength wavered. 

Hunger churned in their belly as the hours passed, and after hours without someone claiming their meal, they decided to take control. Don't waste food, right? Especially when it falls out of the sky with no apparent owner. Well, this logic came back to bite them, almost as eagerly as they bit into that cheesy bean burrito. 

At what point does feeling welcome in someone else's home start crossing the line into feeling entitled?

I'm sure there's nothing more embarrassing for a mother to have to confront her teenage daughter about her boyfriend. And, especially, when that has to do with food. I mean, I certainly would not want to be in her shoes when it comes to this. I think she did well to reach out to the community on Reddit to find some opinions about the matter.

I believe that the most conflicting part about this has to do with the part where he's pretty comfortable with the home, and acts like it's his own. Since we don't have any background about his parents or family, his behavior feels out of place. Requesting dinners, or even complaining when the menu doesn't fit his palate, is disrespectful.

I hope the mother can find the bravery to confront both kids, or maybe her daughter, and put this boy in the place where he belongs. It doesn't have to escalate into something crazy or super big. Just a comment to know that he's been heard, and that he needs to change his attitude. I'm sure the family can find a solution to work this problem out, and I definitely hope that there's not going to be backlash for mom, since she just wants to feel respected and appreciated. 

Also, it's very important to clarify that this situation isn't really about food at all. It's about respect, boundaries, and recognizing that someone else's generosity shouldn't be taken for granted. When a guest starts acting like they have a say in what's stocked in the fridge or what's being served for dinner, it's understandable that a host might begin to feel uncomfortable in their own home. Let us know in the comments what you would do in this situation!

"You can't go on vacation because we need you, and if you go, you're fired" is an equation that could baffle Ivy League mathematicians. A paradox that can be studied in philosophy classes for years. And this company's using it on simple employees… what a waste.As someone who spends a lot of his time reading philosophy, I can tell you managers and corporations are some of the best at producing paradoxes, anomalies, thought experiments, whatever you wanna call them.Add that to the fact this company's doing everything in its power to make policy changes cryptic, and you have all the evidence you need to conclude they're not greedy and probably somewhat evil. Oh no! They're scholars! Academics! It's you and me that aren't smart and educated enough to grasp these concepts.Approved time off, it seems, means approved until it becomes inconvenient for someone above you, at which point it retroactively becomes a you problem, and also a character flaw

What do you get out of being exceptionally good at your work?

We all know that the answer to this question is probably… more work. When you're good at your job, and other people recognize that you're doing a good job, the reward is usually expanding your workload so that your workplace can benefit more from your success. The lucky ones might get a raise out of it, or even a promotion, but most excellent employees only get the wonderful opportunity to work more while getting nothing in return.

The positive thing about that, which most people tend to forget, is that you can always say no to the extra workload, especially if you feel like you don't actually have the capacity to take on more tasks. If you're doing a good job as it is, and you haven't got an incentive to take on a bigger workload, well, the simple solution is that you don't.

Tell your coworker, your manager, or your boss that you have enough on your plate as is, and that you don't want new tasks to take away from the job you are already putting your heart and soul into. There is not much to lose from it, especially if you know they know how good of an employee you are, and you definitely know they cannot risk losing you.

The employee who shared this story below on Reddit's r/jobs subreddit learned this lesson only after they agreed to help their coworkers with other tasks. People got so used to giving this employee more work to do that they simply assumed they could handle it all. And with no incentive or appreciation, all that extra workload simply became too much.

It was only when this employee started saying 'no' to requests that their boss finally noticed how much they've been doing, and decided to finally give the employee the recognition they deserved. All it took was putting up these boundaries, and the employee stopped feeling so invisible.

'Love is in the air', clearly we are not breathing the same air, Jackie. 

I don't know about you but dating is becoming more of a challenge than getting my degree. 

Family is not just a community that supporters but also one that obliges you to do things you don't want to do for them.

From lending money to provide them with a house to leave and a bed to stay, anything can be asked by your family members, and if you want to avoid a fight, you have to do it. You may feel used or as if they are dependent on you. Unfortunately, there is not much you can do about it. If you complain or suggest that it's unfair in the slightest, then you're inconsiderate and mean. Boundaries are nonexistent, and your things are communal and more available to others than yourself. Welcome to having a toxic family!

Also common in toxic families is the preferred child, and usually it isn't you. If you have a brother who can't maintain a job, never pays rent on time, and blames everyone except himself for his mistakes and problems. Then that is the preferred child. Even better if you have an amazing job, incredible academics, and a super organized work-life balance. The more amazing you are, the more they justify the unsuccessful life your awful brother has. And it always comes with phrases like: "life is not as easy for him" or "you have everything, why not share it with your brother?" Almost treating him as an infant who can't do anything right. Well, that is the situation of the woman in this Reddit Story.

Other daughters that are "blessed" with this horrible fate just bend their heads down and try to help with what they can, only to be presented with no gratitude from anyone. But the user who wrote this story wasn't like that. She grew a grip, tired from this situation, and said no, multiple times. When his word was overruled, she took action. She changed the locks. She went above and beyond to change her sad destiny, and for that, a whole family drama was created in which the least affected person was his brother. He just moved back in with his parents and didn't care about anything. Now, even though her parents are mad at her, she stayed clear-minded about her decision, and that is the best thing she could have done. 
 

Breakups are not reserved for couples

Have you ever lost a friend? Not naturally, not through the passage of time, but through concrete action, a good ol' breakup just like lovers do. I have, many times, some I have gone back to, some I haven't, but it's always funny how so many words and songs and books and films exist about the end of romantic love, and how few about the end of a friendship.

Mixed-gender friendships are sometimes complicated, though they have no reason to be; it can happen, and I think catching feelings for your friend might be a universal experience. It's our first time in this life for all of us; that's why certain relationship configurations are not easy to navigate. Blessed be who can go through the turbulent waters of unrequited love without losing their cool. In this story, shared by the dumper, people did lose their cool, but we understand them.

When malicious compliance turns into simple compliance

I was about to make malicious compliance my new religion until I came across this example of it going in the exact opposite way it was expected. Maybe it's time to give up on our mischievous endeavours and turn back to old, regular, direct communication.  When something like this backfires, we get two problems where there used to be one. The thing is, it's very hard to go back to how things were when your boss loved the new implementation. Should we invent an emergency protocol for when malicious compliance goes wrong? How should it be called? Un-complying?

Sometimes, doing exactly what your boss tells you is the best medicine against useless changes. 
 

Malicious compliance, what is it? And why is it so common in workplaces? Malicious compliance is a way employees can get back at their horrible bosses. It is a form of vengeance in which the workers don't do something inherently wrong. Instead, they do exactly as they are told. It is a passive-aggressive behavior in which you do exactly what you are told, while ignoring the intended outcome. This has become very common in the last few years because of some incompetent bosses who try to fix things that aren't broken. They put their nose where they aren't needed and change things that don't need to be changed. That triggers a response from overworked employees who decide to comply simply because they know it will inevitably fail. And, in the long run, that may change the way their bosses approach them.

In this Reddit story, a healthcare worker is asked to talk less, be less friendly, as –supposedly– she is not doing her work because she gets distracted with patients and other employees. That is not true, and the user knows this. That's why she complies with what she was asked. This generates a weird environment where everyone feels like she is having issues. They start to worry she may be going through a rough patch, as it extends to the boss, who originally told her to be like this, and ends up calling her to tell her to go back to normal.

This story is just another example of when bosses try to fix something that works perfectly fine. There were always good reviews about how nice the receptionist was, the workplace was harmonious, and everyone was doing their job perfectly. But no, the boss had to intervene just because she could. She did not care if it was useful advice or just micromanaging. She did it anyway, and the outcome was horrible. So maybe it's better that if everything seems to be working, leave it like that. Bosses, stop messing around when you are not needed to do anything!
 

When your family thinks you're too young to demand your own bed

The practical explanation might be simple: 'They're the youngest, they're more flexible, they'll manage'. Sometimes, when you are the youngest sibling, you're forced to remain in a babyfied position. This is probably not on purpose; it's just a way of functioning that got stuck when you were a baby. The thing is, you're now 25 and have back pain (I know 25 is still young, but computers are destroying us! lol), and you are staring at the couch your family gave you as a bed during vacation, like it is a dark joke about to be amended. Well, it wasn't a joke for this woman; it was more like the last straw.

Sometimes, life likes to throw difficulties at us at the most inconvenient times, and we are left to fix them all on our own.

Even though we all signed up to do our jobs, everyone wished for an impromptu day off from time to time. Think about it, how great would it be if your office would suddly get a power outage, and your boss would tell you that you can go home while they try to fix it?

You could be getting a whole day to relax while someone else deals with an issue at work, and no one can blame you for it… 

That being said, a technical issue shouldn't actually disturb your job for more than a day, unless you want to truly risk your position at your workplace. There is only so long that you can get away with not working, even if the problem is not up to you. At some point, it can very much cost you a lot more than a little delay for your workload.

Take the employee below as an example. Almost three weeks ago, their computer broke down, and since then, no one has been able to fix it. Not only was the computer not fixed, but IT seemed to make the situation worse when they discovered that the employee's account and login were deleted entirely from the faulty computer.

Since then, every day the employee arrived at work, and every day they sat there waiting until someone could fix the issue and allow them to get back to work. And every day, they were unsuccessful… It had gotten to a point where the employee's coworkers thought they had quit, and they are so behind with work that the entire company is going to feel the backlash very soon. Still, no one is able to find the solution.

Do you get along with your in-laws?

It is such a cliché to have beef with your in-laws, and yet, it truly happens all the time in real life. What came first, the art or real life? The chicken or the egg? Like, why is this cliché still so often the truth? Why can't we all just get along? This Redditor, u/TheLastLook- seems to be living the cliché, but in an even pettier way. The passive aggression of her mother-in-law is laughable, and that's usually what she does when she gets into sticky situations with her. She just laughs at the absurdity of her MIL and carries on with her life. Except for one thing… Her MIL keeps tricking her into being the "late" one arriving to all of the family functions, and this Redditor finally cracked. 

Can you imagine catching your horrid MIL in the act of trying to plan your demise? I can't tell if that is extremely satisfying or just sad… Like, why don't you want the best for your family, MIL? Why does it have to be a competition? The way her MIL made a fool out of herself in front of the DIL and the rest of the family is pretty satisfying, though. 

The DIL told her hubby to get the kids ready to leave an hour early to make it to the reservation on time due to the fickle weather. Unfortunately, dum dum hubby told his mom that they were leaving an hour early, so his mom went and told everyone else to get there exceptionally early to ensure her DIL was still the late one. However, when the DIL got there, she spotted the MIL through a two-way mirror that the MIL didn't realize was there. Well, let's just say the DIL got some front row entertainment and epic ammo to call out the MIL in front of the entire family at the dinner table. 

The World Cup has all of us in a chokehold, but that doesn't mean you can bail on your own children.

Football, soccer, whatever you call it, has always been important. But in the last few years, the World Cup has achieved an importance that surpasses geographical limits. It does not matter who you support, but the fact that you watch it. The importance is such that advertising spots have gone up by millions. This also means that a lot of people have become obsessed with it, taking time off work to watch the matches or, in this case, bailing on their children so you can watch it with friends at a local bar.

In this Reddit story, the main problem is not the friend who does not know how to set boundaries and avoid getting used to, or the mother who excuses her husband and defends him when he is doing something wrong. The real issue is the dad who prefers to abandon his children to go to a bar, is the dad who prefers that someone else take care of his own descendants, and the dad who has no remorse in putting his hobbies and pleasures above everybody else's. This is not about the hard-working women who are doing more than they can to take care of the little ones. Is the unapologetic man who decided to put himself above others, even his own children.

This story is not showing us a friend who takes advantage of her childless friend, because she doesn't. The user who wrote this rant offered to be the free babysitter so that her friend could have some free time. The problem is that instead of being a good thing, it transformed into the easy way out for a grown man who likes to avoid his responsibilities. It shows the entitlement and poor care this dad has for his household. And that is the real problem. 
 

If one sibling provides years of hands-on care while others remain distant, should inheritance reflect that contribution?

There's something almost mythical about the idea of a life-changing windfall of cash that drops in your lap, pulling you out of the current paycheck-to-paycheck repetitive cycle you find yourself in and changing your financial outlook considerably. Things like inheritance and insurance payouts are the most likely ways that this will happen, but that will come at a great cost, perhaps even greater than you are prepared for. That's exactly how it was in this story, which a grandson shared to a popular Reddit community, which sparked conversation on the delicate questions surrounding family, obligations, inheritance, and fairness. 

This is why my partner and I call buying a lottery ticket the "hope tax," which we do occasionally when we are having a bad week. Simply, throwing away $20 for a one in a million chance gives us that fantasy, at least for a little while, that one day we could quit our jobs and travel the world some time before we reach retirement age.  

Of course, this is a slippery slope, and one should be extremely careful about such things. It would be better to put that money toward some other small habit or pleasure that we enjoy and start building towards that success that we dream of. Why, that lottery ticket could buy a week's worth of coffees that could be slowly sipped while sitting in a coffee shop somewhere or on a bench in the park. And that habit would probably help out a lot more with that rough week than the lottery ticket.

Sometimes you have to act out a directive in order to prove the flaws. 

Sometimes in life. Let's be honest: no matter how open, honest as a manager you are; no matter how "down to earth" you are and how much you believe in empowering your teams and giving them agency… Sometimes, sometimes, you just want to give a directive and have it followed without question.

It's important to realize this and know that you might have a great relationship with your boss, but sometimes you might drive them crazy pointing out every little thing that is wrong with their decision, or especially the decision that they had passed down to them from on high.

Of course, in these times, the best thing you can do as the one taking the directive is to simply follow this. In this way, malicious compliance can be extremely effective, pointing out glaring flaws in a policy change or process without having to be a "naysayer." Of course, getting the directive in writing and documenting every step is important because simply following orders won't stop fingers from eventually being pointed at you.

Overwhelm can quickly create compounding issues in workplaces and cause stressed-out managers to behave in stress-driven ways that they wouldn't normally. Leading them to set strict authoritarian directives that they wouldn't normally.

But let's be honest. Like in this story of workplace malicious compliance, which was shared by a service industry utility worker who normally was stationed as a runner, chefs are famously known for being stressed-out perfectionists who run their kitchens with an iron grip.

When your friend is perfect, and you… aren't

Have you ever had a friend who has simply everything going right for him or her? Have you ever had the same friend having everything going right not for a period of time but FOREVER? I had, but I never reacted with jealousy. I don't want to seem like the moral police here, but I think there can be plenty of postures to take that are much more beneficial than jealousy. The question is whether that is something which you can decide upon.

This Redditor shared a story with us about her seemingly perfect best friend and presents herself as doubtful about what to do about it. Do you have any recommendations for her?

Somewhere in a conference room, someone decided to convert a residential apartment building into a hotel and thought the best communication strategy was to email the tenants a month before it happens and claim nobody knew until recently. And then starting to move in furniture immediately afterward. Just a streak of bold choices

Hotel conversions involve permits, investors, contractors, and months of planning. The residents found out in an email. These two timelines do not suggest a surprise so much as a deliberate decision about when to share information that was never actually surprising to the people making it.

Landlords, in theory, are generally required to honor existing leases, but as we all know, landlords are divine creatures who are above theory, law, and any other, so this sort of human-level restrictions don't really apply here

Artificial Intelligence vs Organic Slyness

Sometimes I think the robots are overpowering us, and then I come across stories like this and realize they still lack the flexibility and the sharpness it takes to adapt to ever-changing human demands. At least the humans who know a little about coding can find ways to slip through the cracks.

This employee might have fallen into a trap of his own making cause he probably spent a lot of time and energy developing a system to get even with a machine, but in the end, it was worth it. Should we all start to learn programming? Or is it too late now? Maybe it's time to leave the internet forever and run away into the woods.

When 'we agreed on this' stops meaning anything then some things are not working right. 

Boundaries only work if both people actually treat them like boundaries, not suggestions that expire the moment they're inconvenient.

Wanting to save some money and avoid wasting food sounds great, but maybe do it while preserving your manners.

Restaurants have become so expensive that it is usual to see people taking home the remaining food on their plates. This is great not only money-wise, but it also avoids throwing away perfectly good food. This is now so common that most restaurants have applied an extra cost to taking the remainings home. It's a pretty inexpensive fee, so that they can place it in a plastic recipient and a brown bag. Even though the cost is usually no more than $5, there have been some critics, as the customer has already paid for the food, and this act is simply taking home that same food.

In this Reddit story, the customer decided she didn't want to pay for the extra bagging to take home her food, also known as a doggy bag. So, she took a Tupperware with her to the restaurant, and when she ate all she could, she saved the rest to take home. This attitude was not reprimanded by the restaurant workers, but it was by her friend. At first, she just looked at her weirdly, but then she said that was really embarrassing and basically that she had no business doing that. The woman tested the same attitude with another friend, and he completely encouraged her, so now she is pretty lost on whether this is correct or not.

In my opinion, this constitutes two kinds of people, the ones that are really conscious of their own presence and are easily embarrassed. And the people who simply don't care if what they are doing is acceptable or not, they just do it. This seems to be a problem in both parts. You shouldn't be living your life thinking what the people that surround you –and that you don't even know– think about you. But also, you shouldn't embarrass your friends with poor manners and attitudes that you know are not great to do in public spaces. In the end, all this could be resolved with conversation and compromise.