Karens, the internet way to call annoying customers.

Karen has officially become the name of every annoying customer that exists. It doesn't matter if a customer threatens to call the cops on a worker because they say they are not allowed to access private information. If they want to get a hairdresser fired because their hair was cut one millimeter more. Or if they are filming an employee at work because they have no more ice cream at the ice cream store. This may seem exaggerate but I promise you, all of these have happened.

They act almost like a child demanding something that a worker has already explained is not possible, and getting annoyed or violent at the rejection of their wishes. Their complaints are always followed by a mean comment, a horrible attitude, and a threat. This last one can be to get you fired, to sue you, or even to slap you. They seem like people who want to be saviors to the unfairly treated, but they always choose fights where they are in the wrong. Is like a superpower that activates when they do not have to.

The name started as a way for customer service workers to have some kind of vengeance toward the people who always treated them as garbage. Employees were filled with rage caused by the entitlement and believed power that these ladies have when talking to them. Instead of using words to communicate something that does not seem fair, they simply escalate the situation. As in the Reddit story, where a customer expected to receive private information just because they started yelling.

As someone who has worked in customer service, I know that these people exist. I have encountered them too many times. But the truth is, they are not only women. These people are of different genders, religions, and races. Sometimes they only explode when the conversation has gone on for minutes, and sometimes it simply starts with the explosion.

I do believe that this mocking is actually useful, making customers aware of certain attitudes and, luckily, making a change in the long run. 
 

 Sue the hairdresser. Sue someone. Sue me. 

Some haircuts start with a pair of scissors and a dream. And sometimes, the dream becomes a nightmare when the hair hits the floor.

Bonded so much it ended badly

Some things we can only figure out in retrospect. People often act in ways we deem incoherent and irrational, and only after everything ends can we see the underlying motives for their behaviour.

Becoming too close way too fast with someone might be a cause for concern. I don't mean to instill paranoia, because sometimes it just means we're going to become friends forever with the person. Still, more often than not, it might mean something toxic is about to emerge with the same intensity that the 'friendship' began.

This time, it happened to a server who bonded too rapidly with the general manager and was hired on a whim. Could she have done anything to change the course of events?

Do you work hourly, contract, or salary?

It doesn't matter; it's time for memes. The meme factor never closes and always needs employees. The supply and demand for memes is constantly flowing. The quarterly targets are always reached. Meme bonuses for everyone! The memes are the pay AND the benefits. Listen, I know, it doesn't matter if you are working your dream job, you still have days when you wish you weren't. We are humans. We weren't built to be frolicking through fields and getting berries by a creek. Now we have to type "per my last email" like it's the arrow that catches our prey for lunch. It doesn't feel natural. But we are an evolving society, and we need to work. So, we try to find jobs that make us happy and remind ourselves, even when the going gets tough, that we are, in fact, doing what we want to do. What is life! C'est la vie, right? Oui! 

I've worked my dream job, I've worked several jobs I can only assume satan himself assigned me for, and I've worked jobs that were like fine, whatever, at least I made some friends along the way. Sometimes, it's the amazing team and coworkers you end up working with that really make or break the job. Like, if your work besties quit, it's only a matter of time until you do the same. Having a job is such a love-hate relationship. You begged the universe for this career and job, and now you have it! But, wow, I miss being bored. Remember when I was bored and had free time? I definitely took that time for granted. You know what has never disappointed me or gotten old? The memes that have come out of the job market. So let's clock into memes! 

How do you write a cover letter? 

A lot of people are likely asking themselves (and Claude) that very question. These days, companies are opting for mass layoffs, outsourcing, and other desperate measures to stay afloat in this dismal economy, leaving many able-minded and able-bodied workers looking for jobs online. However, a lot of folks have either become dependent on AI to write their emails or never learned to use the critical thinking portion of their brains in the first place, and it's making hiring managers crazy. 

How many times can a hiring manager read the exact same AI-generated cover letter before losing their minds, too? Can anyone actually write or think for themselves anymore? Well, yes, obviously there are humans who don't rely on non-human aid to write a paragraph in the "About Me" section of their job application, but that kind of job applicant is becoming scarce. Apparently, too, there are some telltale signs of corner-cutting in the hiring world that are more obvious than you'd think, making a lot of job hunters think twice before they hit enter on their latest prompt. 

As it turns out, our little human flaws and our nuances are what make us prospective employees attractive to companies. It's not a "perfect" resume or a weirdly robotic buzzword response that makes people more hirable; it's their spirit, expertise, and their innate ability to actually get the job done. But how can a hiring manager see through the artificial intelligence? By scanning for natural intelligence, of course. 

There are a few obvious buzzwords that the chronically online folks have learned to spot, but can you catch the nuances of a clanker faker in the ranks of the legitimate? Probably not as well as these hiring managers from r/AskReddit…

Being unemployed is nobody's fantasy. Day after day, send resumes just to be disqualified by an AI system that doesn't care if you're the next Einstein or a simple worker who needs a job to sustain their family.

This is the current state of the world, no jobs, no work, no suitable candidates that exceed the unrealistic expectations that AI resume electors aprove. Every listing requires workers to create a whole new CV with great qualifications, amazing recommendations, and out-of-this-world experience. Well, the truth is, soon nobody would be perfect enough. The requirements change every time someone archives them. There is no real bar because a computer is better than a human at being productive. In the end, we are not really fighting each other for a position. We are fighting a system that rejects anything human.

In this Reddit story, the unemployed user is describing the feeling of constant rejection that can only be caused by the current state of the job market. We are nothing more that number forever applying to positions that can only be filled by nepo-babies or computers. It has changed so much that it started a wave of influencers and human resources employees to start ranting about what we can do differently, as if there was a formula that worked. But there isn't. This user got the job for being human. He had the same qualifications as probably half of the people who applied. He wasn't better than everyone, he just did the best interview that he could, was relaxed, and treated the questions as a normal conversation. He treated everyone kindly and was confident in his humanity. Eventhough it seems as if there is no more place for actual workers, there is, AI can't replace us all. Our humanity and values makes as valuable and needed for jobs. 
 

It's all about the way you say it

When we try to obtain something from someone, for example, a seat exchange on a plane, we should be mindful of the way we ask for it, because it can change everything. We're not supposed to go about the world feeling entitled to seats or to other people's kindness, and this Redditor gave a man who felt like that a lesson.

Being gigantic doesn't give you the right to stomp on everyone, but malicious compliance can be the revenge of the little ones. Do you think it's better to act this way or to be openly confrontative?

When does helping family stop being a favor and start feeling like an obligation?

I'm going to start by saying that I'm standing with the OP in this one. There's nothing more unfair to me than realizing my family is forcing me to be responsible for something that's not mine, nor something I asked for. I think he's right when he stands up for himself and sets this boundary with them.

There's also a big difference between helping family during an emergency and being expected to provide ongoing free labor. Most people would gladly make the occasional trip if something urgent came up, but being on call several times a month with little notice is a completely different commitment. It's obvious that the OP is beginning to feel less like a helpful grandson and more like an unpaid property manager.

For a little extra context, he states that his grandparents are European, so they're very strict when it comes to helping and lending others the key to their house. That leads their own children and grandchildren to go and fix the house whenever there's a problem. But, it's not just a quick fix: everyone lives very far away and has to travel a lot just to get there. So, essentially, this arrangement doesn't work for anyone.

What stands out to me is that the family seems to be treating the lack of a property manager as an unavoidable problem when it's actually a choice. If the grandparents have decided they don't trust outside help, that's their problem, but it doesn't automatically mean the responsibility should fall on their children and grandchildren. 

I hope that he setting his foot down is going to be helpful for the rest of the family to be more genuine and to help out if they really want to. However, according to the story, the family is very cooperative and titles him as selfish when he does not want to head down there to do some work.

What is the appropriate response to an employee's letter of resignation?

There are a few ways this could go, and all of them would be acceptable. Some employers would take the resignation, say 'alright,' respectfully, and move on with their day. They don't give way to emotions or show any sign of remorse that one of their employees is leaving, and honestly? That is perfectly valid and probably the most desirable response for most employees who are quitting.

Some employees actually would like to see some emotion coming out of their employers as they tell them they quit. They want to see the employer feel bad that a valued employee is leaving, and if you throw in an attempt to get them to say, that's even better. A little emotion is not necessarily a bad response, after all, we're all humans. If you worked for someone for a while, it makes sense if you want to see that they are even a little bit upset about your decision to leave.

The one response no one wants to get from their employer as they hand in their resignation letter is anger. Some employers are so mad about the prospect of an employee coming up and telling them that they are not happy with their job that they would go as far as putting all of the blame on the employee, instead of admitting that some of it is their fault.

The response to the employee's resignation in the story below is truly something else. While the employee tried to be as respectful as possible while they explained the reason for their quitting, the employer couldn't have responded with more accusations. All the employee said was that the working conditions were not sustainable due to the tip and pay system, but the employer decided to throw accusations about their integrity, selfishness, and work ethic.

The employee shared both the resignation letter and the boss's response in the story below, so keep scrolling to read all about it.

Two parties, zero accountability, and one guy standing in his destroyed yard as summer starts. Classic. Classicly annoying but still classic

The contractor's defense is that they were following the client's instructions. The neighbor's defense is that he never gave those instructions. Nobody is lying, nobody is responsible, and somehow the person whose property got torn up is the only one with an actual problem to solve. This is what happens when adults decide that pointing fingers is cheaper than writing a check.

Data isn't always everything, although it is often the most visible. 

In this Reddit story, an act of malicious compliance around tracking and timesheets raised a very important question about the fact that any time spent tracking time more thoroughly is actually wasting it.

We often think that our increased ability, aided by technology, to log and record every amount of data but one thing we often don't think about is just how much time and resources all of that data that we can track takes to process.

All of that data and increased insight itself can become an occlusion, as systems feed you data you're never going to get around to processing. All the while, more pours in and decreases the likelihood that you're ever going to get to it.

Plus, whatever you are focusing on becomes its own bias, and the more you focus on a single or few key metrics, the more workplace behavior will distort to meet it. But the invisible work is equally as important as the KPIs you're tracking (try explaining that in a board meeting), and the more time you spend forcing people to perform to a standard, the more you're eating away at those tasks.

As a manager, too, all of that micromanagement becomes a massive time sink; just as soon as you're having to spend all of your time worrying about what everyone else is doing, you can also count on the fact that you're not getting anything done yourself.

That works for some managers who have none of their own work to do, but for everyone else there's just no way that would be possible. 

This employee sought to get around their new boss's micromanaging scrutiny of their timesheets and decided to bombard them with so much information they couldn't keep up.

Sometimes a relationship ends but one part is unaware of it

I've been in this situation so many times, almost always on the aware part, but either way, it never ceases to be heartbreaking. Friendships, sadly, sometimes take the worst part of romances, and people in them exhibit behaviours such as nagging and jealousy outbursts; or you find out one day that you are much more important to your friend's life than that person is to you. That, I think, is what's happening to the woman who shared the story below. Also, there is some difficulty setting boundaries and being assertive going on, but we'll discuss that later. I just wanted to preface what I'm going to comment on about this story by saying that it would be great if friendships were the place where we could let all that programming from romantic relationships fly out the window, and just enjoy ourselves and be free.

When should our nitpicking stop?

In these modern times, there's a pretty widespread idea that our partners should be there to satisfy our every need, and that we should be so pragmatic as to leave them ASAP if there is a very minor box they don't check. Evidently, I do not subscribe to that way of thinking, and today I'm going to explain why.

The woman who found herself in this desperate situation states she has no resources left to solve it and that it is a deal-breaker. And who are we to judge her? We'll just stick to using the story as an excuse to do our own bull session.

Can a take-home assignment become intellectual property theft?

Isn't this just a wonderful vengeance story? As a writer who has been working for a while, I had to complete multiple assignments during interview processes, and it never occurred to me that recruiters might be using my work without paying me a single penny. I just can't get over the fact that a company would actually do that. But I guess sometimes these things can happen.

That's why I got so thrilled when I read that the applicant installed a tracker on his design work, to check if those people would actually use it… and as a matter of fact, they were. But not only the used it: they rejected the applicant. That job position might have ended up being a total scam… Is it possible for companies to pretend they need to hire someone only to get a job done for free? I'm might be losing hope in the work industry if this is true…

I believe we can all learn from this situation and just be a bit more mindful when job searching. While taking a home assignment can be a legitimate part of the interview process, it does create opportunities for companies to steal the work and not pay for it. Although many companies act in good faith and they really want to test the applicant, being careful about it is a smart move.

Wow… it really surprises me how competitive the job market is getting. I remember a couple of years ago, it wasn't really common for companies to send homework for you to do in order to test our skills. But now, with so many applicants, it's the norm. I guess the rules are changing for both ends, so taking care of your work and demanding what's yours seems pretty reasonable.

Let us know in the comments what you think about this designer! What would you have done?

Question: When is it okay to park in a handicapped parking spot?

Answer: Only when you have a permit to park in a handicapped parking spot. If you don't have a legal permission to park in an accessible parking space, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever for you to park in one. 

Not even for five minutes, not if you stay in the car, not in any scenario. That spot is reserved for people who need it, and for a good reason. There are enough people who need it anyway, so don't be a reason someone can't park in a spot they deserve. It isn't worth the risk of preventing others from using it, it isn't worth the fine you might get for illegally parking there, and it generally doesn't make you a good person. Just look for a different spot, even if it takes a few extra minutes out of your day.

All of that is very clear to the customer who shared the story below, but apparently not clear enough to the drive-thru employee who told them to park in the spot in the first place.

This customer did everything right: They made an order on the app so they wouldn't have to wait for it to be ready, they went through the drive-thru line, and accepted the fact that their order might take a few more minutes to be ready. But when the employee asked them to wait for the order in the handicapped parking spot, the customer finally said no. This was not something they were comfortable doing, and they had no problem saying that to the employee. Why should the customer risk getting a ticket because their order wasn't ready in time? And who is the employee to decide who can park in an accessible parking spot?

Who determines our relationship to love and marriage?

At first, I thought this was yet another story about a guy getting cold feet right at the moment he is asked a big question. This is how it always goes for me: everything seems to be going fine, and at some point, I decide to bring up some variation of the 'what are we?' question, and all we had goes up in flames. I think this is a fairly universal experience and not just my bad luck… Right?

Well, this wasn't the case at all for the young woman who shared this story, although it has some similarities with it which we're analyzing later. Also, his dragging the mother into the debate is all very cliché, but I'm not going to be prejudiced about this or project my love life frustrations onto it; the commentary will go in another direction, I promise.

Food can look different in different cultures, but it always means practically the same thing. Humans have gathered around food since forever and have also constructed countless rituals surrounding it. Feeding is one of our first contacts with the world around us when we're babies and are fed by our mothers. Most of the time, food signifies love, community, connection, nurture, interdependence, etc.

Having said this, what happens when the food we're being offered is not yummy, and it feels like it's being pushed down our throats? That's what we're about to find out. The story below was shared by a tired sister who doesn't know how to take care of this growing issue surrounding her sister's rather nasty appreciation displays.

When help is not helping

I think there is something to say here about a road paved with good intentions, but anyway. Sometimes we analyze a situation and come up with the best solution we can think of, and we end up breaking something that was steadily functioning. The key to success might be communicating our plans to fix the thing instead of doing it as a surprise, but well, everybody makes honest mistakes, and it even feels unfair to call a situation like this a mistake.

This good-willed employee spent hours of her days doing something she thought would benefit the entire department and ended up finding herself in a very awkward position. What would you do in this situation?

Why do some people see financial independence as a threat to commitment?

Okay, I'll totally admit that I feel compelled by this story. I am the older sibling, and I will always do whatever it takes to help any of my sisters. No matter what. Even if that involves money. And I think any sibling would do something like this… So, this anecdote could easily have happened to me. That's why I think I'm very invested.

What I don't get is why the boyfriend is so upset with the older sibling. I mean, of course, she was expected to help her sister, and since he has been around for three years, I believe her behavior is very normal. I understand that he's heartbroken and that he wants to keep the girl, but taking it out on the sister is definitely not the way to go. Especially when he's blaming her for the separation. 

I understand the position where the OP is sat. And, let me just say, she has no business with the boy and for sure doesn't have to try to comfort him in any way, or try to be in his shoes. She's there for her sister, as she has always been. Now, I'll say that I'm curious about the little sister's approach. What's on her mind? Because, essentially, her ex-boyfriend is calling her immature and demanding that she pay him back for the very expensive lifestyle they indulged in while being together. That's a bigger fish to fry. 

I'm very amazed by how the boyfriend thinks that the little sister is following money, when I'm sure there's a reason why she's leaving the relationship. And the OP clearly states at the top of the story: "she's not impressed by money". I hope the boy can see that there are more reasons behind the breakup, and demanding money is never going to help the situation. I'm curious to see what you think about the conflict. In my opinion, it is a very interesting thing when money interferes with family problems.

We're not born knowing how to not be anxious around love, and our first experiences with it are filled with all-or-nothing scenarios. I remember how I felt every time my high school sweetheart didn't immediately text back. I would succumb to the deepest pit, thinking my life was definitely over. At that age, it's very hard to tell the emotional mind that the other person might be occupied and has not spend its afternoon thinking about how to destroy you.

Truth is, we learn all this from experience, and this puppy love might have to go through its own lessons to become a more established form of partnership, but we'll be here to analyze and discuss how things got to this point and what the boy can do about them before it's too late. Or is it already too late?