These bosses realized too late that they hired the wrong person for the job… only to then fire that worker ASAP. 

Sometimes, workplaces hire the wrong person for the job, and then they're faced with a choice. Maybe that person is avoiding phone calls, or maybe they're consistently taking random days off, or perhaps they're just turning in poor-quality work. The powers that be, mainly management and HR, have to put their heads together and decide — is it worth it to keep this person onboard and put resources into training them? Or should they just tell this person it's the end of the line, and that they're fired? 

Americana has its charms, and for the foreign mind that's spent a lifetime watching American movies, many of these whimsical tropes were nothing but on-screen magic, until, of course, they realized that it wasn't just fiction: That's just America, babyyy.

Okay, America has a bad rep sometimes, but some enchanting and charming things don't exist anywhere else. 

As a born and bred Amurican myself, raised in the deserts of the Southwest and coastal beach towns of Southern California, I've been steeped in Americana since day one. Frontiersmanship was ingrained in my soul, the call of freedom echoed in my mind, and baseless confidence steeled into my bones; naturally, it's the American way. While there are many things I'd love to change about this country, there are even more small charms that I wouldn't trade for the world. When the diner server calls you "Hon," or when an old cowboy runs to the other side of his dually truck to open the car door for his woman, my heartstrings are tugged, and my mood is magically lifted.

It wasn't until I met and married a foreigner, a Frenchman, that a lot of the simpler Americana moments became obvious. 

To him, America is a movie set come to life, reflecting the films and the TV he watched with dubs or subs since his own childhood, but to me, America was just how it was; nothing to it, right? As I've grown older (and hopefully wiser??!), I realized that there IS something to it. Ice cold lemonade on a wraparound porch and fireflies at twilight are more magical than you'd think. Yellow school buses are as cartoonish as the tumbleweeds bustling across the 8-lane freeways. The prom king and queen will always be royalty, and cowboys really do be wearing 10-gallon hats. 

So despite the vastness, the diversity, and the strange ways of the local Walmart, America has proven to be the wild, wild west that it's portrayed in films. The ground spouts misty fog in Manhattan, and bartenders have heart-to-heart conversations with strangers every night, and that's a part of our charm. Culturally, the outside perspective of Americana is fascinating because it's the smaller moments that define Americans just as much as the loud moments, but it's the quiet confidence, the smiling sweetness, and the good ol' boy mentality that make them who they are. 

Chime in with the tourists and take a gander at what Americans look like from the outside, because the answers from travelers online may surprise you in ways that are both wholesome and heartwarming at the same time, making your average American mind expand and appreciate this country for all its worth.

Scare away your inevitable Sunday scaries with these funny memes!

The Sunday scaries now hit many of us before it's even Sunday! Some say that is simply called anxiety, but that's just semantics. Whatever you wanna call it, you need the meme. Serotonin to make you feel better and dopamine as a reward, memes can help you get both! So let's stop messing around and get to the laughs. We're not talking about doom scrolling, we're talking about the good old-fashioned meme listicle below. 

Everyone's first professional environment shapes their perspective on work.

For a small subset of individuals, their introduction to workplace culture is a smooth and successful one. Some folks might have even felt valued, respected, and fairly compensated. 

The rest of us, however, likely experienced a lack of respect and maybe even a lack of compensation entirely. I wish I could say that what this marketing intern experienced during the first weeks of her time at this agency was abnormal. The truth is that most of us have experienced some version of this unfair treatment.

Everyone's first professional environment shapes their perspective on work.

For a small subset of individuals, their introduction to workplace culture is a smooth and successful one. Some folks might have even felt valued, respected, and fairly compensated. 

The rest of us, however, likely experienced a lack of respect and maybe even a lack of compensation entirely. I wish I could say that what this marketing intern experienced during the first weeks of her time at this agency was abnormal. The truth is that most of us have experienced some version of this unfair treatment.

A love life? No, thank you! How about a comedy routine instead? These dating app fails will make you laugh more than your ex ever did. 

Another Valentine's Day, another year of hearing horror stories from your couple friends. Yeah, that's a hard pass! Dating isn't a walk in the park either, but at least it has the lore. These funny dating app fails will keep you laughing while staying single pringle this romantic holiday, and you're happy about it! 

Dry January has been over, and it's time to cheers to February with brews and memes. 

Are you a fancy pantsy brewery brews kind of person or a cheap goes-down-like-water kinda drinker? We're love them both! Depends on our mood, really. And currently, after a very snowy and stressful January, we are fully ready to enjoy FeBREWuary to the fullest. We might be too old to play staff wizard with our beer cans, but we're going to be cheersing with the homies whenever we get a chance. No more avoiding people and pretending like we're going to start our "healthy" New Year's resolution. Time to be 100% yourself and enjoy the little things. Because if can't enjoy the little things, like an ice cold brew, then what can you enjoy? Seriously, it's kind of all we've got these days…

Oh, but we'll always have memes! The memes online, in your heart, and piling up in your DMs from your besties. That's a true friend right there! One who can get a pint or two with you and then still be able to send you 1,000 relevant memes afterwards. That's the kind of friends we are and the kind of friends we are closest with. Is their really anything better than drinking and meme with the besties??

If you need a very silly show to watch while second-screening and half paying attention, may I recommend Ryan Murphy's show All Fair? And when you need an interesting show to actually pay attention to, would you believe that I'm also going to recommend you a Ryan Murphy show called The Beauty? 

These shows are on different levels of acclaim, but they have a theme in common — Murphy's shows are delving into the workplace with a type of super silly imagination that is lacking from today's procedurals. 

Look, if you want your workplace TV shows serious and solemn, there are a metric ton to choose from on any streaming service or channel. Medical? The Pitt. Restaurant? The Bear, of course. Office? Severance. These shows are all highly critically acclaimed, but sometimes serious is not what we want. Sometimes these shows are downright stressful, or they remind us of workplace experiences that we don't want to relive (I'm thinking about The Bear for both critiques here!). Sometimes, you just want to watch junk-food TV, and that's where the goofiness of Ryan Murphy's shows come in.

Photos via IMDB and IMDB

We should all appreciate (most) teachers, and most of us do. That is, as long as they act like teachers, the ones that are authority figures, not reality TV judges for pre‑teens.

A middle schooler in a gifted magnet program gets roped into a group project that ends up landing almost entirely on her shoulders. She organizes the work spells out tasks for her teammates and keeps nagging them to contribute.  One girl does a handful of images another throws in a few sources and the rest of the heavy lifting becomes her full‑time gig.

After baking dozens and dozens of cookies, this Mom wasn't thrilled that her husband suddenly wanted his own batch. 

Valentine's Day can be so cute if you have kids! 

Many parents love to do arts and crafts with their kids to create homemade decorations. Others do a bunch of baking and let the children decorate cupcakes or cookies. 

Some parents also let their kids pick out those packs of Valentine's Day cards, which sometimes come with lollipops or other candies to attach onto them, which they can then give to all their classmates. It's a very sweet time of year, all puns intended!

This Mom of 4 young children is also a teacher, and she has really overbooked herself. She accidentally agreed to make cookies for all 4 kids' classes, plus a bake sale. Suffice it to say her kitchen is a one-woman bakery right now!

However, her husband wandered into the kitchen and kind of cluelessly started badgering her with questions. And uh, it didn't go smoothly for him from there on.

The big guys will always try to blame the little guys. They seldom get away with it; at least, when there's a paper trail involved.

Sometimes, department heads might have an ego that doesn't mesh well with their subordinates' eye for detail. To be proven wrong by someone lower on the ladder feels like a living nightmare. They were supposed to know everything. They were supposed to check the progress of a task at every touchpoint. Now, they have nothing to show for their oversight. So, instead, they try to place blame on their employees. Luckily, repeated stories of this nature circulate on the internet daily. Now, everyone knows what to do in the wake of a mean, conniving boss. Scroll to read about how this department head couldn't have been more wrong about his gut feeling.

While booking a family flight, this father never considered what would happen if his wife and babies got auto-assigned into separate rows…

We don't always get to choose where we sit on a plane — that's a privilege reserved for the business-class bros, the fancy first-class flyers, and whoever will shell out like $80 a seat to sit next to their loved ones. 

For most flyers, it's really no big deal if you don't sit next to your wife for a 3-hour flight. You're just like, "Bye, babe, see you when we get there!" Then you settle in next to your seat-mates, put on a movie, and eat your tiny bag of pretzels. Easy peasy. 

However, some people are flying with their kids, and you can't just leave your kiddos unattended… right? 

To be fair, if one of your coworkers started assigning tasks to the entire staff without actually having the authority to do so, would you be willing to listen?

Gaining authority over other people at work is something you must earn, whether through the respect of your coworkers or an actual promotion and endorsement from higher-ups in the company. What is unlikely to happen is for you to march into the staff room and simply demand the authority, without anything tangible to back you up.

Which is exactly why the employee in the story below was unable to get any of the staff to follow their lead.

Despite the fact that this employee was the most responsible person on shift and the only one who cared enough to get work done even without the shift supervisor on site, they couldn't get anyone else to listen to them. They tried to assign tasks to staff members instead of waiting for the supervisor, but no one was willing to adhere to someone who is not technically in charge. And honestly, who would blame them?

A woman and her dog make exceptionally loud noises all hours of the night, then get upset when a neighbor walks their dog in broad daylight.

"Rules for thee and not for me." We have all met someone like this. They might be a coworker, a family member, or a not-so-sweet next-door neighbor. Entitled people tend to ride the wave of entitlement and double standards because it allows them to preserve their fragile egos. They never have to admit that they're wrong, and instead, guiltlessly demonize unsuspecting, normal individuals they come across in their daily lives.

Dogs are always at the forefront of neighborly disputes, yet somehow, the issue isn't exactly with them. It's actually their owners. A dog can be trained, but a human… that takes more persistence and some Pavlovian strategy, in our opinion. These innocent furry fellas look up to their owners because they're the ones giving them kibble at the end of the day. If only they knew just how problematic their human parents were… But hey, we all have those days. If we're open to constructive criticism, then all's well that ends well. Right? If we're not open to criticism, we might be hearing from some very angry neighbors about our behavior.

This story shows you what to do and what not to do as a dog owner.

Do: Let your dogs out if they need to use the bathroom.

Don't: Yell at them to use the bathroom during quiet hours, more precisely, at 1 am.

Do: Listen to your neighbors when they tell you that the way you tell your pup to use the bathroom is a nuisance to the neighborhood.

Don't: Begrudgingly take out your frustrations on them because you know they're correct.

Scroll below to read about a story where this exact scenario plays out.

A lack of laundry room decorum can truly ruin someone's day.

As a tenant in an apartment building with a frequently busy shared laundry room, I empathize with the author of this story, whose frustration echoes my own sentiments about unspoken rules in these spaces. 

Recently, I went downstairs to pick up my laundry just one minute after the cycle had finished. I specifically had chosen to do my laundry during an "off hour" so that I wouldn't be scrambling to claim a machine. I was even able to dry clothes in one of the new speedy dryers, which tend to be in use whenever I would like to try them. 

I always make a point not to let my clean clothes sit in the machine for too long. I know that doing so could wildly inconvenience other people. This time, I came down right after my cycle was finished, only to find all my clothes strewn about the table (some on the floor), still wet. Clearly, some neighbor of mine thought they could get away with removing my clothes early on in the cycle to get the speedy dryer when there were so many regular dryers available for them to use. My revenge? I stopped their cycle while their clothes were still wet. An eye for an eye!

An employee whose workplace accommodation was mishandled, going against their doctor's orders, ran into roadblocks with their employer when their manager and HR attempted to blindside them over their mentioning of "accountability," turning their complaint into a threat against their job.

If there's something that remains a fact about people, both in the workplace and in the wider spaces of life, it's that they don't like to be confronted by their own shortcomings. Almost every one of us, to some extent, is going to get our egos involved when we're approached about something that we might have done wrong. 

When it comes to scammers, they don't respect anyone, especially their seniors. However, this scammer was quickly put in their place by this sweet granny! 

Back in the early 2000s, online scammers were a new thing. Many people fell for the "Nigerian Prince" who said that they had millions of dollars to give you. Kind of crazy to think about how many people fell for that now… But, senior citizens were definitely targeted and still are today. This old lady, however, didn't fall for it at all! In fact, she gave a scammer the good old-fashioned Uno Reverse card. 

A TV mount is only as strong as the family that surrounds it.  

A handyman who has been working for a decade shows up to assemble and install a wall‑mounted TV stand for a couple with a three‑ or four‑year‑old boy who treats furniture pieces like a jungle gym.

This manager wasn't impressed by an intern's performance, but they didn't know whose son they were reprimanding. 

This person got that dreaded message from their boss: the directive to "hop on a quick call." Uh oh… we all know that's usually not a good sign! 

Turns out that their boss left out some key information about an intern under that employee's supervision. 

Look, we all know that interns aren't usually very good at their jobs. That's kind of the point, actually. Interns are usually in college or are still in the beginning stages of their careers. They're not really properly "hireable" at any normal job, because they haven't grasped office etiquette yet. They don't have experience with managing time-sensitive assignments, working for super-strict bosses, or grinding away at office drudgery for 40 hours per week. Not many internships are fun, per se, but they build character and teach you the basics of office life in your chosen profession. 

When their kids turn to adults, parents start asking their kids over and over: "When are you going to give me grandkids?"

The bond between grandparents and their grandkids is unbreakable. It can be the sweetest thing to witness, and is often a gorgeous time in a married couple's lives. When they realize they're expecting their first baby, they get to tell their parents, often by giving them a little gift, like a shirt that says "Best Grandma Ever" or something similar. They then get to watch their parents become thrilled at the prospect of having a little baby in their lives again!

Those aging parents are in their 50s or 60s, having raised first a baby, then a cranky teen, and then going through the stages of adulthood. So after all that, they really long to hear adorable childhood laughter and tiny footsteps running through their home once again. They want the joy of having a new baby around, coupled with the wonderful experience of watching their babies raise babies of their own. 

Here's the thing, though, and it's a hard pill for some older folks to swallow: not every couple wants babies…