This hotel receptionist was completely bemused by an aspiring influencer's request. 

As the job of "influencer" becomes a highly sought-after career choice, more and more people are throwing their hats in the ring. It often starts with passion: an artist showing off their works in progress, or a cat-lover highlighting their pet's hijinks, or a parent giving child-raising tips. But some people just do it for the clout. They only care about having the eyes of as many people as possible on them at all times. They want to influence everyone around them, but until they start getting some sweet brand deals, they'll have to fake it until they make it. 

A lot of smaller influencers think that they should be entitled to comped meals, free excursions, or discounted clothing all so that they can promote it to their audience. But as the larger influencers know, unless you can prove that you're moving units with your influence, no one is going to give you free stuff. And that's especially true if you only have a teeny tiny group of followers. Plus, as one commenter pointed out, this person might've had more success if they had a niche travel page or something, but they seemed to think they were entitled to freebies just for existing. 

Up next, check out some stories from people who realized they aren't dating the brightest bulbs, like one person who was informed by their spouse that "My plant was not 'food grade'."

Sometimes, no excuse is better than a lame excuse. Everyone deserves the right to take a break with no questions asked. Unfortunately for the workers of the world, that can be very hard to do when you have a demanding and nosey manager. 

These employees made the mistake of trying to fabricate valid reasons and coming up short. It's definitely better to say nothing at all if the only "reason" you can come up with is the grown-up version of your dog eating your homework. Luckily, those ridiculous excuses are entertaining to read about, from the employee who called to say they were coming down with something while club music was playing loudly in the background to the worker who claimed they were snowed in and couldn't drive to work despite living only a block away from the office. 

Keep scrolling below for the full collection of weak excuses to call in sick. Don't try these at your jobs, folks. For more, check out this post about an employee who got "quiet fired" just before her wedding.

One person realized their spouse wasn't that bright when they declared, "I thought we could just buy tickets at the airport on the day we leave." Their spouse literally thought that showing up at the airport, bag in hand, with no ticket, would still get them on a plane with any certainty. Only if they're lucky would they wind up on an aircraft! And that person isn't the only one who's been a bit surprised at their significant other's intelligence deficits… 

At least 14,000 people had stories to share about their spouse's lack of common sense. While dating someone, you quickly realize that the way they were raised influences their current knowledge. For example, there's a guy who didn't understand the correct way to make ramen noodles. It seems incredibly simple: boil water, cook the noodles, add the spice packet, and eat up. How hard could it be? Well, this dude proved that even the instructions don't count on someone being so dense that they wouldn't think to stir their soup before eating it. If you want to dump in the packet, not stir it, eat one extremely salty bite and then eat the rest of the "plain" noodles, well, it's his right to do so.

After that, read about what happened when this secretary stopped relaying messages to the CFO, writing, "I see the tow truck arrive and leave with the CFO's very, very precious Corvette."

Have you ever had a coworker who seemingly will stop at nothing to get you fired?

Before we get into this story of how an employee managed to save themselves from getting unfairly dismissed by instead getting their work nemesis fired first, let's unpack how these kinds of work rivalries happen. Most of the time, like most elements of a work environment, it all comes from the top down. If the system is built upon a foundation of unhealthy competition, that will almost never fare well for employees at the same level who are ultimately seeking promotions. That seems to have been a large part of why this Redditor's coworker was conspiring to get them in trouble from the start. 

Luckily, the Redditor was savvy and knew exactly what to do when they discovered what their coworker was up to behind closed doors. Talk about a toxic work environment! For more, check out this post about an employee who was "quiet fired" just before her wedding.

The more an employee spends time in a company or a corporation, the more they find out just how little that place of work actually cares about employees.

I used to think that HR is there to make sure employees are happy in the company and have someone to turn to when they need help. But the more I am exposed to this corporate life, the more I understand that HR is simply there to protect the company, and will do as little as possible to make their employees happy.

This Reddit story is the perfect example of how little HR cares about its employees. After quite a heated dispute between an employee and a problematic coworker, which resulted in the coworker being escorted off the property, the employee reported him to HR. That resulted in the coworker being fired, along with the employee who reported him, clearly proving that HR wanted to simply get rid of anyone who might cause the company problems.

Scroll down to read the full story, and let us know what you think about it in the comments. Up next, click here for a story of a new hire who tried to quit after their trainer publicly scolded them.

New management always tries to come in and change things. Perhaps it's to validate themselves in their new position or to create a clear hierarchy in the workplace, but when this new managerial Godzilla comes to trample over a functional system, there are bound to be a few toes that get stepped on.

When the long-standing employee in our next tale encountered his own world-demolishing manager, he decided to ensure that the only toes getting trampled were his manager's. After an ungraceful organizational change in the company, the original poster of this story was forced to pick up the operational pieces on the backend of the workflow. He created a loophole that benefited all of their departments and suited every manager just fine until the newest suit came in with something to prove. 

Keep scrolling to read all of the details of how this experienced employee warned the hot-headed newbie of the potential fallout of her department 'clean up', but was foolishly ignored. Remember sis, you've only been with this company for 5 minutes, while some of us desk jockeys have been here since the dawn of the Internet. 

After this, here's another tale of workplace craziness where a bride-to-be gets her PTO denied for her wedding day.

A couple of corporate bigwigs have gotten into the habit of only speaking to each other through their secretary. Their secretary isn't even supposed to have that job… they've just gotten themselves intertwined in the workplace drama between their different bosses. Instead of just finding a way to communicate properly, they've made u/zanfar their go-between. 

As is the case with many workplaces, people will disagree on something and instead of trying to compromise, they'll just avoid that person indefinitely. If you've got a secretary, then you have just another way of delaying that inevitable confrontation. Any awkward conversations can be filtered through them and through polite "office speak" email jargon. But of course, you can only do that for so long without the consequences coming back to haunt you. It seems like the original poster handled this situation about as well as they could have… and commenters were delighted to read about this great malicious compliance scenario. Hopefully those two higher-ups learned their lesson! 

Keep scrolling to read this story of the CFO and his precious Corvette. Up next, these HOAs have some really ridiculous rules that have tenants rolling their eyes, like one person who was informed, "Your mailbox isn't shiny enough." 

Time at work is for, well, work. Similarly, time you're not working is for not-work—well, mostly. Certainly most of us will occasionally check in on our work related obligations or check off some little task here or there even if it's just monitoring emails or putting a couple of late-night touches on an important project. We're probably not going to be paid for that time, but it might help us keep our jobs and that's nice too. Other obvious exceptions to this "not-working while not at work" include work-related time-wasting obligations like commuting and things like catching up on a project or grading papers 

Still, it's increasingly easy for this line to blur in the modern age where technology has made it possible for us to be contactable anywhere at any hour and where a lot of us could do our jobs from anywhere if our boss would let us. But there reaches a point where if you're expected to be contactable all the time you'd better be getting paid for it. And, while you might volunteer small amounts of time to help out with a job you like, a job where you have a tyrannical boss who effectively expects you to be on call with no added compensation is not going to be a job where you're happy to do so.

That was the topic of conversation in this online thread where this gym manager shared how they had been reprimanded by their boss for being unreachable on their day off. Frustrated, they shared their experience with this online community sparking discussion on the subject.

Have you ever heard of a restaurant owner demanding their servers sign an NDA to keep them from discussing their jobs? Well, you are about to hear about it now.

It can be understandable that some workplaces require employees to sign an NDA to protect information that needs to stay within the company. Many lines of work handle delicate matters, and it is not beyond reason to legally prevent employees from talking about it outside of work. But demanding employees sign an NDA simply to prevent them from discussing their jobs with others? That is where the line should be drawn.

It is clear that the restaurant owner in this Reddit story has some control issues, as he tried to prevent his servers from saying anything about the restaurant and the experience working there. After a heated argument with one server regarding a comment they posted on Facebook, it was obvious that the owner was making up rules regarding the NDA, just to keep his employees from talking.

Scroll down to read the full story. After that, click here for a story of an employee who reported her problematic coworker to HR, and got fired because of it.

Getting back at one's neighbor is always tricky. One's actions must be passive-aggressive enough for one's annoying nuisance of a neighbor to get the picture, but one's action must also not be so dire that it starts the kind of all-out conflict that could end grimly for all parties involved.  

Here, we have a neighbor who started to notice that the Karen next door was dumping trash into the Redditor's trash bin. Of course, the first offense could be interpreted as a one-time thing, but once it started occurring regularly, this quickly became an issue. It also became clear that the trash she put in her neighbor's bin was the kind of trash she didn't want to put in her own bin because it was smelly and gross. Furthermore, she left that trash completely unbagged, so it only made the smell worse. 

Keep scrolling below to see how the Redditor gave the Karen next door a piece of her mind. For more, check out this post about a resident who got back at their entitled neighbor by building an eight-foot fence just to prove a point.

Training a new hire is an important job not only because you are in charge of getting them familiar with their new job and responsibilities, but also because you are their gateway to understanding everything about their new workplace. That means that the way trainers treat new employees, and the way they act around them is going to be all they know of the company at least at the beginning, so you'd think they would want to make a good impression.

Not the trainers in this Reddit story, they could not care less how their new hire feels or thinks about them or the company, at least it didn't seem that way by how they treated the new hire. They were unpleasant, mean, and condescending to the new hire, and didn't pass on an opportunity to publicly scold them in front of the entire office. This caused the new hire to report the trainers to HR and even file for their resignation, but was told to give it a few more weeks.

Scroll down to read what happened next. After you are done with this story, click here for a story of a job candidate who found out he was lied to after accepting a new job.

When everything goes according to plan, a wedding can become the perfect weekend for anyone attending, but if things go wrong, no one is safe.

Part of that is due to our cultural and sociological obsession with the importance of weddings. From the flowers to the venue to the music to the food, there is always going to be something that the bride and groom will obsess over and, because of the random nature of life, not everything is going to be perfect. No matter how many times you may try to reason with a bride or groom that at the end of the day, a wedding is just one day and a marriage is (hopefully) much longer than that, logic never really resonates fully in the buildup to a wedding. You may even feel pretty logical about how you plan to handle your wedding whenever that day comes, but you will be surprised how the pressure can take control over even the most rational human. That's the power of weddings.

Keep scrolling below for this collection of top entitled Karen brides and grooms. For more, check out these top Karens of the week.

Some of these designs make you wonder how they ever got past the drawing board and out into the real world. Someone had to look at these designs and say, "Yep, I'll greenlight this." It really makes you want to know the backstory of these images. 

Below are a bunch of funny design fails. Some might take you a moment to realize what's wrong! For example, one person decided to put some brail on a vending machine so that blind folks can get themselves a snack, too. Too bad they put the brail stickers inside the vending machine… behind the glass. Ah yes, accessibility.

After you look at these derpy designs, check out some really ridiculous HOA rules, like one person who was told, "Your mailbox isn't shiny enough." 

Calling fashion an acquired taste is a major understatement when it comes to some of these, shall we say, memorable choices. Look, everyone should be entitled to wear whatever they want whenever they want so long as they are not hurting anyone's feelings in the process. That being said, some trends and looks can be so difficult to look at that one has to wonder who in their right mind thought said trends and looks were good ideas. 

For regular folks, fashion missteps shouldn't feel that high stakes. It's one of several benefits that comes with not being a celebrity. If they make an egregious fashion error on the red carpet, then they will be branded Worst Dressed on every gossip and pop culture internet site known to mankind. However, they're celebrities and they had entire teams helping them out so you can't feel that bad for them. If only I had a stylist helping me out in high school… things would have looked a lot different.

Keep scrolling below for these fashion missteps. For more, check out the top Karens of the week!

When traveling, whether it's for business purposes between states or a long-distance trip to the chilly alpine slopes of Switzerland, it's necessary to adhere to airline etiquette.

The story below is an account of a frustrated traveler. The original poster (OP) had just returned home to Seattle from Florida. In the story that follows, OP describes his interaction with an entitled couple who attempted to steal his designated seat. They tried to claim the seats as their own at first, but when that proved unsuccessful, they shifted their strategy in the hopes of gradually wearing OP down.

So, be sure to read the story below if you're interested in learning the specifics of what happened and whether or not OP gave up on his assigned seats to avoid problems! Additionally, when you're done and have a minute to spare between your afternoon meetings, don't forget to read the account of the partygoers who raid the event, leaving the hosts high and dry with nothing to entertain the remaining attendees!

PTO requests are a delicate tug-of-war in the workplace offering both managers and employees a semblance of power over one another. But pull too hard in your best interest's direction and someone in the workplace is going to dig their heels in. Whether it's on policy, the 'unlimited PTO' on their contract, or just a good ol' fashioned power struggle, PTO debates that go sour are tough to recover. 

The Redditor in this next story reached an impasse with their manager when a PTO request was denied. You'd think that a manager who's aware of a once-in-a-lifetime event coming up in their employee's life would plan accordingly by approving their PTO request, but when this stouthearted manager refused to give his employee time off for her wedding, a test of stubbornness ensued. 

And can you blame her? What would you do if your boss denied your PTO request for your wedding–bring your work laptop down the aisle with you? Or flip him the bird and say, 'Sorry, you're going to be short-staffed'? Because at the end of the day, when most of us are 'requesting' PTO, we're really just informing our boss of our imminent absence. 

We don't take kindly to silly HOA rules 'round these parts. You might say that this town ain't big enough for the two of us! 

Seriously though, HOAs are a giant pain in the rear for just about everyone who's moved into their territory. A lot of first-time home buyers will find their dream home, fall in love with the property, and move in ASAP. But then when they arrive, they're told they'll need to pay hundreds of dollars per month to the local Homeowner's Association (HOA). Hundreds! Every month! One person revealed that HOAs took $300 per month from them. That's enough for a car payment or a month's worth of groceries, and it's all going to the guy who's telling you you can't park your car in your own driveway. 

These people shared the reasons they hate their HOAs. There are a bunch of reasons, and all are ridiculous. You can check out these stories below. 

Next up, check out these DIY projects that should've never seen the light of day, like an unbelievably perilous-looking caravan parked off a cliff in New Zealand. 

Any time responsibility and accountability is spread to thinly without the individuals themselves having the possibility of facing consequence for their actions people stop feeling the need to or trying to do the right thing as they normally would. See the bystander effect and **insert metaphor for society here**.

You see this play out in group projects and the same is true in any instance where you're trying to get to big of a group together to do something with each person being accountable and doing their part.

Attempting to organize a trip for 12 "friends" to all stay in a vacation house together is a recipe for disaster. I've tried something like this once, and will only ever try it that one time. For starters, tell me, honestly, that you can get 12 people in the same room together who all actually get along with each other… Because you'll find that these types of friend groups apply the term "friend" quite liberally. There's always drama with interwoven relationships, romantic interests, and clashing personalieites contributing significantly. There's just no way to keep that many people socially engaged without some messy histories developing.

So, you're already on the backfoot on the fact that quite a few of these people you're trying to get to stay in house together, well, hate each other. Now you're expecting all of these people to agree on something together too and pay you their fair share. 

Long story short, you're going to have a bad time, just like this friend did when they tried to organize a trip for themself and their 11 closest friends. They shared their experience with this online community wondering if they were in the wrong for booking a cheaper and smaller place when their friends refused to front up for the deposit. 

Front desk employees often have to deal with entitled customers, but sometimes they have to deal with equally entitled bosses.

In this day and age, we don't expect toxic workplace environments to get away with wildly outdated behavior anymore, and yet as much as we'd like to think that progress has been made, unkind and unfair treatment still does happen all the time. 

Here, we have a young female employee who was on the brink of getting married when the VP of her company organized a disciplinary meeting threatening to fire her if she didn't pull it together at work. Of course, there was no concrete evidence that she was slacking in any way, but this dude had HR on his side and ready to clean up any mess. 

It did not take long for the Redditor in this situation to realize that this was not that uncommon among the other female employees in the office. Keep scrolling below to see what happened when she gave this guy a piece of her mind. For more, check out this post about the top Karens of the week!