Some workplaces run on teamwork, dedication, and a shared commitment to doing things the right way. Others run on unpaid labor disguised as "lunch."

That was the case here, where an employer routinely deducted 30 minutes from every shift despite requiring employees to answer phones, help customers, and basically pretend they weren't eating at all. Over the years, this added up to tens of thousands of dollars in stolen wages.

But when one employee moved up to shift manager, things took a turn.

A mother recently decided to skip Thanksgiving this year due to the unruly behavior of her sister-in-law's kid. Not only does this spoiled little girl throw a tantrum when she doesn't get her way, she also completely wreaks havoc the entire time she is over. She has tracked dog droppings gleefully into the house and onto the bed, she's thrown items into a swimming pool, and she even poured a drink on an adult's head for no reason. The worst part is that if any other adult tries to reprimand her, there comes her mothers yelling at that adult for upsetting her child. Like, parents need to parent and this mom ain't doing that. 

So, a mother made a difficult decision for herself and her family and decided to opt out of Thanksgiving this year. She knows that her spoiled niece is just a kid, but enough is enough. Her kids don't act like that! The husband was upset since it was his side of the family, but his side is not all peaches and cream. Apparently his mother has sticky fingers and his father is a swindler. So, it didn't matter to this mom if her husband was upset or not, she was putting her foot down and she stuck by her word. And you know what we say to that? Bravo, mama!

Calling all cat people! If you don't have a repertoire of go-to cat memes for your everyday texting, let us help you with that. I too needed to up my cat meme game and went straight to work. Maybe you've seen these cat memes before, but what if you haven't? You better check. They're all hissterical and are now going to be my go-to response to many group text threads. How am I feeling today? Cat meme. Did I get that thing down for work on time? Cat meme. What am I doing this weekend? Cat meme. The world might be a scary and dark place right now, but how lucky are we that we get to live during the time where there is a cat meme for anything you can think of. Gotta appreciate the small things when you can.

So let's start with these most purrfect cat memes. And guess what? Cat puns also brings me happiness, so I'm going to be using them when I can. I don't care what you say! Will I be meowing to people in regular conversations? Okay, I haven't evolved that far in my cat lady form yet… But maybe one day! For now, I'll be saving my meows to meow at a cat for their attention. Everyone else gets a cat meme. 

Where there's a Buddy the Elf, there is also a Scrooge.

Take a look around you. At least one of the people you see hates Christmas and will do anything in their power to talk down those who opt to actually enjoy their holiday season. For whatever reason, the holidays strike a nerve in certain individuals, and some of these individuals have the power to police how you decide to celebrate this jolly time of year.

What better Scrooge exists than an HOA? The number of rules in an HOA handbook is probably as long as Santa's nice and naughty lists, and that's because every home needs to look crisp, clean-cut, and uniform. Sure, you can argue that those who decide to join an HOA in the first place know that they're signing up for this, but you never think that people would police some colorful Christmas lights.

In the story below, an HOA homeowner is threatened by their HOA to take down their colorful Christmas lights, or else they'll be fined 100 dollars each day they remain up. Only white lights are allowed… So nobody has Christmas cheer anymore? Scroll below to read the full story.

Two can play at that game, and in this case, that game is who can get who in the most trouble with the HOA…But it did not start as vengeful, this woman was just minding her own neighborhood business, until her rule-obsessed, Karen-like neighbor came out from the woodworks and started filing complaints about her over the most minor incidents. By minor, we're referring to grass that's 1-inch too long, or hanging an American flag with the wrong shade of white (is there even a wrong shade of white??)

This neighbor felt like she was purposefully being targeted, so what did she do? Well, she definitely didn't accept the $150 fine and pledge forgiveness…No, instead, she read through the whole 40-page HOA rulebook to see where she could beat her neurotic neighbor at her own game! Let the complaints begin… She noticed something written about the height of lawn ornaments, and remembered that her neighbor's lawn was so filled with garden gnomes that you could barely locate the actual grass, so she took her tape and began measuring…

Procrastination is a side effect of life we all deal with daily. We all have tasks on our to-do list, at work or in our private lives, that constantly get pushed further and further down until we have no choice but to deal with them. 

Here's the thing: as long as the procrastination doesn't affect anybody else, go ahead and push it as far down as you want to. But if your inability to get things done gets in the way of someone else doing their work successfully, then you should be put in your place and face the consequences of your procrastination.

The boss in the story below, whether it was due to procrastination or general malice, decided to drop a last-minute task on his employee. He demanded that the employee take care of a shipment to Europe in less than two days and refused to help them in any way. This led the employee to take the most expensive route to complete this task, and they succeeded so thoroughly that they even got promoted, to the boss's dismay.

This coworker has a bad habit of refusing to take any of the blame when projects run late, and unsurprisingly, his coworkers are growing tired of this habit. 

No one wants to get on the boss's bad side, and a lot of workers will stay late, eating dinner at their desks and working until the wee hours of the night just to finish an important project or two. If you don't set good enough work-life boundaries, a boss can push you into madness trying to get done all that work! Of course, if you have a strong team of coworkers with whom you can tackle the challenges head-on, that's a real benefit. You or your boss can try to assign people to parts of the tasks that they excel at — and that makes everyone look good. 

They say you should try and make your boss look good to their boss, so when you are consistently not hitting your deadlines, and that manager is breathing down your neck, it's only natural to worry. Luckily for this person, they're well-versed with the CYA method of covering themselves to ensure that they can't be wrongly blamed for anything. 

Their coworker also really pushed the limits here, and what he's doing is bad for his own relationship-building. He probably lost all of his coworkers' trust the first time he threw someone under the bus. And yes, he didn't lose the trust of just the person he blamed, but also every worker around him who noticed exactly what he did. In the moment, he made himself look good, but I would argue that pulling this kind of stunt even one time is enough to make all of your coworkers look at you sideways. Check out this excellent story below — see who you side with!

When you turn on the television and see fully grown adults walking around like middle school kids, your first thought might be that you must be watching some sort of SNL parody. However, if you were one of the 59.6 million viewers tuning into Netflix over Thanksgiving weekend, you were probably watching Stranger Things, which does exactly that. 

Helmed by the Duffer Brothers, Stranger Things follows a group of kids in the fictional American town of Hawkins in the 1980s as they uncover and battle a series of monsters in a mysterious parallel dimension known as the "Upside Down." When it first premiered in July 2016, Stranger Things was an instant juggernaut hit, introducing audiences to a new generation of young actors while harkening back to classic American science fiction and horror influences from Steven Spielberg, Stephen King, and H.P. Lovecraft.

Nine years later, with several extended hiatuses in the interim, the final season of Stranger Things is finally upon us. Although, there is something bizarre about the end product, and it has nothing to do with the uncanny supernatural creatures in the narrative. This time around, it has become particularly difficult to take these "child" actors seriously. That's because they are simply no longer children, yet the show refuses to embrace their actual age. The effect fuels satire, as the final season is full of unintentionally humorous performances from actors who have grown out of their roles along with repetitive storylines that lack evolution.

Some family members will act unhinged, then get upset if you have the nerve to question them on it. Make it make sense! 

This mother-in-law has an odd way of showing her displeasure. Not everyone is a good communicator: some folks will be passive-aggressive instead of ever once being confrontational. Instead of just saying, "Hey, I don't like when you do this," they'd rather give you the cold shoulder, or throw a tantrum, or berate you for doing that thing. It's not effective, and it's not respectful towards your loved ones!

 When you're feeling your lowest, your family members can either step up for you, or let you down. This MIL chose to upset her daughter-in-law after she came back from the airport, jet-lagged and exhausted. The only things you want to do after getting home from a long trip are shower, then fall into bed and sleep for 10 hours straight. You certainly don't want to be dealing with a petty mother-in-law who seems determined to ruin your belongings and then lie about it! Wouldn't it be so much nicer to come home to someone who's made you a meal and wants to know how your trip went? Instead, this woman now has a ton of cleaning up to do, and the whole incident should make her rethink how much time she and her wife spend with that petty mother-in-law.

Some employees do not like to make a big deal out of their birthdays at work. Those folks would not thrive in this workplace environment.

The billing department of this office tended to go above and beyond for people's birthdays, regardless of whether they liked it or not. it became a tradition, and this time, it was Cody's turn.

Cody seemed to be the kind of person who pretended that he didn't care about his birthday, but he secretly was expecting the royal treatment. Since he observed other people's birthdays in the office, he knew exactly what was coming for him when he was called to the break room in the middle of the work day. 

The problem was that the coworker who volunteered to organize the party this time around, Rick, was not exactly the smoothest of individuals. In fact, it turns out that he was about as clumsy as it gets. You know that viral video of the large family who gathered for Thanksgiving this year, only for the table to break and all the food items collapsed on the floor? Let's just say that Cody's birthday party ended up looking pretty similar….

Well, well, well, if it isn't the consequences of a micromanaging manager's actions. And we love to see it! It's not surprise that there are many managers out there who love to micromanage and thus actually making everything LESS efficient. They do it under the guise of helping, but it's truly just a power trip. Luckily, this micromanaging manager had to face the consequences of his actions head on. 

His final plunder was removing the front desk's cork board away. They weren't allowed any notes on the desk because it was unsightly and "unprofessional." The employees tried to explain that it helped them remember certain things about their patients and that it made their clientele feel more appreciated and seen. But, nope, he wasn't having it. So, they did everything he said to do, and do you know what happened? The place crash and burned. When he realized what he had done, he called a meeting to tell everyone to go back to the way things were. He never apologized or took accountability, but he also brought back what his front desk employees originally had and wanted to keep, and he never micromanaged again. A win is a win and we applaud it!

Look, we all love to riff on the bizarre nature of workplace decorum and point out how comically exploitative the entire relationship is on average, but there's a point where this crosses a line, and trying to "stick it to the man" puts you into being the one who is squarely in the wrong.

You can't let that get to your head and just think that you're entitled to do whatever you like and help yourself to things around the office out of some distorted sense of justice. Just because something has been advertised to you as "free" or "complimentary" doesn't mean you can help yourself to an unlimited supply, as if you'd won some sort of giveaway promotion. There are a lot of things in life that are like this, in a "live long enough to become the villain" type of way. If you want to rally your compatriots to your side, leaving an office full of workers without their free office coffee is not the way to do it.

Realistically, this is one of those instances where, if you're the hiring manager, you're just glad that she revealed her character now and not at some point down the road that was less obvious and held more serious stakes, like mismanaging or embezzling funds from an account.

There are some really ridiculous ways that you can get fired, and this is one of them. The imagery of a new employee walking off with two bags of coffee beans at the end of the day, like it's nothing, really puts a smile on my face.

The more people who are in a group chat, the less you're actually going to pay attention — and respond — to what's being said. You probably already know this from your day-to-day life, especially if you're in some group chats of like, 5+ people. It means that you wake up in the morning and see that people have been writing in the group chat, but you just ignore it because there's a lot to catch up on. Maybe you're still waking up, so you skim what people have been writing about, and then just forget to ever reply. 

However, this person has 2 roommates, and they just totally ignored them. That's not like, a huge group chat. That's only 3 people! It's one thing if those 2 people are talking back and forth all day about something random like a TV show or how to get to a friend's house. But it's another if one person is begging someone to do a very simple task! For them to ignore the chat, they'd have to be willfully looking away from their phones. I know a lot of people, myself included, keep their phones on do not disturb 24 hours a day… but you can still peek in every once and a while to ensure there aren't any emergencies going down in your text messages. 

Commenters had thoughts about this roommate situation, and some were surprised that the birthday celebrator actually disposed of the food when they did. A cake could be left out for 4.5 hours, but ice cream would never survive such a fate. Next birthday, these roommates totally owe this person a cake baked from scratch to make up for all the stress! 

The small billing department turns into a one-person group project when one coworker returns from maternity leave and slowly starts treating flexibility like free labor. At first the extra help feels normal. A few invoices here, some statements there, the kind of thing you do when someone is exhausted and trying to keep a baby and a job alive at the same time. Then the favors quietly evolve into full accounts landing on one desk with neat little notes saying who will handle them, and spoiler, it is never the person who is supposed to own the work.

Weeks go by and the pattern sticks. One person is staying late, making more mistakes, feeling their brain get foggier and foggier. The other is still technically meeting targets, because the supervisor only looks at the department totals and not who is actually slogging through the mess. Every time the imbalance comes up, the same lines appear. You are better with details anyway. Being a single mom is hard. Office banter turns the situation into a joke about being the work wife who keeps everything together, which is a cute way of saying unpaid assistant.

Have you ever felt the weight of the world on your shoulders, like your legs were one step away from shattering below your torso? Usually, I feel this way when I'm too lazy to go to the grocery store and acquire some grub to get me through the week, so instead, I use Instacart and shop through the aisles virtually. Close enough, right?

Grocery delivery is life-changing for many, especially those who are older or are not completely physically able to get from point A to point B in a swift manner. Plus, you help delivery workers keep their jobs and food on the table for their families, so it's a win-win situation.

The only person losing in the story below is a resident who is dealing with a nuisance caused by their neighbor's frequent grocery deliveries. The deliveryman brings the neighbor groceries multiple times a week his car blocks the resident's driveway in the process. This prevents the resident from getting in and out of their driveway swiftly, but the neighbor refuses to take accountability. When will people learn that if they don't own the property, they have no right to do whatever they please with it? Scroll below to read the full story.

This HOA president finally discovered the limits to his authority.

This community happened to be located in an area where there were frequent hot air balloon landings. This became common practice, and everyone in the neighborhood was accustomed to these landings, provided that they were handled safely.

Apparently, one morning, there was another safe balloon landing on one neighbor's five-acre property. No one was harmed or disturbed, and therefore, no one thought anything of it… except for the disgruntled president of the local homeowner's association.

This grumpy individual decided that morning that for whatever reason, he was going to put an end to this practice. Without holding a meeting and administering a vote with the other HOA board members, this man proceeded to send an email blast to everyone in the neighborhood forbidding them from granting any balloon landings in the area from here on out.

This, of course, was a remarkable display of audacity on several levels. First of all, he didn't have the authority to enforce a rule that was not passed by the other board members. Second of all, and more importantly, he had no authority to tell the community to disregard federal aviation regulations. You can imagine how this ultimately went down…

A scholarship is an incredible achievement that's extremely hard to come by…So if one is lucky enough to receive one throughout school or university, it's important to use it responsibly if one is given direct control over the lump sum. There might be other factors in your life, other than your education, where you would prefer to spend that money, but it's important to remember what it is intended for. Providing you with a sufficient education so that you eventually can afford to nurture those other areas in your life financially. 

And if you do receive a large amount of money strictly intended for tuition, you may come across people who may try to persuade you to spend it on other things…such as them! Take it from this older sister who was just gifted an amazing scholarship. After receiving the money, she was suddenly bombarded with shopping requests and demands from her teenage sister…'But can't you buy me this'…'But I really want that' …However, what this teenage girl is struggling to understand is that her sister's tuition is solely for educational expenses, not the newest limited-edition Sephora mascara or Gap Christmas sweater…It's called looking long-term! 

When something is handed down to you as a gift or thoughtful gesture, it's important to treat it as if you bought it yourself! Just because you didn't spend money on it doesn't mean someone else didn't. So when this older sister went off to university and generously left her car for her 21-year-old sister to use, she was confident it was in good hands. Yet, she couldn't have possibly been more wrong.

Stripped, towed, and ultimately claimed by the tow yard, the younger sister couldn't have cared less about the car, despite knowing how much it had meant to her older sister, as the first car she had purchased herself! She wasn't completely unaware of her disrespect, even going so far as to send staged old pictures that made the car look like it was in perfect condition. But when the older sister returned from university, it didn't take long for her to realize that a giant, four-wheeled, 4,000-pound item was missing from the driveway.

The last thing anyone in a work setting wants is to be volunteered to complete tasks they are not interested in, nor are they paid extra to do. A wise person once said, "Act your wage," and we haven't forgotten that mantra. Why should we go above and beyond for a company that believes its employees are worth a pay raise?

Then, there are those colleagues who try to push these additional duties onto you so they don't have to complete them. That's our favorite type of bad employee: they will never admit that they are lazy and incorrect in their ways, and instead try to make everyone else seem like the bad guy and themselves a victim.

If you've ever had a colleague who volunteers you for things without asking, then the story below might bring up some old, negative feelings. The colleague in question repeatedly volunteers this employee for small tasks at first, but then starts offering their auditing services (even though they already stay late in the office to complete their original taskload). So, obviously, the employee would be fed up at some point. We're just surprised it took them this long to put their foot down—commenters are feeling similarly. Scroll to read.

Imagine telling your boss, 'Hey, thanks for hiring me, but I don't really need to be here'…Well, that's basically what this 47-year-old ex-retiree wanted to tell his younger boss, give or take a few polite words…He just re-entered the workplace for "finding purpose" reasons, making it painfully clear that he does not need the money that comes with working a job…But does that mean that due to this, he is willing to put up with a lot less in the workplace? Most certainly. We mean, it makes sense…If we didn't actually need our salaries at the end of the month, would we put up with doing half the work, pressures, and potential drama that comes with working for someone else?

However, just because he has this privilege of not having to worry,  doesn't mean he's suddenly become the company's CEO, granted the power to make his own rules and limitations! Maybe it's the 6 months he took off from working, but it seems this IT employee has forgotten how the workplace hierarchy operates. Demanding autonomy and flexibility the moment you enter an entry-level IT position is highly unlikely to get you in any boss's good books. Regardless of how hard you may try to hack the ranking system!