Look, by nature, the interview process is going to require jumping through hoops and putting a little bit of yourself out there—and it's a lot like dating in that respect. The whole thing may seem like an unnecessary performance, but like with a first date, the idea is that setting a basic social exchange with some universal ground rules in place allows each party to assess the other party and decide whether there is any compatibility for proceeding further.

Rule number one of being a manager should be to never become the enemy of your team. Of course, it's nearly impossible to be the best friend of your team members. There will always be a power dynamic there and a sense of authority and professionalism that you cannot shake (nor should you, in many cases). However, what you do need to do is create a sense of approachability and to lead with empathy and understanding. This is, of course, easier said than done, and there are certain work environments that do not lend themselves well to these important facets of managing a team. A restaurant, for instance, is not the easiest work environment to be a team leader.

Imagine paying a premium to work your way into this crazy housing market, purchasing a house from someone who paid a quarter of that amount for it 15 years ago. You're probably still going to be coming to grips with the weight of your new mortgage when you're confronted by your new neighbor, a "lifetime" resident, who regards you with disdain because, for one reason or another, they don't think you're worthy of replacing their longtime neighbors whom they had grown fond of. 

When you live in a small town, word gets around, and if you have beef with the city council, you had better giddy up for a long ride… of malicious compliance. One woman took on her HOA (that wasn't really an HOA, but more of a city council of sorts, as they were a small town) when they came with multiple complaints on different occasions about her property.

The issue this woman had was not with their complaints, but rather with the fact that they did not bug any other of the neighborhood residents with these petty offenses. So, she felt singled out, and rightfully so. And so began the malicious compliance… She found a way to get around the rules, or straight out break them, even going as far as to bring animals to 'mow her lawn'. To find out what the rest of her plan entailed, scroll down.

Then, check out these top Karen memes that are especially relatable for employees quitting the day after tomorrow. And finally, I hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving more than I did… Enjoy the rest of your week.

Not everyone is good at giving gifts. Obviously, for some people out there, it's their bread and butter. Their love language, if you will. If that's you, congratulations. However, the rest of us (myself included) were not born with the "good gift-giver" gene. As someone who was once gifted a dictionary and a pencil case holder for my 15th birthday, not to mention a DVD of Inside Out for my 21st birthday, I was not raised to be good at this. That's why when this time of year rolls around, I get immediately tense. As I've gotten older, the good gift-givers go even more "all out" while folks like me never know what to get people. I'm sure one day, I will end up in someone's anonymous Reddit post about a gift I gave that totally missed the mark. 

These folks shared their worst gift stories via this r/AskReddit thread. Keep scrolling below for the full stories. When you're done, check out this list of the top Karens of the week.

Interns are allowed to make mistakes over and over and over again. It's kind of just part of the job. 

As a young person in college, you want to get some valuable experience in your career field with an internship. But since you are still in college, and have probably never worked in an office setting before, you're just bound to mess things up. At least at this point in your not-yet-existing career, you're allowed to make a few mistakes in the name of learning and gaining experience. 

This person, u/SaltySolicitor, had an internship that they were not thrilled about. It seems like their boss, Bob, was not a good communicator. This is another issue with being an intern---a lot of managers just don't like them, and don't want to bother with them. Bob gave the OP tasks without the right instructions, and would then get annoyed with the OP for trying to clarify. So many people in supervisory positions see interns as beneath them, or not worth their time, just because they're only around for a short while. If that's the case, just don't work with an intern, Bob! 

The OP at least got a satisfying lesson on the inner workings of a legal office. Check out the whole tale below. Then, read about this student who demanded a professor regrade her paper… but she could have asked a little nicer. 

Has anyone else been fooled by their boss into thinking they were being singled out for something special when in reality, they were just being taken for granted? It's a common occurrence in the workplace, especially during busy times of the year like the Holiday season when people tend to be the most selfish under the guise of graciousness. Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone, many employees have already begun to plan for their office Holiday parties. Few of you are excited, many of you are anxious, and most of you are probably eager to imbibe on the company's dime at the very least. But what happens when your company has an exclusive Holiday party for those at the managerial level and you get invited under the guise of inclusion when really, you are actually being asked to work the event? Once again, tone-deaf selfishness has made its way into an already toxic work environment.

Attendance policy changes on the whim of every company once in a while, and HR may or may not fail to inform team leads of the modifications… The problem with that is when attendance policy changes and employees are unaware, they could get written up for not adhering to it, which in my book, is totally unfair. 

In this case, a worker who was employed at a Pharmaceutical manufacturing company for over 5 years had no idea that the company's attendance policy changed. During the 5 years, the worker, OP, never got a write-up, not even once… which is pretty impressive. Thanks to the new policy, that changed, and OP finally got written up. The huge issue with the write-up was the fact that OP had been absent from work for completely legitimate reasons, such as the fact their car went kaput for a week, the pipes in their house broke, and finally, because they got really sick.

But HR did not care if OP's absence was valid or not, they decided to write them up anyway, regardless of whether it was fair or not. After all, life isn't fair, right? But OP was not satisfied and decided to unleash their anger through some malicious compliance. When you come at a senior employee, this is what you get.

For more like this story, here is a micromanager who told one of his employees, 'It's us or grad school'. Huh, tough choice.

There's this general idea online and in life that pregnant people deserve special treatment. You're probably holding your breath reading this, wondering where I'm going with that statement—and before you get too outraged, let me just say that, yes, absolutely, that idea and treatment is resoundingly deserved. After all, they're growing a whole new person inside of them—an astonishing feat that deserves special recognition before you even factor in the ordeal of troubling side effects that come along with growing a whole new person inside of you.

BUT—give me a second, don't get outraged yet—it stands to reason that there are plenty of entitled people out there in the world, and there are plenty of entitled parents with children out there, too. So, at some point, those entitled people will become pregnant, and those entitled parents will have been pregnant, which leads us to the logical conclusion that there are entitled pregnant people out there… Like this pregnant woman who insisted that she be able to have a random woman's chair that she brought specifically to take the weight off her bad feet and knees.

Readers resoundingly voted that the aunt wasn't in the wrong here, but see the original post below and pass judgment for yourself.

There's one in every office. Each business place has that one person who everyone else gives a side-eye to. They probably have some kind of personality quirk that irritates everyone. But it's the kind of thing that you can't go to HR for, because what is HR going to do about issues like "Tina is always breathing too loudly" or "Jack has been heating up three meals a day in the microwave and he lets the microwave count down to the beep each time"? These are minor issues, and we all have to live and let live, apparently. 

For these people, however, they have office mates who are extra annoying, and they're ready to share their stories with the world. 

'If you don't like it, find another job', said a grouchy manager through clenched teeth, certain that his employee would back down like a pup from a wolf, but to his dismay, this machinist did not take the bait. 'Good luck replacing me', said the machinist, grabbing his things and taking off, not forgetting to inform the manager that he would take ALL his accrued PTO & vacation time for the next 2 weeks.

This is what happens when companies hire managers without a day of experience. A machinist took to Reddit to explain why he had gotten fired, and what had happened in the wake of his replacement. When I read stories like this, I wonder who on earth approved the firing, but hey, I am not a micromanager so my brain is still somewhat intact.

After reading through this story, you can check out another one about a manager who demanded their worker choose between grad school and work. Hmmm, I wonder what he was thinking… that the worker would quit, I guess. But it did not work out exactly as he thought it would.

In the world of client service, there's a common belief: go to any length—great lengths—to keep all clients satisfied, under contract, and coming back for more. Most managers frown deeply upon contract cancellation notices, forcing workers to submit justification for cancellation along with what their work group did to try and retain the customer. At the end of the day, the number of contracts signed versus the number of contracts lost is the only metric that's being tracked, so that's the only thing anyone cares about, even if the contract is causing financial strain on the business. 

This trucking company's client employed a new rep to manage the account. The companies had a long history of working together, with the original delivery dating back to over 50 years prior. The new rep was presumptuous and arrogant, wildly overestimating his employer's importance to the trucking company and the nature of their relationship. He challenged the trucking company to "fire them" as a client, an empty threat that backfired spectacularly.

See the story as it was originally shared to Reddit's r/MaliciousCompliance subreddit this week by Reddit user u/Wildcatb.

Some people don't like to be told that all their work is wrong, even if it's the truth. We have all been there in some way or another, whether it was in school or at home or at work. At some point, some more knowledgeable person probably took a look at all your hard work and pointed out an error that effectively rejects all the hours of time and effort you put into the project. It's an inevitable part of learning and growing up, and it can be especially hard to take this news if you lead with your ego, as this student clearly did.

First impressions are important when establishing a working relationship, so important that people tend to read way too far into things during the first interview. It's not unheard of for interviewers to take one single harmless thing you said and extrapolate it into some wildly imaginative reason why you're a risk to hire. Tell the wrong interviewer you like baseball, and maybe they'll decide you're not fit for their team since baseball reminds them of their resentful father who tried to force them to take up the sport as a child. Similarly, the first impression that you get from an employer as soon as the interview process is over says a lot; an opportunity that might have seemed like the dream role during the interview process may soon unveil itself to be a nightmare.

That's what happened in a lot of these stories, which were shared by the workers who lived them to Reddit's r/askreddit community. Enjoy this collection of stories where people decided to cut their losses and walk. Next, see these 20+ candidates who walked out of job interviews.

Some people possess a disquieting ability to turn even the most run-of-the-mill, ordinary shopping encounters into strikingly impressive battles of indomitable wills. And if you have ever worked in retail, customer service, or as a server, then you have met more than a good half of them. They take residence in restaurants, malls, stores, and any place where they can find someone making minimum wage to take their anger out on. Basically, they unleash all their rage onto the people who should be getting the most appreciation.

'I'm sorry, but I don't accept the fact that this coupon expired in 2012. The world was supposed to end back then, remember? So I forgot to use it. I'd like to use it now, thanks.' Now, replace every polite word with a much less polite word, and you will have a Karen. When I worked as a server back in the day, I would get the most entitled, rude people on the planet as customers. Thankfully, now I get to suffer in corporate.

Scroll down for the hilarious memes and then check out even MORE Karen memes from back in the day.

Common sense isn't gifted to every person. Sometimes things will seem so crystal clear to you, and so obvious, that you can't understand how anyone could mess it up. But without common sense, people do dumb things. This woman in particular had a bone to pick with her neighbor, and I bet you can guess why her neighbor was refusing to mow her lawn for her. 

While some people really dislike mowing the lawn, others find it cathartic. If you can listen to music or a podcast over the crazy loud sound of the machine, it's not so bad. At least it's a good workout, while you're also doing a necessary chore. 

U/somethingintheyard told a story that happened to them as a college student, during a time where they were in the habit of mowing the grass for their parents. The OP didn't mind it too much, and they even mow another neighbor's yard just out of the goodness of their heart. That's what good neighbors do---they take care of one another. That respect has to go both ways though, as the OP's crabby neighbor quickly discovered. 

Scroll down to read up on this grassy disaster. Then, check out a workplace story. 

One guest got up on the wrong side of the bed one morning, and decided to take it out on a poor front desk clerk, who could only reply with the corporate script she had been given. The guest was aghast when she found out that the hotel did not provide a Thanksgiving meal, and promptly demanded a discount. It was not the hotel clerk's first rodeo, and she politely explained to the guest that with all due respect, the hotel was not required to provide a Thanksgiving meal… Obviously, the Karen guest did not appreciate being told that she wasn't going to get her way, and things escalated.

This story reminds me so much of the days I was a local tour receptionist. The requests I got were blown out of proportion, and mostly, people just wanted free stuff. I was young and frightened, and if I am totally honest, I was not good at keeping the upper hand. However, the OP in this story absolutely knew how to tell entitled people, 'No'.

For the full story, scroll down, and then check out this administration that crippled a company by denying employees raises.

This SIL went out of her way to use the wrong "tablecloth." Now that she's faced with the consequences, she's not happy about it.

Hosting a Thanksgiving meal involves a lot of preparation, from shopping for food to cleaning up your home for guests who are staying over. This person, u/fabricadabric, was hosting the Thanksgiving meal, and her SIL and her three kids were also staying over. With that many kids, there are bound to be some messes. But when the OP went shopping for last-minute items, I'm sure they didn't expect the SIL's kids to ruin one of their prized possessions. 

It seems like the OP and their SIL might never get along: the OP writes that their SIL already treats them with disdain since they 'prefer pets over kids.' That makes it even more suspicious that the SIL let her kids ruin something the OP holds near and dear. Maybe it was a form of sabotage. 

Check out the entire tale below, as well as the opinions of commenters who wanted to weigh in about what the OP should do next. Then, this team of engineers needed an important piece of expensive equipment, and when their company wouldn't listen to them, the company ended up paying thousands more dollars than they needed to. 

Ma'am, just get a janky $10 phone charger from CVS and move ON! Some Karens do not understand the concept that there are limits to how long one can complain about something, especially something as replaceable as a phone charger. Now, if you're like this Karen and you're really just trying to get access to a free charger, there is a much better way of going about this. For instance, she could have just asked the front desk agent if there was a charger she could borrow for an hour or so. But like many Karens, the notion of approaching a situation like this with kindness is not one that was on her radar.

When it comes to sticky situation, you're going to want an expert in charge, right? Unfortunately, sometimes, like in the instance of this Redditor's story, the "expert" in charge is actually the worst. This Redditor was new to working the service industry. (They have since worked it for many years, but this was from the start.) The were working at a big chain steak house when they got a male Karen. This guy ordered something off the menu that did not exist. When OP pointed that out to him, he simply did no care and demanded what he ordered. Since it literally did no exist in that establishment, the tantrum started. Luckily, the male Karen didn't end up getting what he wanted, but his penance was definitely not enough. Plus, he didn't even leave a tip. A classic way for a new server to find out that people can be the worst.