We all struggle with maintaining a workload that we can handle, and there are many factors we take into consideration when we build our work schedule. It's important not to overload ourselves, not to take on tasks that are outside our job description, while still doing enough to prove ourselves to our bosses and ensure we get to keep our jobs.

If we try to add on top of all that the workload of a coworker, the whole delicate system can crumble.

The employee in the story below made the mistake of agreeing to take over a coworker's tasks when they left work early one day, and before they knew it, it became a habit. The coworker would leave work hours before the shift ended, and expect this employee to simply do his job for him.

After that happened a few times, the employee put their foot down and refused to encourage this behavior any longer. This led the entitled coworker to turn to the boss and complain about the employee's refusal to "be a team player". As if he were the poster child of a team player…

It's hard to think of a more condescending way to demand your team come into the office than having ChatGPT write them a bullet-pointed email about why they should actually ignore a serious weather forecast. 

Although it doesn't seem to bother a lot of its users, ChatGPT and other AI chatbots have this saccharine, cloying way of writing that is just so infantilizing. It comes off as so pedantic that I truly don't understand how anyone could actually like it. But there are people like this boss, who asked ChatGPT to tell the employees to haul themselves into the office, despite all signs pointing towards an impending blizzard! 

The email, which you can read below, tells employees that they should come in (at 8 AM!), but it also tries to meet them "halfway": they get to wear sweatpants and see the office dog. Wow, what a super great reward!!! That will totally make them less resentful and worried as they drive cautiously through snow and ice. They'll be so super thrilled to still be paying for gas, lunch, and/or ticket fares as they attempt that perilous, sweatpants-clad trek to the office. I bet they can't wait to scrape ice off their windshield at 6 AM! This boss deserves a nice pat on the head for being such a caring person. 

Of course, since this entitled boss used AI to "write" this email, it's just… off. If it snows for 4 hours straight in the middle of the workday, your commute home is just not going to look like your commute in. There is 4 hours' worth of snow on the ground! It is going to be cold and icy and dangerous to drive! It's infuriating to watch this chatbot launder a weather prediction to mean the exact opposite of what is actually supposed to happen. 

No one wants to be told just before the end of the work day that they need to stay back for an emergency. 

Sure, unforeseen circumstances do happen, but nine times out of ten, these occurrences are more directly the result of poor management than anything else.

In this instance, an employee was sick and tired of being told at around 4:50 PM by their manager that "something came up" and he needs to complete a significant task at the last minute. It did not take long for this employee to realize that his manager was either testing his work-life boundaries or majorly disorganized.

If the answer is the former scenario, then this guy needs to stop power-tripping and find a better way to manage his team. If it's the latter, then senior management needs to take note and get this guy out of there. His methodology is not good for morale and it's certainly not good for business either.

This overnight flyer instantly became the least-liked person on the entire plane after deciding it was time to watch her shows at top volume — without any earphones at all. 

There are a lot of theories about why people watch videos at full volume on their phones these days, declining to put in earphones even when that would benefit every other person around them. We all don't want to hear the bubble-popping sound from your mobile game, pal. We simply do not want to listen in on your 20-minute commentary YouTube video. Rest assured, no one else you're traveling with is excited when you turn on your latest Netflix show at a volume so loud it renders your phone speakers blown out and squawking. 

I actually don't think people do this to be impolite though (although it is impolite!), but instead because most phones don't have headphone jacks anymore. Sure, you can buy a dongle adapter, but I've had so many of those break on me that I just bought a pair of AirPods. And I don't know about you, but my AirPods don't last more than like 90 minutes to 2 hours. Sometimes they lose battery life mid-commute! If you're a busy parent who's got 30 childfree minutes to themselves while they're on the train, I kind of understand why they still want to watch their shows, even if they don't have or can't use headphones. Or if you work 60 hours per week and you just cannot fathom going to work without your distractions, you aren't going to be bothered by the glaring looks of everyone else around you — you're just focused on your own entertainment. Without headphone jacks, this problem is here to stay. 

However, this overnight flyer really took things too far. What she did at her big age of mid-40s to early-50s is just inexcusable. She reminds me of those people who decide that the perfect time to clip their toenails and file their feet is midflight. They haven't given a second thought to literally anyone else on board, and instead, they're acting oddly antisocial. 

The author tried to explain to her boss that she was snowed in and that there was no way she was going to be able to access her car to drive to work. It sounds like she lives farther out than her other coworkers, who were not as affected by the storm as she was and were able to show up. Still, local authorities recommended that the author stay inside during the storm, a fact that she raised to her boss as well… to no avail.

Instead, he insisted that if she couldn't get herself to work that day, she would have to use one of her paid time off days. She tried to reason with him by saying she could work from home. After all, her internet connection was still strong and all her meetings that day were virtual anyway. Still, this man showed absolutely no compassion for her situation. 

Keep scrolling below for the full story and for the best reactions from members of this online community!

Buying your first home is so exciting. New homeowners dream of what they'll do with the extra rooms, debating game rooms, home theaters, or a nursery for their future offspring. One thing that new homeowners never imagine in their freshly ordained space is their mother-in-law, rooting herself as a permanent resident in their upstairs guest room.

For better or worse, we all try to love our parents, but when this woman overstepped her welcome, she made her son and his wife think twice about their family loyalties. 

After a rousing day of cooking and with a full tummy of turkey, new homeowners, a son and his wife, were put on the spot by their mother-in-law, her son and his wife, on the spot. She loudly got everyone's attention at the table and was proud to announce that she'd broken her lease and started packing. Where was she moving? Everyone wondered. But when she exclaimed she was moving into their "unused" guest room, jaws dropped so fast they shattered the dirty dishes on the Thanksgiving table. 

So with that intrusive news dropped, who's ready for dessert?

Look, having children is no easy thing to manage; they take a lot of time, energy, care, and a level of patience that most of us would wear through in 5 minutes.

Life's already difficult enough without having kids; heck, even without children, it takes enough energy to get through the work day and still have enough energy for the basic tasks and chores that come along with adulthood. 

But, still, although there are massive costs, it stands without question that those with parents already receive preferential treatment in the workplace, be it the opportunity to leave early or arrive late, or even having first dibs on holidays that center around the school holidays, which are consequently during major holidays and usually the time that everyone is trying to take leave.

Particularly in areas where the managers themselves have children, they'll be sympathetic to other parents' commitment. This might even afford fellow parents more opportunities and career mobility since management sees them as "grounded." "mature" or "reliable" in ways that they think someone without children possibly couldn't be. Especially where they view the act of having children as a pivotal moment in their own lives that set them on the straight and narrow.

None of this is surprising; everyone's path through life and values are different, but without question, we find ourselves more easily and readily relating to those who have shared similar experiences and are currently in the same stage of life that we are. 

This can all, of course, create issues in the workplace, as can any instance where personal beliefs and circumstance intersect with the professional space. I have particularly seen instances where it all comes to a head over disagreements over leave, where parents attempt to book vacations with their children at the last minute, which is the issue we have seen come to light here.

This coworker thought herself entitled to take leave over Christmas instead of her childless coworker, who had already booked their vacation during that time. The way she approached the situation, her request, and specifically the way that she escalated thereafter by making outrageous allegations meant that not only did the team's manager have to get involved, but that HR also had to get involved, which might see her out of a job in the near future once the fallout concludes.

The coworker in question shared their experience here, with this account of events that detailed the rise of tension in their office.

Christmastime for those with big families can break the bank! 

Many of us save up money throughout the year so that we're prepared to buy our loved ones the things they want most. It's helpful to write it all out in a list, so that your loved ones can buy you exactly what you want, minimizing returns. Everyone's smiling, everyone's happy, and whatever money you spent on your gift-giving will probably come back to you in the bundle of presents you receive. 

But for those with big families with tons of kids, it can be logistically and financially impossible to buy every child a good gift every year. Sure, you could buy every kid a little $5 gift or some mittens or something… but if you're going to spend money on a present, you'd ideally like it to be something that kid is going to be psyched about. 

For this big family, having 9 kids is making the holidays a bit harder to navigate. It's good to make a list for each kid, but their Mom is demanding that her sibling buy every kid a $100+ present. That's where this all starts to break down. You can't just demand that your sibling spoil your kids. It would be much more reasonable to ask that sibling to spend maybe $20 or less per kid — there are Goodwill stores or garage sales where you could find some cool and unique stuff for a low price. Or perhaps the sibling could give them all a gift card to somewhere fun, like a movie theater or a Chuck E Cheese location. Since this person also noted that they're not even that close with the mom of 9, it's not possible to plan a few outings with like 3 kids at a time, but the parents could take the kids out using those gift cards. 

This mom is clearly expecting way too much! It's going to ruin the holiday cheer if she's being a Grinch about gifting, which we all know is about the thought that counts, rather than the dollar signs next to the present. 

Offices always have at least one guy who treats the workplace like his own personal podcast. In this case, it is a mid-40s coworker who has been planted at the same job for 15 years, drives a flashy car, lives in his parents' apartment, and spends his days narrating how rich, connected, and important he supposedly is. Shady friends, sponsored vacations, hostile messages framed as jokes. It is less intimidating and more like being stuck next to a low-budget crime documentary that never ends.

What really grates is the self-assigned mentor role. Because the younger coworker is from a smaller city, this man decides he must be the wise urban success story, smarter than anyone else, here to teach life. The arrogance lands harder when the younger colleague actually comes from a self-made family, already knows how to work hard, and is not impressed by someone whose main achievement seems to be repeating the same story about powerful friends to whoever cannot escape the room.

There is also that quiet little sting of comparison. One loud, braggy man has been married twice, waves money around, and gets attention. A younger, more reserved coworker wonders if that is the trick. Act bigger, talk richer, pretend to have dangerous friends, maybe women will notice. The sad truth is this is not allure, it's noise. People do not respect it, they just tolerate it.

When your boss classifies an event as 'optional,' we all know what that really means…if you don't attend, it will most probably be held against you for your whole career…but again, it's completely up to you…Most of our coworkers, including us, would likely attend to obtain that 'reliable' and 'cooperative' reputation. Undoubtedly hoping our boss remembers seeing our faces at the beach clean-up, or sandwich packing event when considering our raises!

But what if every single one of those unpaid 'volunteering' events occurs on a Saturday…and if instead of genuine charities, all the "team building projects" involve tasks that specifically benefit your boss's immediate circle of family and friends? Well, now we understand how this version of 'giving back' might not appeal to every employee! Especially this employee. There are only so many times she can clean her boss's friend's cafe, or paint her boss's sister's daycare, without eventually feeling like she's completely being taken advantage of by her boss! We're just not quite sure her other coworkers are ready to stand their ground and fight for their weekends! 

In 2025, it's hard to justify not having basic computer skills in a modern office environment.

Yes, we understand that some folks have lived longer than the existence of the internet. Of course, everyone deserves grace and patience as they learn to adjust to modern technology. Still, there are some folks out there whose incompetence and inability to learn have absolutely nothing to do with their age.

In this office environment, a small but mighty IT department had instilled a simple, user-friendly process for reporting technical issues. Tech support requests could be submitted via email or over the phone, but according to this author, there were still a handful of individuals who refused to fill out those requests on their own. They needed their hand held every step of the way, including describing the problem they were having.

To combat this, the IT department decided to band together and collaborate with HR in order to enforce mandatory tech training. That way, these entitled coworkers wouldn't be wasting the IT department's valuable time with non-issues that they could easily fix themselves. You'll have to guess how this mandatory training turned out…

In an office full of people, it is also filled with different talents and skills that everyone has acquired over the years. One employee is a great cook, another is a wonderful makeup artist, and a third is secretly a tech genius. People have lots of hidden skills that don't necessarily shine in their lines of work.

Should they use it at their job if they get the chance? That's up to them.

The employee in the story below has a helpful skill: she speaks another language fluently. She never got to use that skill at work, but recently her coworkers discovered that skill, and one coworker decided to use it to her advantage. It started with translating an email for her husband, then a few paragraphs, which continued to a whole pile of papers.

At that point, the employee refused to continue doing free labor for this coworker's personal affairs. But that didn't stop the coworker, who decided to report this to the manager, claiming the employee refused to help the team with their international communications.

Keep scrolling to read how the employee set the records straight.

In the thick of the holiday season, you will inevitably be invited to multiple parties you'd rather not attend for a multitude of reasons; You either haven't spoken to the host in ten years, dated them, or they're your boss. All of these options seem like they are, in fact, optional, but one is not… If your boss invites you to their holiday housewarming party, you go—even if it's the last thing you want to do.

Schmoozing is the name of the game in corporate. So, you put the suit on, buy a fancy bottle of scotch that you think smells like gasoline, and nod your head at the arrogant comments your boss and other C-suite executives make under the guise of a "joke".

The employee who shares this next story explains that his company's VP invited a few employees to his home for a holiday party, which marked nearly a year of his residency there. As the party approached, the employees were informed that they would have to "work" the room and partake in business conversations. The employee calls this "mandatory fun" and, quite frankly, they're not wrong.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation like this before? How did you get out of it?

For years, this employee did everything the company asked. They did the extra projects, the late nights, and had the quarterly "career conversations" that went nowhere. Each meeting came with the same script, promising that a promotion was coming; they just needed the right timing.

By year five, that timing still hadn't appeared. What had appeared was burnout, frustration, and the sinking feeling that loyalty was being mistaken for complacency.

That's the quiet part no one says out loud in corporate life. Some companies will gladly keep you exactly where you are if you let them.

Sometimes a family gathering feels like sitting in the audience at a standup show where the headliner never met a punchline. This family's weekend was a classic. Dad's cousin, now 2 years into his seventies but still living off the kind of trust fund most people think is a myth, launches into a full rant about how kids in their thirties are too lazy to make anything of themselves. Work ethic, discipline, all the quintessential notes, delivered from the comfort of a life that's been paid for, month after month, since he was barely old enough to rent a car.

And in a move that makes proud as a fan of cynicism, in this family they don't let this type of irony slide. The sister-in-law pipes up with what everyone is actually thinking: Don't you have a trust fund? And sure enough, it's true. The man started getting $1,500 a month for life as a teenager, an amount that, especially back then, meant free college, a mortgage that never kept him up at night, and the kind of choices most people never get unless they hit the lottery or inherit a small island.

Years of not doing much led this guy retire at 50 so it's only natural we should all be eager to learn from his extensive experience at nothing all and swallow the riff about hard work he learned on the way to golf?

A man who quit his toxic workplace three years ago got a perplexing phone call from HR one day begging for him to return. They offered him $300 more a month and a $5,000 rejoin bonus on top of another $3,000 retention bonus. Sounds like a swanky deal, but what in tarnation could possibly be going on if a company you despised is trying to get you back? Don't let their new "deal" make you forget why you quit in the first place. The reason this man quit was because he wasn't being given any respect and they refused to let him grow in the company. He had had it. So he quit and moved on to a much better job and work environment. 

That's why it was so easy for him to "politely decline" their new offer three years after he quit. After that phone call, he spoke to several old co-workers who he had worked with who also eventually quit. It turns out that HR was tasked to call all of the past employees over the last five years and give them the same offer to return. Turns out that the entitled management that pushed everyone to quit, also pushed the company into disaster. 

One thing that somebody, somewhere will always have? The audacity. We live in a world riddled with entitlement and arrogance, and this is most clearly seen when you live in close proximity to them. All it takes is one "No, I'd rather not" to set them off. Be like the homeowner in this story—be as up front as possible, as soon as possible. This homeowner might have avoided any dissonance with their next-door neighbor if they hadn't been passive with him in the first place, though…

As one commenter states: "Fences are your friend." When a next-door neighbor suggests they dig up your land to benefit themselves and solely themselves, you tell them that it's your property, not theirs. We must all set the tone for the life we want and the relationships that we expect to have with others, and in this story's case, the tone wasn't set quite soon enough. The next-door neighbor here asks if they can make a trail through the back of the homeowner's yard so they can easily get into the back woods, and the homeowner passively and confusingly responds affirmatively, but later takes it back. What do they get from the neighbor in return? A "sullen" look that only the most entitled individuals display once they realize that the world doesn't exist solely for them. Scroll to keep reading.

These siblings are following their Dad's cooking rules to a T! Too bad he won't reap any of the delicious cooking benefits of it, since these kids aren't technically allowed to make food while unsupervised… 

Learning to cook is truly one of the nicest things you can do for both yourself and others. The earlier you start cooking, the more effortless it'll become over time. There's so much to learn: every ingredient cooks differently, for example. You can put an onion in a pot and walk away for a while before it's cooked to a golden brown, but if you try that with herbs, you'll be staring down a crispy black mess burnt into your pan. Meats don't need to be flipped over and over again during cooking (if you want them to be juicy and tender, that is), but a rookie mistake is flipping that steak every 3 minutes to make sure it hasn't been burnt. 

But before you get to any of that, as a child, you can do things that don't involve heat, like chopping up vegetables with safety knives, measuring out some sugar or milk, or even just giving your parents a helping hand with the dishes! If your parents are patient enough to teach you the very basics, you'll be well-equipped to cook any dish you want later in life… However, that doesn't stop parents from worrying about their kids getting burned or starting a fire while they're cooking, and it's understandable why they'd keep a close eye on them. 

Now, this Dad had a rule about his children's cooking, which was that they shouldn't be doing so unsupervised. That's totally reasonable, but his kids were getting a little frustrated by the restrictiveness of this when he wasn't around. That's why we keep the pantry stocked, folks! At least let these kids have some ramen noodles or soup or something! 

Check out the full story below and see if you side with these crafty siblings, or with their Dad. 

In the digital age, sharing one's screen during a meeting or presentation can be anxiety-inducing. Denise's story is full-blown proof of why that is.

Sure, it's unlikely that something embarrassing will pop up on your screen if you're prepared. You've probably made sure that your messages are turned off. You've probably triple checked that all your tabs and windows have been closed save for the ones you need to share. And yet, the fear bumbling under the surface somehow remains. 

This author recounted the unfortunate tale of his coworker, Denise, who was leading an important presentation to a potential client. The meeting had begun, everyone was settled, and so far, everything was going according to plan. That is, until Denise accidentally hit one button on her computer screen.

At this point, a photo of one of her cats decked out in costumes popped up on the screen. That would have been fine, were it not for the fact that over 50 more photos started popping up with no end in sight. Poor Denise couldn't easily laugh this one off, but once she got the photos to go away, she tried to pretend like it never happened. Too late, Denise!

These workers declined to give their 2-weeks notice, and instead, they quit on the spot to teach their bosses a real-world lesson they won't soon forget. 

Some business owners treat their employees as if those workers aren't holding their very business together. The owner gets to strut in each day and boss around workers, sweet-talk the customers, and berate any manager in sight. They're acting like they're holding up the entire tent by themselves, all the while forgetting that without enough help, that tent would collapse around them. Just think about how flustered a boss or owner would be if they had to run their own company alone for a day — even an hour!

The workers who shared their stories of the times they quit their jobs on the spot have a slight idea of what that might look like! It's the kind of thing that many workers dream of — telling off your boss and walking out the door while your coworkers look on in awe, making yourself an instant legend at your company (and perhaps a martyr, if you don't have a new job lined up). Still, if you want to gain some "I quit" inspiration, check out the tales below from workers in tons of different industries who were all thrilled to kiss their old jobs goodbye forever.