Here's a good piece of advice for any aspiring homeowners out there: Try not to move right next door to the president of your HOA!

This couple had the unfortunate experience of enduring constant complaints from the old dude in the adjacent home. The problem was that on the surface, they couldn't do much about it. This man seemed entitled to complete control of his neighborhood given his false sense of authority.

Clearly, he was motivated by the smallest of inconveniences, most of which did not even affect his property. In fact, when he took issue with the tiny vegetable garden that the author and her spouse plants in their own backyard, the couple discovered that they actually had not violated any rules or regulations in the HOA handbook. The HOA president responded with the most nonsensical comeback, claiming that he had the power to essentially invent rules. 

This was far from the truth, and the author knew that inherently. What helped them out in the end was the impulse to return the favor and investigate if there were any legitimate violations on the HOA president's property. After all, they had suspected some hypocritical behavior here. Well, it turns out they were right! 

When a neighbor treats their cul-de-sac like their own personal driveway, suddenly the free parking on the street goes away, curbside appeal diminishes, and the neighborhood's patience starts to fray. While it's understandable to have a car (or two) parked on the street to protect your garage from unwanted oil stains, once you start collecting a fleet of vehicles, like the bad neighbor in this next story, it's time to stop bogarting public free space and move the car show to your private property.

Car enthusiasts are obsessed with their ride. Polishing the rims with a microfiber towel and using biodegradable soap at hand-wash stations, these vehicles see more love than most living family members. However, this obsession doesn't give car guys the authority to take over the entire street. Rightfully so, this woman and her husband were tired of finagling a complicated park job around their neighbor's 5 cars, so they took to the city handbook to read the fine print about public parking areas. 

Turns out, the city ordinances had their backs, protecting the public areas from the overcrowded curbsides of an entitled neighbor. If only he'd known that before getting impounded… 

The last thing you want to do when starting at a new workplace is find a way to make all of your coworkers dislike you. Yet, fresh graduates seem to have a reputation for this by getting on the wrong side of veteran staff when they walk in the door with their new degree in hand. Being "all knowledge and no sense," sticking to finer points and technicalities rather than the most obvious path.

You know how this goes: when you have someone training you, they explain the process to you, but then show you the way that you should actually do it to be more efficient. This is how you know you have someone who knows what they're doing, but sometimes new, inexperienced workers take it upon themselves to report this type of trainer for not following the process, rather than being grateful for them sharing their secrets with them.

I like to think of these process adaptations as a sort of process "desire pathways," which are pathways that form in the grass between planned pathways where users have identified more efficient routes. You'll see these out and about on campuses and between adjacent sidewalks, where walkers and passersby have taken these alternative routes to cut corners and avoid walking the long way around. Over time, these new pathways form, and others follow them in turn, creating a snowball effect and solidifying a new pathway where grass will never grow.

But I digress. The real point here is that it's important not to make waves when joining a workplace. While it's a good rule of thumb to avoid contributing money to something you don't know anything about, the last thing you want to be doing is basically broadcasting to your coworkers that you don't trust them and their established social endeavours and processes. 

One might argue that the workplace should be funding these activities; this would have been a given in years past, but in the modern workplace, employee-funded celebrations are more common than not. But having it be employer-funded would avoid this situation altogether, preventing anyone from being skeptical of costs and eliminating any cost of anyone skimming a little off the top, while being a boost to morale for relatively little cost to boot. 

This out of the picture, surely there's some kind of middle ground here, some compromise that can be struck in order to appease all parties. While the poster isn't necessarily wrong in this situation, I'd be wary of rocking the boat like this with the entire office.

This ex-boyfriend had the worst day of work ever, all thanks to his ex-partner and a friend!

What can heal you after a breakup? There's no one right answer, but spending time with people who love you and can distract you from your love-life woes is a safe bet. After all, who could be a better choice to comfort you than your best friend who's adored you for years and knows you better than anyone else?

These teens had an incredible idea to get back at an ex-boyfriend in a way that's both petty and totally harmless. Not to mention it involves eating brunch on a weekend, which is another exceptional post-breakup idea. Brunch allows you to have multiple drinks at the same time, and that's why it's the best meal out there. One drink for fun, one for energy, and one for health — that's the key! These teens just took advantage of that brunching mentality as they ordered a bunch of drinks, while ensuring that they touched up their makeup between sips, and let everything else play out naturally. No one knows how to be petty like a scorned teenager — check out the full story below and see if you agree with their methods! 

Buying a small place and slowly turning it into something better is already a long game. Doing it under the gaze of a neighbor who owns almost everything around you and still cannot mind his business is its own special kind of headache. This couple is trying to get a pole barn up, maybe expand the house a bit, nothing wild. Just enough storage so life stops feeling like a daily game of Tetris.

The neighbor circles every step like a hall monitor with acreage. First, it is tree panic and property line drama, even after maps, measurements, and a survey say the trunks in question are firmly on the right side. He complains about cutting trees while standing on land that only looks the way it does because someone once cut trees to build his big house, his barn, his cabin, his pond. The double standard is not even subtle, just loud and annoying.

Then he switches to disaster predictions, announcing that the new building will ruin drainage and flood his land. The punchline is that the only reason his yard has stayed dry for years is the same husband he is lecturing, the one who dredged the creek and put in a culvert to keep water moving. On top of that, the construction plans already include a drainage system designed to avoid the very problem he is ranting about.

It is one thing to reject an employee during the hiring process after realizing they don't have the right qualifications for the job; it is another thing to reject them after you already offered them the job.

Doing the latter is highly disrespectful and frankly, quite unprofessional. They might not meet the qualifications, but the only one to blame is the one who offered the job without noticing the missing criteria in the first place.

Imagine you got a job offer from a company and even started the onboarding process, only for them to rescind the offer after realizing you don't meet the qualifications. At first, you might be disappointed, but you will soon realize that you are better off without this unprofessional company. Now, imagine that two years after the whole ordeal, you get another call from the same company, which is offering you the same role, thinking you forgot how they treated you the first time around.

What makes them think you would want to work for a company that has no problem treating its new hires this way?

With the holidays quickly approaching, many employees are hoping to take their remaining PTO to spend the holiday season with their families. Unfortunately for this airline coordinator, his manager almost got in the way of that valuable time.

The most infuriating aspect of this workplace conflict is that the airline coordinator submitted his PTO request months in advance and even got it approved by management. However, that was before there were many changes in upper management, and his former supervisor was replaced. Still, that PTO request was pre-approved and should have been honored, regardless of how short-staffed they might have been. According to the author, there were plenty of other options this new manager could have pursued before insisting that this guy could not take his well-deserved vacation.

Thankfully, it sounds like ever since those structural shifts in upper management were made, the airline coordinator knew that it was only a matter of time before he needed to leave this toxic work environment so he could at the very least make it out alive.

This must be a rare occurrence, because for the first time in a long time, we think this answer is fairly clear. If a man starts to impose any 'it's him, or me's within your life, take that as a sign to start really looking inwards at your relationship. Because oftentimes him is not referring to a specific person. It could be regarding your family, your friends, or in this case, your career…Because when a man truly loves you, it is not your confinement he values, but your growth. 

So when this renewable energy consultant gets offered for dream job in Denver, she cannot wait to share the exciting news with her boyfriend. After all, she' been working toward it basically since the day she could read and write…But her boyfriend's reaction was not quite as excited. Instead of a bunch of red roses and a slightly-too-large balloon that read congratulations, she received a breakup threat. Claiming that it would be 'incredibly selfish' of her to make them move 45 minutes away…or worse, be in a long-distance relationship. Well, if 45 minutes is long distance, then we'd consider ourselves in multiple long-distance relationships with everyone we know!

If anyone is asking you for a 'donation', you have a right to know where every last cent is going. Whether that's a "mission" for the collector or not. And if they refuse to provide you with a payment breakdown…you have every right to decline the invitation to donate. Now, some people may label you stingy while you place your hand up against the envelope in refusal. But again, if you do not know where your money is going, how does one know it's truly being used for good…and not to pay for some rich man's fifth vacation this year…Well, the fact is, you'll never know unless you demand to, and that's exactly what this employee did!

After being fairly new to the company, and already participating in the coworker-run "social fund", this employee was eager to get her budgeting underway, and in addition, wanted to know exactly where and how her work donations were being used…But when she asked the fund's collector to send her a breakdown of the transactions, he avoided the question as if it were the plague, constantly changing the subject. Whilst somehow still having the nerve to ask her for this month's donations. Just because he had a calculating smile spread across his face, did not mean that she was not on to him…and whatever little scheme he had running. 

When you work retail, you grow accustomed to things like being permanently "understaffed" despite there being seemingly no effort to bring on more hands, and your constant pleas to management to hire additional hands to help shoulder the burden. All the while you're creeping closer towards burnout: skipping breaks, working late, while having to argue with those same managers that the overtime you're reporting is justifiable. 

Your requests for a raise are similarly ignored, being consistently pushed out ad infinitum; every quarter, there's always some new excuse for why you'll have to wait just a little bit longer. 

See, the problem is that by just getting on with it, you've proven it's manageable, leaving them no cause to hire more staff and increasing baseline costs. Burnout and turnover might increase, but they are silent costs that aren't counted on the bottom line. Even if they eventually lead to a business failing, it won't appear on the P&L, so no one will ever notice or attribute it to a causal issue. But the brain drain and the slow decline in the quality of the work are very real. 

This employee was pushed to her limit when her boss reprimanded her for taking her legally required 30-minute unpaid lunch break. According to her boss, she had let her team down by taking a break while they "needed" her. How or why there wasn't a shift lead assigning and scheduling breaks is a mystery, and while we don't know for certain what industry this workplace is in, it seems pretty clear that it is some kind of shift work, likely in retail or service.  

If you've ever worked retail, you know how this goes: there's always constant foot traffic during lunch hours, as those working office jobs in the nearby area look for something to do to fill in the time of their own lunch breaks. This means retail and service industry workers can't ever take their own breaks at the usual lunchtime, and unless properly planned for, breaks end up getting overlooked and then missed, despite the fact that this same dance happens every day. 

And then you're stuck, again, trying to justify the fact that you're claiming overtime for missed breaks, and eventually you either have to give up and skip your breaks and not get paid for them, or otherwise do what this employee likely did and just take your breaks whether the shift lead has told you to or not.

The last season of Stranger Things recently aired on Netflix last week… and it's safe to say that it has brought up some feelings about the season's past.

No, this isn't a television review where we criticize camera direction, plot points, and character arcs. The story in question is of a Stranger Things-centric occurrence that one employee witnessed in their workplace nearly 10 years ago, right when the first season of the internationally famous program debuted.

If you haven't been living under a rock, you know that Stranger Things largely targets a young audience, but people of all ages tune into the show because it's a hit. It has action, funny kids who are now not-so kiddish anymore, and Winona Ryder. What else do you need?

The colleague in the story below could've done without it, because she berates an employee for recommending the show to her. You're probably wondering what traumatized this narrator-described "annoying" colleague… and why she was only putting herself in the position of the late Barb's mother, and not Will Byers or Eleven, who also suffer from grueling fates. Scroll below to read the entire story.

Office workers can be like eels. Eternally wriggling free of work's consequences and passing the blame onto someone else in their bureaucracy, office backstabbers avoid taking responsibility for their shortcomings. For this reason, when it comes to office work, the best revenge is in the receipts; that's why it's always advisable to keep a paper trail of emails, letters, or written word to back yourself up when the office space starts getting a little hot. 

Like all career folks, we're all just out here trying to build a name for ourselves, so when your coworker who's known for slacking off starts blaming you for letting the project deadlines slide, all anyone can do is save face. And when you have the email receipts (timestamped, of course) to clear your good name, the lazy, low-life, backstabbing employees of this world have nothing to do except beg forgiveness from the higher-ups. 

Maybe next time a project is due, this office employee will think twice before blaming everyone else for their failure, because the embarrassment from this company meeting was enough to memorably sting their ego for all time.

These stairs should've never made it past the blueprint phase, yet somehow, they're set in stone (and wood, and ceramic) and ready to trip up anyone who walks on them!

A lot of kids are afraid of stairs. So are many dogs. It doesn't take much to overcome this fear — you either practice until you get used to it, or if you're a small child, you sit down and sort of slide down. Most adults aren't especially fearful of staircases, so when you see one that strikes fear in your heart, you remember it for a long time! 

I used to have relatives who had a home that was like 4 stories tall, and then had a lovely roof where you could go outside and see the Philadelphia skyline. Later, they added another rooftop deck with a narrow, winding staircase, much like the one in the first photo here. While it was all well and good to climb up this staircase, and it was wonderful to chat and watch the sunset on the second rooftop deck, going down was truly frightful and nightmarish. You were suddenly staring down about 6 floors, looking right down into the neighbor's garden from a frightful height, and the only thing stopping you from tumbling down was this flimsy little spiral staircase. It sends a shudder down my spine just thinking about it! That staircase, and many of the ones here, are like something out of a bad dream — you need to get somewhere, but a creaky old staircase is blocking your way. 

Check out a bunch of these shudder-inducing staircases below! I really do feel for that first person — it would ruin the vacation if you had to face your own mortality every time you left your bedroom on those wobbly spiral stairs. 

When someone does you a favor one time, that does not mean they will be available to you at all times moving forward.

You would think that this concept would be a self-explanatory one, and yet, this 31-year-old coworker "Sara" somehow assumed that the author of this anecdote was now her personal chauffeur after she gave Sara a lift home on one occasion. That one instance just so happened to be during a storm, and the author felt badly about abandoning her coworker in inclement weather.

For whatever reason, after that one act of generosity, Sara seemed to think that she had a carpool arrangement with the employee at the end of every work day. She would send her messages on Slack at 4:40 pm near the end of each day telling her she was ready to leave whenever. One time, the author was staying later to finish up some work, and Sara was visibly upset that her "driver" would no longer be available to her.

Keep scrolling below to find out what happened when the author refused to drive her around wherever she wanted from here on out!

There's always a stickler for the rules in every company, and when this person decides to make everyone else comply, too, it can really gum up the works. 

There are very few careers where everyone works 100% by the book 100% of the time. There are some fields where this is crucial, but chances are you know that ahead of time if you're choosing that career path. This person is sharing the story of their middle-management boss who is a true stickler for the rules, and wants things done by the book, every single time, just because. This guy loves opening and closing help-desk tickets. It seems like he literally won't answer a question unless a ticket is formally filed by his employees. 

Actual help-desk tickets are useful for those who answer said tickets — they provide a log of errors going on with someone's computer, as one example, so that the random worker fixing it has some background information about which solutions have been tried already. And for employees, filing a ticket is a good way to cover themselves, ensuring that they won't be penalized just because some of their equipment is broken. If you have to file a ticket for literally everything, they lose their meaning, not to mention their priority status. If you have one important ticket to deal with, it'll get dealt with before lunch. If you have 150 tickets sitting in your inbox, where do you even begin? You might approve a few less important tickets while totally missing out on the actually urgent ones. 

Commenters urged this person to report back when they have an update! Check out the full story below and see if you side with the frustrated employees, or with the boss who got stymied by his own communication style. 

No one likes that one entitled customer who thinks they can cut the line without any repercussions. 

In fact, we all have likely been stuck at the end of a long line at some point and witnessed a person brazenly break the rules and skip to the front. When this happens, a series of thoughts tend to cross your mind. The most generous interpretation would be if the line-cutter had a legitimate excuse. Perhaps they were in line prior to your arrival and had to step away for an emergency. Nine times out of ten, of course, this is not the case. 

It's far more likely that the line-cutter simply felt like they could get away with this behavior because they are blinded by their own Main Character Syndrome. If you're still stuck in the back of that line and bearing witness to this person's audacity, you are likely thinking about all the ways you wish you could confront them in that moment. However, because you're not one to make a scene, you probably would choose to refrain from doing anything of that nature.

The last stage before a new hire signs a contract with a company should be filled with honesty, from both sides. What is the point of lying about anything regarding the job, if one day on the job would prove that whatever was discussed is not what is going to happen?

We're not just talking about how candidates shouldn't lie about their qualifications; we've all been there. No, we're talking about how some companies promise all kinds of things to employees before they sign the contract, only to back out of them as soon as the employee arrives on their first day. 

Why go through all this trouble just to drive the new hire right out of the door they just walked through?

Take the employee in the story below as an example. They were told they would have to go through 2 weeks of training out of state, and were promised certain accommodations. However, in the first week, they discovered that the training was actually 6 weeks, and that the company refuses to provide any of the accommodations they promised. 

Which leaves the new hire wondering what the point of the promises was in the first place…

A favor is only a favor until it becomes an expectation—or even a demand. At that point, what are you even doing? 

Unfortunately, it's only natural "humanness" to become adjusted to something and adapt to it over time. We are creatures of habit by nature, and it doesn't take long before something that's new and exciting becomes a baseline for our lives. 

We're most guilty of this probably with our own parents; we grow up so used to them doing things for us that it can be easy to forget that they're just people too, and anything they're doing for us comes directly from their own time, energy, and intention. Or even that friend who goes out of their way to keep in contact with you. Would you even still be friends if it were up to you to message them first?

When it's something that someone else is doing for you, it can be all too easy to take it for granted. It's a quiet line that is crossed without you even noticing. We might not even mean to take advantage of it, but we do all the same. And, at the end of the day, we're responsible for our actions (or lack thereof, not only our intentions.)

I'd argue that this happens with all instances of favors, too. The minute the behavior becomes a pattern, it's just ingrained into you and, thus, becomes an expectation. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't do favors for others; in fact, I'd argue that this part of the social contract is one of the biggest things we've lost as a society in the last 30 years. 

Doing something for another person for the sheer kindness of it should be one of life's greatest satisfactions, but instead, we're all just crabs in a bucket seeking to better only ourselves at the expense of others. Still, the other side of the same coin of doing favors for others is clearly communicating and setting boundaries. Which is something else we've also lost in the modern day, as we all largely seem to struggle to communicate directly and say what we mean. 

This employee found herself in a difficult situation when she relented and provided her colleague a ride home on a rainy day, intending for it to be a one-time thing only. However, she unwittingly opened a door that, once ajar, her colleague was quick to stick her foot into, jamming it open. Realizing how "easy" it was for the employee to drop her off, she decided that this should be a daily occurrence, signing the employee up as her personal chauffeur, even asking to be driven for personal errands. 

Like a shark in the water, she'd come circling every day when it came time to head home, acting like it was outrageous any time a ride wasn't then offered.

As mentioned previously, boundaries are essential in any relationship, but this is especially true in the workplace. After all, having some inoffensive universal baseline to refer back to is the foundation of professionalism. It's a shame, but instances like this are why everyone is wary of extending a personal kindness to anyone in a professional setting.

Kids say the funniest things… just ask these mall Santas, who have heard every sweet and silly holiday request you can imagine. 

Quick, pretend you're a mall Santa: if a kid asks you for "elves" this year, what would you reply? Some kids will ask for easy gifts, like the child who requested pickles for Christmas. Easy! But what do you say to the 3-year-old who wants to find one of Santa's elves in her stocking? I imagine these mall Santas have some pretty good stock answers, and I bet they get really good at improvising their answers on the spot! 

As kids, my siblings and I knew that mall Santas weren't actual Santa, because he was at the North Pole making our presents, and because Santa couldn't be at both our town's malls at once, as we worked out. However, that never stopped us from being wide-eyed with wonder at the jolly guy with the white beard, who let us sit on his knee and tell him what we wanted for the holidays this year. 

Mall Santas have to do a lot of interpreting: when a toddler demands a snake and a goat for Christmas, they probably do mean the real animal, but we all know they're going to find stuffed animals under the tree instead. At least the whole process can help parents get some good ideas for what to gift the kiddos! 

A hardworking employee finally reached her breaking point after her three other incompetent coworkers pushed all of their work on her. It wasn't just the stuff they couldn't do, it was the stuff they just didn't want to do. They had full access and ability to do the work, and, in fact, it is their job to do it, and yet they still pushed it onto this other employee. Even during her breaks or days off they would reach out to her demanding they do the work they were supposed to do. So she decided she had enough. 

Turns out her company was looking for places to make cuts, so when she requested to work less, they were happy to give her Wednesdays off. Now, she only works four days a week with a break in between. What will her coworkers do? It is unsure, but they are definitely going to flounder for a while. They could hardly survive without her for an hour when she would go on break! A whole day every single week will most definitely help shine a light on their incompetence. A win is a win, and now, this hardworking employee is not only getting a well-deserved break, but also so karma on her entitled coworkers!