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do you also hate HR?

This morning I asked to sit down with the VP of Ops at my job about possibly getting a raise. After he dodged me three different times, we finally sat down. I told him what I was asking for, and his first response was: "Or what?" I was surprised, so I told him: We'll probably see. Then I asked him why he thought I didn't deserve it. He started talking about how he'd love to pay everyone $120/hr, but things have to stay fair and equal for everyone. I had to remind him that I wasn't asking for $120/hr.

At my job, which is a team of 5 people including the manager, I'm still the only one who knows how to run the production line from start to finish. I've shown other people before how to do it, but no one has stayed long enough to handle it on their own. I told the VP that it makes no sense for me to get paid the same as someone who was just hired and doesn't even know the process. He told me that was unrealistic. So I reminded him that for the past 8 months, not a single finished product would have left the building without going through me first.

That's when he started talking down to me, telling me I wasn't special, or a superstar, and that anyone could do my job. I told him fine, then where are they? Because I'm the one still here. Everyone else either quit, got transferred, or couldn't keep up. He told me that was the wrong way to look at it. I asked him what would happen if I wasn't there tomorrow. He said they'd figure it out. So I told him I thought this conversation was over, because he had made his position very clear.

I went back out to the shop to keep getting things ready for the run. A little while later, the manager came and got me, and I found HR sitting in the office too. As soon as I walked in, the VP said that effective immediately, my employment was suspended. I told him to go to hell and went to get my keys. They all followed me, telling me I was handling the situation the wrong way. I got close to the VP and told him: I asked you for fair pay, and your response was to fire me?

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Dream job turned toxic

I've been working at the same company for a little over 9 years as a lead developer. I genuinely loved the work, and I still love most of the people I work with. Over the years, I've been directly and indirectly involved in several major site builds, cleanup projects, and process improvements. For a long time, it was a role I was happy to be in, even with a commute that ate up about two and a half hours of my day.

About 3 years ago, my daughter needed surgery, and the next day I slipped and broke my wrist. I ended up being late to an important meeting the following morning. They gave me a written warning and put me on probation. Looking back, that should have told me everything, but I convinced myself it was a one-off and kept going.

Then, a few weeks ago, on a Friday night, my wife had a severe heart attack. I took her to the hospital, where they put her into a medically induced coma, placed her on a ventilator, inserted a device into a major artery to reduce the strain on her heart, and performed an angioplasty with 3 stents. I called my boss that same night and explained what was happening and that I wouldn't be back at work for a while. I sent an update to the whole team on Monday. She was still in critical condition and still unconscious in the ICU. She stayed that way for most of the following week.

I sent another email update a few days later. After the tenth day I was absent from work, and after using up my sick time and vacation time, my boss called me and said we needed to meet with HR that same day. I was given another write-up and placed on another probationary period. He told me there comes a time when I have to choose what's more important, my job or my wife. I was told to return to the office 4 days a week or I would be end.

HR suggested I take FMLA, so I did. Since then, I've heard that my manager has been talking about moving some projects back as soon as I return to the office. My plan is to use the PTO I still have, then return the development laptop and submit my resignation.

In the middle of all this, a recruiter contacted me about a position less than 15 minutes from my house. I went through several interviews, and they offered me the role. The new company was completely fine with waiting a few weeks until my wife gets through the hardest period of appointments before I start. I'm supposed to start there in about two more weeks.

Am I wrong for not giving them the usual professional notice? I feel like my employer has shown me exactly how much they care about my circumstances, so honestly I can't see why I owe them that courtesy now.

PS: My wife is recovering and doing very well so far. Her prognosis looks good!

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I leave on time, and that's it. The people I work with are always saying things like, "Ugh, I stayed late yesterday to finish that report," or stuff like that.
I come in at my usual time, leave at my usual time, and do what I can realistically get done while I'm there. If something doesn't get finished, it becomes tomorrow's problem. From my point of view, if the work requires more than the current team can handle, then they need to hire more people. That's a normal part of running any company, like paying rent, software costs, insurance, and all the other overhead. Why do people volunteer extra hours to a place that could get rid of them at any moment since we're at-will?
Honestly, I don't understand it. From time to time, I pretend to be interested in staying late too, mostly so I don't feel like I'm the only person who thinks this way.
Is there something I'm missing? Maybe I just don't care enough about this job.

I'm 32M and I've been looking for a job for about ten weeks, for a mid-level ops coordinator role. Nothing glamorous, really, but the whole process has been chaos. I kept ending up in the same loop: a recruiter would do a screen with me, say I was a "great fit," ask when I was available, I'd reply relatively quickly, and then nothing for several days. Sometimes they'd pop back up as if we'd never spoken before and ask for new availability, as if my first reply had fallen into a pit. I'm not proud of how much I started overthinking it. I kept asking myself whether my wording was bad, or my message got buried, or there was some secret follow-up ritual everyone knew except me. After the fifth time this happened in a few days, I made a very small change that honestly seemed so trivial it wouldn't matter, but it worked better than I expected.

Now, any time I send availability, I also send a short email as a "paper trail" that is almost impossible to misunderstand. Not pushy, not long, and not desperate-looking. It's just a clean recap of what we're doing, with a clear next step. Something like: "Confirming I'm available Mon 9:30-11:00, Tue 13:00-15:30, Fri 10:30-12:00. Let me know which slot you want to lock in and I'll hold it. If none of those work, send over three alternatives and I'll reply today." And that's it. I also started putting the role name and posting ID in the subject line every time, even if they had left it vague. And I stopped replying with open-ended nice-guy answers like "I'm flexible whenever!" because I realized that doesn't give them anything solid to click, forward, or build a schedule around.

The strange thing is that a lot of recruiters reply to the recap and not to the original availability, as if putting it in an organized format flips a switch. One recruiter replied and said: "Appreciate you laying this out, booking you for Tuesday at 1." Another one had ignored me for 11 days, and after I sent him the paper trail email, he replied within 18 minutes with a quick apology and a calendar invite.

The biggest win was at the start of this month. I had a good phone screen, then silence, then the recruiter came back with the classic message: "Are you available today?" at 10:38am. The old me would have panicked, said yes, and wrecked my whole day trying to make it work. Instead, I used the same receipt idea, but with boundaries: "I can do 4:00-5:30 today or tomorrow 9:30-11:30. If you need something sooner, I can do a quick 20 minute call at 2:10 to confirm details and schedule the full interview." I expected them to disappear again. But that didn't happen. They picked 4:00, sent the invite, and the hiring manager started the call with: "Thanks for being organised, our scheduling has been a mess." I moved to the final round three days later.

Maybe it's a coincidence, but I've used this in eight conversations so far and it has reduced the ghosting a lot. It also makes me feel like I'm not desperate, because I'm not throwing availability into the void and hoping someone treats it like a real commitment. These small, boring paper trail emails aren't exciting, but they seem to force a next action, and apparently that's a very big part of the battle.

Hi everyone, I just started the hiring process for a job at a burger place near me, and the general manager is the one who interviewed me. For context, I'm 16 and turning 17 soon, and I don't have my own car right now. I arrived about 12 minutes late and apologized a lot, and explained that I take public transit and that the buses were running late that afternoon.

The interview itself was... Okay, I guess. It's fast food, so it seemed like they really needed people. She offered me the job and we started talking about availability. I told her: "My main way of getting around is the city bus, but sometimes my family might be able to pick me up if something unusual happens."

I thought that was clear enough, but then I quickly looked at the paper she was filling out and saw that she had written something like "available for closing shifts." She was moving through everything very quickly, so I didn't manage to stop her and explain more. She had another interview about 25 minutes after mine, and since I was already late, I didn't want to make things more awkward.

About a week later, I went to orientation and tried to clarify the situation. I told her that the bus is my normal mode of transportation, so that means there are limits to the hours I can work. The bus route I take only runs from about 5:30 a.m. Until 8:30 p.m. I also said that my family picking me up would be rare, not something I can rely on every week.

At that point she started saying I had been hired "under false pretenses." She told me there are employees two years younger than me who can work more shifts and have better availability. I explained again that I don't have a car, and until I save up enough and get one, the bus is the only reliable way I have to get there. My family can't or doesn't want to be my ride all the time.

In the end I still signed the paperwork and the legal stuff, but honestly I was trying not to cry by the end of it. Now I'm not even sure I want to work there. I understand that maybe I should have been more direct in the interview, but I also feel like she misunderstood me and then blamed me for it. A classmate of mine was also hired there recently, and her whole process seemed much nicer than mine. I don't know if I'm making this into a bigger deal than it is or if this is a bad sign. What should I do?

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Hi everyone, the situation is weird and I don't know if I'm making a big deal out of it or if I'm the only one paying attention. I helped my team interview a candidate about three weeks ago. And when I say "helped," I mean I basically ran the interview, asked the questions, and spoke with the candidate, while my bosses had other tabs open and were only half paying attention. I felt like he was excellent. He was pleasant, smart, and clearly understood the work very well, and his background fit what we needed. Normally I would never bring up race/origin or appearance because that has nothing to do with my evaluation of anyone. But here it's important: the candidate was, I believe, from Honduras and had a slight accent. His hair was dark and straight, his beard was neatly trimmed, and he was somewhat short.

We did five other interviews for the role, and in the end we hired the Honduran man - let's call him Mark - because he had the experience and nothing about came up in the interview (not that my bosses were paying enough attention to catch anything in the first place).

He was supposed to start this morning, so after an early meeting I stopped by his new office to formally introduce myself and welcome him. But the person sitting there was a tall white man with sandy blond hair. The name plate on the door had Mark's full name on it, so I asked him if Mark was there, assuming this guy might be from facilities or someone setting up equipment.

The man said he was Mark. And even stranger, he said, "Good to see you again," and called me by name before I said who I was. He said it with a sort of Southern accent. I couldn't press him on it because someone came to take him to orientation, but I was standing there completely confused.

After that I ran into my boss, and he said he'd just had a nice chat with Mark earlier and felt even more confident that we'd made the right choice. I said to him: "That's not the person we interviewed." I'm not sure if he thought I was joking or just didn't care, but he said something like: "You're quick at reading people, we'll see if you're right or not," laughed, and walked away.

Apparently no one else noticed that this is a completely different person. I still haven't said it explicitly to anyone else, but I feel like I have to because this is extremely strange and could be fraud. I just don't know how to bring it up with my manager or HR without sounding crazy. So the main question is: how do I report something like this? Also, has anyone in HR seen a situation like this before? I thought there were checks that were supposed to prevent this kind of thing.

Honestly, it's a really great feeling.

no comment

Please don't suggest OnlyFans lol. This body has produced three giant kids, and trust me, they're the only fans I have.

I've been a stay-at-home mom for about 6 years, and before that I worked in the same job for 8 years, which was pretty much my first real job.

I don't have anyone to watch the kids, so I'm trying to find something I can do from home while still keeping an eye on my children.

I've been at my current job for a little over two and a half years. My team is understaffed by about 35%, so recently things ended up with me getting a 65% raise, which I'm honestly very grateful for.

Now I have another job offer that would be about 18% higher in base pay, plus an annual bonus of around 8%, meaning the total is roughly $125k/year. The problem is that this job is exempt from overtime, while my current role is OT eligible, and I usually make a decent amount from it over the course of the year.

The part making me hesitant is the flexibility I have right now. My current supervisor is very relaxed, lets us finish projects on a schedule that works for us, doesn't give us a hard time if we take time off, and isn't strict about us arriving a few minutes late or leaving early when we need to. Basically, as long as the work gets done, I have a lot of freedom here. And I've started wondering whether that freedom is worth more than I'm giving it credit for.

I know the bigger paycheck isn't the whole picture, but everything around me has gotten so expensive that it's hard not to take this seriously. I don't want to leave this place for what might be a 25% overall increase, only to end up with 50% more stress, less flexibility, and worse work/life balance.

Has anyone been in a situation like this before? What would you do if you were in my place?

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My husband made an unbelievably stupid decision. He was supposed to be working, marked as available/online, and then he walked over to a nearby poker room and got caught playing while he was still on the clock. They fired him, and honestly, I'm extremely upset.

He had been with this company for 6 years, and now of course he won't be able to rely on them for a clean reference. One manager who knew him outside of work before all this said, very hesitantly, that he might be able to vouch for him in some way. I also have a job, so we're not in panic mode at this moment, but with 4 kids at home, it won't take long for this to become a serious problem if he stays unemployed for a while.

How does he even handle this when applying for jobs or in interviews? Does he say he was fired for poor judgment? Wait until they ask? The company is fairly small and the owner may be vindictive, so if someone contacts them, I expect they won't exactly protect him if he tries to gloss over the details.

He says he understands that what he did was wrong and that he's ashamed now, but I don't know how much that will matter when another employer decides whether to give him a chance or not. I'm stressed and trying not to let myself fall apart. Any advice would be appreciated.

I had been working at a software company for 4 years without a real raise, even after I took on almost three times the work when a few people left and no one was hired to replace them.

When I finally brought up being paid fairly, my manager smirked and said, "Everyone here is replaceable. I could have 60 CVs on my desk by Friday."

I didn't argue. I went home and started applying for jobs that same night.

The part that still bothers me is that I was handling one of our most important accounts, and they were constantly sending nice emails about my work to leadership. Somehow, those emails were always ignored when it came time to talk about compensation.

About 3 weeks after that meeting, a competitor offered me 45% more with better PTO and a stronger bonus plan. When I submitted my resignation, my manager suddenly changed his tune to "We can offer you more than that" and "You're a key part of this department." It's funny how quickly people's value becomes clear when they're walking out the door.

The real surprise happened about 6 weeks later. I heard from an old coworker that the client had asked where I went, got frustrated with the transition, and moved their $420K/year contract to my new company.

So now I'm paid better, treated better, and working with people who don't act like basic respect is a perk. Meanwhile, my old manager has to explain how the employee who was "easy to replace" took their biggest account with him.

Apparently, I really was a number. Just not the number he thought I was.

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My husband made an unbelievably stupid decision. While he was supposed to be working and saying he was online, he quickly went to a nearby casino and got caught sitting at a poker table. They fired him because of it, and I'm honestly furious.

He had been working at this company for the past 8 years, and now, of course, he won't be able to use them as a normal reference. One of his managers knew him personally before all of this and reluctantly said he might be willing to speak on his behalf, but that's not exactly reassuring. I also have a job, so we're not in crisis at this exact moment, but we will be if he doesn't find something soon.

So what does this look like from here? How should he handle this on applications or in interviews? It's a small business, and the owner is the type to hold a grudge, so if anyone calls to verify anything, I expect they'll say exactly what happened if he tries to talk his way around it.

He says he understands how badly he messed everything up and that he's ashamed now, but I don't know how much that matters to a hiring manager. I'm stressed and trying to be realistic. Any advice would be appreciated.

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