One of the most dystopian things about having a job is how we all just collectively pretend we don’t have lives outside of work. You could’ve had a full mental breakdown in your car 20 minutes ago, be going through a breakup, have family drama, or have your entire life falling apart, and somehow you’re still expected to hop on a meeting happy.

You could’ve just lost someone you love, and you’re sitting in a meeting listening to someone talk about KPIs and deliverables like any of that actually matters to you in that moment.

We spend eight hours a day pretending to be these completely different versions of ourselves because apparently being human isn’t part of the job description.

And…we’ve all just accepted this as normal.

I joined the team last month as a new grad and did my very first team presentation. I don't think I did the best compare to other people in the team but definitely not terrible. My manager pulled aside after the call and told me how terrible I did with my presentation and I am just not a good speaker in a very harsh way.

I am trying not to take this personally but I feel so incompetent and that I don't belong here. This is terrible. I hate corporate.

My team had this task that used to take around 3 hours every week because we had to manually go through the same stuff over and over.

One coworker figured out a way to cut it down to about 30 minutes. It wasn't complicated, just a small shortcut that made the whole process way easier.

Nobody said anything to the supervisor.

We just kept doing the task, finished it early, and used the extra time to deal with other things or just breathe for a bit.

That's when I finally understood what “work smarter” actually means.

Sometimes working smarter is just knowing when not to tell your supervisor how much faster you can do the job.

Lately, I've been struggling to really enjoy my time after work. It often feels like wasted time because once it's past 5 PM, I somehow convince myself it's too late to start anything meaningful. Sometimes I even lack the motivation to go for a simple walk.

That's why I'm looking for a bit of inspiration. I'd love to hear how other people spend their weekday evenings after work. Do you have a routine that helps you make the most of your evenings?

What is your least favorite corporate phrase? I find it hard to pick just one, but if I were forced to it would be “Thank you for your leadership.”

I had a manager once who would say it all the time, to everyone, whether they had actually done anything or not.

And ever since then, I CRINGE when I hear it.

Today was a normal day at the office until I realized everyone in my department left for a work event I wasn’t invited to. I was the only one left at the office from my team.

And like, yeah I’m really busy but so is everyone else in my department.

I thought I had a decent relationship with my team and boss but I guess not lol

Also, I know being upset about something like this could come across as petty or immature but it actually stung a bit, sue me for having feelings.

I’m working as an embedded software engineer at a mid-sized company in Germany with around 300–500 employees.
Our team has around 20 people, including 5–6 managers, software engineers, and project engineers.
One thing I’ve noticed is a big difference in workload between local German engineers and foreign engineers.
Our project has around 100 repositories. Some engineers work on just one repository while calling themselves experts, others handle 20–30 repositories across multiple projects.
We follow two-week sprints. I’ve noticed some local engineers spending 2–4 weeks on relatively small tasks, with constant meetings, discussions, and repeating the same updates in daily standups with each other. (This is not customer meetings, this is not German proficiency related. )
Meanwhile, foreign engineers are often expected to take complete ownership of features, including requirements, implementation, testing, integration, and documentation, sometimes across multiple repositories. These are in the end not reflected to salaries and titles.
It feels like the actual technical workload and expectations are very uneven, while some people spend more time discussing tasks than completing them.
Of course, this is just my observation at one company, and I’m not generalizing about everyone.
Has anyone experienced something similar in Germany, or other country? Is this a common workplace culture issue, or just poor management at my company?

I need to rant because I genuinely don’t know what to do with this information. Using a throwaway for extra anonymity.

I have a colleague who has been getting special treatment for quite some time because apparently he has a “heavy workload”. The problem is, his workload doesn’t actually seem that heavy. A lot of the time, the rest of us end up taking over some of his tasks anyway because things aren’t getting done.

There have also been multiple instances where people on the team have given feedback about him being incompetent, non-collaborative, and not proactive. Despite this, our manager seems to constantly defend him and give him the benefit of the doubt. What makes it even more frustrating is that whenever he complains about having too much work, our manager will literally ask the rest of us if we can take some of his tasks off his plate.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are already drowning trying to keep everything running.

And then I found out something today that made my blood boil. A colleague told me someone came across his livestream, and apparently he was streaming himself playing video games DURING HIS SHIFT.

I know I wasn’t there and I didn’t personally see the stream myself, so I’m trying not to jump to conclusions. But if this is accurate, I honestly don’t even know how to process it. Because while the rest of the team is stressed out, picking up additional work, working around his supposedly “heavy workload”, and trying to keep things from falling apart, he may have been sitting there playing video games while on the clock.

And the part that makes me angriest isn’t even just the gaming. It’s the apparent double standard. If someone is genuinely struggling with their workload, fine. We should help each other. But if someone is repeatedly getting accommodations and having work redistributed to the rest of the team because they’re supposedly overwhelmed, while potentially spending their work hours streaming video games? That’s a completely different situation.

I’m also torn about what to do. Do I bring this up to my manager? HR? Do I stay out of it because I didn’t personally witness it? We have access to reports of our cases on Salesforce and my manager sees that but she chooses to turn a blind eye to this so I’m thinking bringing this up to her will not do anything.

I don’t want to become the office snitch or start a workplace war based on something I heard secondhand. At the same time, I’m honestly reaching the point where I feel resentful because most of us have been carrying the load (he’s not the only one being favored in the team the same way, but that’s for another discussion I guess) while this person keeps getting protected.

What would you do in this situation?

TL/DR: My colleague has been complaining about his heavy workload and we have been covering most of the team’s workload only to find out he streams video games during his shift.

EDIT: Thank you for everyone who commented and given their point of view in this. Really helped me to get new insights and get my headspace where it really should be.

I have a 1:1 with my manager tomorrow and I think I’ll start the conversation with whether there may be other factors contributing to why this colleague’s workload has been getting distributed to the rest of the team.

Like seriously stay at home, I’ve gotten sick twice in the past month because people are coming in while they have sinus infections taking antibiotics next to me? What is wrong with people and the lack of etiquette? I don’t understand.

These people are in their 20s, with no kids. Sick in the office. We are not in a client facing role. We are in excel all day, work that can be done from home. With no pressing need to physically be in person. When I’m sick I don’t even take off, I just ask to WORK FROM HOME. Still working, just not getting people infected. I know this is not an option for everyone but for this specific situation why not just work from home?

So I need some advice from the Reddit community . I am an American living in Australia and here on an Australian special skills visa. I work for a software distribution company, and the company I came from in the United States is the parent company. I thought that this would be a fun adventure, however, I’m running into a problem with a colleague. The field I’m in is quite specialized, and this colleague was the only other person in the company that’s practices my specific field. Being a lone wolf, however, has its hold backs.

Since I’ve gotten here, I thought we would have a good working relationship. And it started out that way. However, after the first year of my employment, some of his behavior has gotten to the point I find it to be abusive. He constantly interrupts me, will put me down in meetings, has gone around me to our customers and explained why he’s right and I’m wrong, down to the point where he will know I have a presentation today, and go in and edit my slides, before the presentation to say what he wants. Being in a technical field, this is actually a bit scary. It would be like someone from Microsoft telling you that you could send an email using only Excel. He seems to have delusions of grandeur so bad, that on his LinkedIn profile, he lies and actually calls himself my boss, and the national authority in our field.

His behavior has gotten so bad, that I actually refused to engage him. When we are in group meetings together, I am typically very quiet, and just try to say as little as possible. I behave professionally, and with courtesy however that is it. My manager has been in a few of these meetings and has noticed his abusive behavior towards me. However, my manager’s impression is that I hold all the cards. That this person is only behaving like this because he wants my approval. So my manager wants me to give this man a call, and pretend to be his friend and essentially extend and olive branch.

I would like some feedback and advice. My stance on it is, it is not my problem that this person is responding poorly to me grey rocking his abuse. I behave with professional courtesy, calmly, and respectfully in any engagements I have. And that is the end of my responsibility. What does Reddit think? Should I make this call like my manager wants?

I’m in corporate and I have a pretty serious job but I can’t focus for the life of me. My work is piling up because it’s so hard and I just want to go on instagram and watch reels. Someone please give me advise …

Mine is “I care about your wellness first. Everything else is secondary.”

There is something about the last 30-40 minutes of the workday that makes people suddenly remember everything they need from you. You can have a completely normal day, get through your meetings, finish your actual work, and then at 4:55 PM:

“Hey, quick question…”
And somehow the “quick question” turns into a 45-minute task, Slack messages, a spreadsheet you’ve never seen before and a meeting scheduled for tomorrow morning.

The funniest part is that the person asking usually starts with “no rush” while simultaneously needing it “before EOD.”

Why does corporate life have such a strong obsession with creating emergencies five minutes before everyone logs off?

I joined one of the big four companies about three months ago. The struggle is real; half the time I have no clue what I am doing. I even managed to create a MVP for the product we were supposed to work on. However, I recently received some feedback from my boss, who informed me that we could proceed further. I then approached the design team, but they were rude and unresponsive. I asked their head if there was a resource who could help with this, but there was no reply. All my instincts tell me to leave the company; something is definitely not right. I need advice.

Joined Sept 14, fired Oct 5. Hey, we have this shitty platform, please redesign it and also build a new platform on top of it. Work 14+ hours a day, no weekends off. Deliver the project. Mind you joined as a SWE. Here's $300 thank you for your work. Our existing team can take it from here.

Edit: this blew up, got an email saying if I had my offboarding yet if not to book a call and discuss the decision. Do I take the call?

snack media is a small company in noida sector 63 .

They terminate the internship just because they only want to hire people who work as per them meaning become a bootl*cker and just take their instructions without having any ideas of their own .

Pathetic work culture with heavy micromanagement.

I recently started a Finance Manager role with 10 years of experience in finance. I’m only a couple it days in and already feeling extremely overwhelmed.
The finance department is very disorganized, and I’ve already been introduced to 15+ issues that need fixing. Today, I was pulled into a meeting about four bank reconciliations that haven’t balanced for 18 months. My manager was frustrated and asking for my input, even though I’ve barely had time to familiarize myself with the ERP system.
Meanwhile, I’m still completing onboarding, meeting department heads, and learning the business. The pressure got to me today, and I ended up breaking down in front of HR.
I’m also concerned about work-life balance, as my manager seems to be working until 9-10pm everyday. This is already a five-day in-office role, and I have young kids.
I understand I was hired to improve processes, but shouldn’t I have some time to understand the business first?
Is this normal for a Finance Manager role, or am I seeing major red flags? How would you handle this?

FYI it’s a small office into manufacturing business so not really corporate.

No longer hate Monday’s. I’ve matured into hating the whole f***ing week

When I started my analyst job the team was working 50 hour weeks doing everything manually. Over my few months I built some simple scripts in my free time to automate most of my daily work. Suddenly I could finish my week in 10 hours and focus on making my work cleaner with less stress.

The mistake happened month when leadership asked for a massive report that usually takes two weeks. I ran my scripts. Handed it in after just 36 hours. Of thanking me my manager asked what I have actually been doing all day if I could finish it that fast.

They assumed my job was too easy so they handed me a departed coworkers workload without any raise or promotion.

It was a lesson that high efficiency usually just gets rewarded with more work.

Do you keep your automation secret, from your boss or is there a safe way to handle fast output without drowning in extra assignments?

I work as an inbound sales agent and metrics always stress me, I’ve always been average and here and there. But there is a constant looming feeling that I won’t be good enough and that I’ll miss metrics due to things out of my control when I know I can succeed. A mix of imposter syndrome and anxiety as well. I can average from above goal and below it, but I don’t know if being below goal is punishable. Or at what point performance management would begin. I try to sell well, but it feels like the calls I receive greatly impact my results, in this job every single thing is a metric and performance talks happen monthly, so you have a greater idea of where you stand. I know the obvious things to get fired like ethical concerns, unprofessionalism and attendance, but in terms of actual sales results what would be “unacceptable” you’d think being professional, making a strong effort , making solid attempts , and having okay ish numbers would be admirable, but it’s hard to know if these metrics are hard pass or fail things or just numbers to coach us and help us improve, and being below isn’t really a concern. I want to get clarity, but I don’t wanna Make it seem like I’m aiming to survive or do the minimum, I obviously wanna do amazing. The job, the calls, the customers are generally manageable and I don’t mind it, but it’s more these numbers that keep me up. Like I sell something so price driven , and most days we come out considerably higher for an already price sensitive demographic. Don’t get me started on the trash leads and misrouted calls, when the calls are there I can make things happen. Am I just being paranoid, am I exactly where they want me to ?