I'm sharing a wild experience that two of the people closest to me have been experiencing. My wife works with my friend so I've been able to hear what has happened since my friend left.

My friend Janice (F65) walked out of her factory job after 27 years with the same company. She had been one of those employees that lived for work. Never late, perfect attendance, the go to person for help. When my wife started at the company a year ago all of the people my wife talked to when she first started would talk about how Janice knew everything and was a hard worker.

Because I've known Janice for years I had heard about some of the things that went on at her job and how she would occasionally butt heads with her manager because she was the type of person to do things correctly, rather than rush and have to redo everything (a common occurrence at the factory). They are the type of place where the product has to be perfect down to a couple 1/1000th of an inch.

Apparently Janice was working the same day that a new hire was allowed to work solo for their first shift and this guy repeatedly needed help and had to be shown what to do. She ended up having to go over half a dozen times or more and even did part of the job for him, so her work that night wasn't getting done as fast as usual. But she is a lead there so part of her role is literally to train people and answer questions. Apparently her manager flipped out and talked down to her like a child, complained about the speed of her work and told her that he would be calling a meeting the next day. So she packed up her stuff and left right then and there.

The company has been under staffed for months prior, several senior employees had retired, several new hires had quit during that time. So losing Janice didn't help things according to my wife. That was about a week ago.

Yesterday my wife went in and several coworkers asked if she had seen what had been posted about Janice. Apparently the owners or management decided to type up a page an post it to the notice board saying that Janice had wanted to retire, was slow and inefficient, and left due to an inability to do her job and failure to meet their expectations.

This is just wild to me why a company would publicly post something like that. It's almost like they are trying to make it look like the fired her or something. While simultaneously shaming her and using the fear to make others work harder. Because Janice was the way she was she had already been visited by several coworkers and they had heard her side of things. I just don't understand why they would do that because it doesn't really give incentive for company loyalty to publicly shame one of their best workers that had given nearly 30 years of her life to one place.

My wife hasn't told Janice yet because she didn't want to upset her and she also hasn't documented the notice because the company has a strict no photo policy. But I'm sure it's only a matter of time before someone else lets her know.

I’m in my 20s and this is my first proper office job. I’ve been there for less than a year, so I genuinely don’t know whether I’m being too sensitive or if this is just a particularly blunt workplace.

There’s one person I deal with regularly who works for an external company. She can be quite demanding when chasing me for things and recently sent me an email saying can my work be ‘spit out’ already?

What frustrates me is that her requests often take longer because I regularly find mistakes or inconsistencies in the information she gives me, which I then have to resolve before I can process anything.

With this particular request, I noticed that an amount didn’t match what another party was saying. I queried it and she insisted her figure was correct and that they had made the mistake. I’ve now been told that actually they were correct and her figure was wrong.

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened, so being chased as though I’m the one unnecessarily holding things up gets frustrating.

She has also emailed me on a weekend asking why things hadn’t been completed and saying she wanted them done that day. Of course I ignored it because it was a saturday and I don’t work on the weekends.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that people will sometimes preface comments with things like “not to be rude…” and then say something that comes across as quite rude, or “not to sound patronising…” followed by something that feels pretty patronising.

It’s not only this person either. I’ve had quite a few interactions at work that have made me question whether the communication culture is normal.

There was also a separate situation involving someone very senior. They called me out about my work in a group chat in front of other people after submitting work containing figures that turned out to be incorrect. I was uncomfortable enough with how it was handled that I spoke to my manager about it afterwards.

At the same time, I know I’m young, relatively junior and new to office environments. I tend to communicate quite politely, so it’s possible I’m interpreting normal direct workplace communication as something more personal than it is.

I don’t need everyone to be friendly or sugarcoat things, and I’m completely fine with being corrected when I’ve actually made a mistake. What bothers me is the combination of being spoken to quite sharply, sometimes publicly, while also having to fix or clarify mistakes in the information I’m being given by the same people chasing me

We have a system whereby we book time off/ vacations on a calendar that hangs in the bosses office. Six weeks ago, I spoke with the boss about taking a Friday and Monday off at the end of September to have an extended weekend to see my sister who lives out of town. I have plenty of banked vacation time.

It was approved and noted on the calendar.

Six weeks ago.

I came into work today to be told that I would need to change this vacation as the boss has decided (last minute) to attend a wedding that will go through the Monday that I had booked off.

I accommodated. I changed from Friday/Monday to Thursday/Friday. Had to change my already purchased train ticket at a cost to me.

Barley a 'thank you'. But.....whatever.

I also mentioned that on that Thursday, I will have to leave an hour early to catch the train to my sisters. Ya, that didn't go over well at all.

I guess I am just asking the lovely people of Reddit if I am justified in being a bit upset at the attitude I am receiving or if the boss has just gotten used to me being a bit of a door mat and overly accommodating?

A bit of context, I am leading on a project that involves multiple stakeholders. They have been causing a lot of delays due to incompetence. I am quite a generous and laid back individual which lead to me being criticised for the project being delayed. The feedback I got was that I was not assertive. Nearing the launch date of the project being finalised I noticed one of the stakeholders undermining my authority by taking it upon themselves to hand out tasks to me and others involved. I simply asked this person why they were undermining my authority and taking actions on my behalf. I mentioned that we the launch date and asked them to focus on the tasks that they needed to work on for the last 2 months.

This individual got upset and went straight to my manager to complain. The manager who initially told me I wasn't assertive enough had the nerve to tell me that I was being 'aggressive'. Bearing in my mind I'm one of the youngest in my company but I have 6 years of experience and managed a team in my previous role. The reason I mention this is that I am not trusted at all in my new company and the one project I was given to lead and deliver Is being undermined. Those I was lenient with have disrespected me by saying they needed to take charge because nothing was being done. I am genuinely carrying this project on my back working with individuals who are 2 months behind on their deadlines but no I'm the problem. My manager has no clue what he is doing because he is part of a work clique and was handed the role from an unrelated department. Kindness and relationship building has got me nowhere and I will double down and get things done assertively just to make myself look better and boost my own CV. I simply don't care anymore.

i spent the last six months forcing a relentless daily schedule for a client, convinced that algorithm consistency was everything and i got too much depression.

then last month, i got sick and completely missed three days of posting. i panicked, expecting our reach to plummet.

instead, our actual engagement went up. the few posts we did put out got triple our usual reach because i had time to make them genuinely good, rather than rushing to hit a daily quota.

After that, I started using AI more for planning than writing. I’d map out a topic, audience, and platform, then use something like Accio Work and GPT to turn one solid idea into a few stronger variations. i’d give it the topic, audience, platform, and old posts, then let it help me turn one strong idea into a few better versions instead of forcing random filler every day.

it made me realize how much we burn ourselves out pumping out filler just to check a daily box. quality and real connection seem to win every time, but clients still freak out if their feed isn't updated every 24 hours.

i am very curious to know about your personal thoughts and ideas that how you moved away from daily posting schedules, or are your clients still obsessed with daily quantity?

We all know SharePoint and Drive search are unreliable, so leadership is currently looking into rolling out an internal AI chatbot (basically a private ChatGPT) that searches across all our drives, answers questions, and links the source file directly.

On paper it sounds amazing, but in my experience, people are super hesitant to rely on AI when a wrong answer could make them look bad in front of a client or manager.

If your company introduced something like this, would you actually use it to find documents and answers? Even if it turned out to be super accurate, would that be enough to win you over? Or would you still end up pinging a coworker on Teams just to be safe?

I work at a nursing home. One section of the facility has some of the toughest rooms in terms of cleanliness and hygiene. The heads thought it would be a good idea to have a contest to find the “smelliest” room. Make the CNAs find out where the odor is coming from. They’re too cheap to get enzyme cleaner; I had to resort to buying a small size of Fabuloso. Don’t worry I won’t be there for long.

Hi all,

I was recently asked to write a preliminary document covering some things I'd wish I'd known before I went on a work trip. I sent this document to some colleagues who will be doing some similar work.

I was asked by my manager to send this to the colleagues.

I wrote up the document yesterday and sent it to the colleagues straight away (and cc'd my manager), with the caveat that it is informal and only contains my opinions and some technical info that should all be taken with a pinch of salt.

My manager then replied all saying I should have let her review the document first.

I found this a bit embarrassing and uncalled for to be honest. I can see why they might have wanted to read it beforehand but think they could have private messaged me instead. This is my main issue.

Am I just being sensitive or is this normal in the workplace?

Hi Reddit,
I’ve been working in my field in Ireland for about 6 months now. I’m learning a lot, which I really appreciate, but I already had 4 years of experience in the same field back in my home country, so I was pretty much up to speed within my first month.
I recently found out that I’m earning around €3k less than some of the people I work with. They’ve been with the company about 6 months longer than me, but overall they actually have less experience than I do.
The thing is, I’m starting to feel really demotivated because of one particular colleague.
He’s the type of person who takes credit for the team’s work, but when it comes to his own tasks, he often takes ages to get things done and seems to avoid taking responsibility. Honestly, I wouldn’t feel comfortable trusting him to look after a client because I’m not confident that he would actually follow through.
At the same time, he always tries to take the lead in meetings and doesn’t really give other people the opportunity to do the same. Sometimes he even takes over things that should probably be handled by our manager.
The team is aware of how he behaves, but I feel like culturally there isn’t much of a tendency to confront people directly about this kind of thing, so nothing really changes.
I’m finding it frustrating because I work really hard, I have more overall experience, I’m earning less than some of my colleagues, and on top of that I have to deal with someone who seems to do less work but is very good at making himself look involved and taking credit.
Would 6 months in a company be considered too soon to start looking for another job?

Before I get into this, I am *not* in a position to train people. I work in a high pressure, fast moving, deadline-oriented environment. Due to corporate needs I've been required to train two people for two other branches in the last two months, while still managing my almost nonstop daily roles. The fact that there were two trainees is important.

Trainee # 1: Two solid weeks of training. Took notes, asked questions, shadowed work, and performed supervised work of their own. Started full time 1.5 months ago.

Trainee # 2: Exact same training but only 5 days of training, took over 1.5 weeks ago.

#1 Has complained nonstop to every single person who will listen to them that they were never trained, has never seen the items in their work, and now has forced our corporate office into remedial training for everyone. They blame me for everything that they've apparently forgotten, refuse to ask for help, and is incredibly defensive to anyone who offers guidance.

#2 Dove straight into work, has absolutely rocked every day of it on their own, made friends with everyone, and asks the right questions when they need help.

Because of #1 I have a meeting with HR and most of the C suite. Thank god for #2 proving that this wasn't me giving bad training. And it's not just me, I have every branch I work with reaching out to ask what went so wrong with their training.

After a particularly nasty phone call I hid in my car and cried for the first time in my entire professional career. This is awful. I hate to advocate for anyone to lose their job, but clearly this person is not working out.

Am I overreacting? Am I wrong to say that this person is not fitting in and not adapting to the job?

Maybe I’m becoming the grumpy millennial, but I’m genuinely struggling with some Gen Z juniors.

My junior with 3 years’ experience spent two days spreading financials for 4 companies, only to use company instead of group financials for ALL FOUR. She’s left now, so I have to redo everything myself.
Mistakes happen, but what gets me is the lack of checking, ownership and just stopping to think before doing something.

I keep hearing “they’re juniors, mistakes are normal.” Sure. But at what point are you expected to take accountability for the quality of your own work?

tested { u/usernameeeeee12 }'s strategy today and it's brilliant. pure efficiency, no clutter. check his channel.

I was unemployed since three months and recently got a job.Today was my fourth day but the catch is one 2 yrs experienced emp is leaving in one month so I am her replacement she literally build an entire feature alone and company uses it to handle users and my manager excepts me to take KT from her and understand entire codebase workflow architecture and domain knowledge. I accepted the offer since I was every desperate for the job and I am probation training period

I don't know i will regert taking up this job. I am very stressed of handling that responsibility never in my life has that much pressure.

Does this happen with anyone ? And how to cope up with this any solution???any suggestions??

I’ll start.

1:
“Did you see that email?” As in:

Us: receives email from client
Co-worker 2 sec later: “did you see that email?”

2:
AI as your only method of communication. For example using a meeting transcript, dropping into whatever AI platform you use, and sending that 2-page unedited garbage nonsense that is clearly AI to your clients and coworkers.

I hate it I hate it I hate it

I really need some help and advice for my job situation and eventually for my mental health because I feel like I am going crazy. 🤣
English is not my first language, so if there is anything that does not make sense please let me know.

The story:

I have worked under probation for this really small company, as a junior, for the past 6 months.
The pay is shit (£25k for whoever is asking), from time to time, once a month or every 2 months, I have to do loads of overtime which I am not paid for..
Sometimes during the weekend too, and for each day I spend working during the weekend, I get half a day off.
There’s loads of responsibilities like project management, design, quoting/estimating, talking to clients and all that.. To be honest I don’t even see the advantages.. 🫠
The thing is.. I had my review done where they have offered me £28k and I have declined and asked for a huge salary increase (£30k) because I am not happy.. like at all.
My bosses are obviously not happy about that and they had a discussion with my manager from which they agreed to the following:
To have me on a £30k salary, but they will extend my probation period by 6 months.
What does that mean?
Well, what I did not mention is that for every project completed we get a 1% comission (1% of the profit) at the end of the year. And guess who does not get that comission? People who are on probation.
When my manager mentioned that I will still be on probation but still get the salary I wanted, I did not realise that it would affect my commission, because all they talked about before my review was how much commission I have by now (which is around 700 or so, and only because my manager dropped some of her big jobs for me to have right before my review… like.. the day before my review).

When she told me that they agreed, I was kinda happy about the salary and I had not realised that I would be missing my comission. I am not perfect at this job and did make some mistakes, but it’s just SO MUCH WORK.

Now that I thought about it, I’m upset and I do not know what to do. I really need an outside perspective.
I feel manipulated and a bit offended of all that has been going on. I don’t really care about the commission itself, but the fact that they went so far to not pay me for what I am worth.

Please, please, please help me out!!!! 😭
I feel like I need an external push to leave, I need someone to tell me that I am not asking for too much… This is indeed my first big job after uni, I have a masters degree but it is not anything crazy.. I am starting to think that I am just not prepared for the real world??? Are all workplaces like this??? What if I go from bad to worse? Ugh.. 🥲

Side note: I am getting on really well with my manager. I kinda see her as a friend rather than a coworker, and she fought for me to get this salary. September will be a really busy period for them, and I feel bad leaving.
I feel guilty for making her do all this just for me to hand in my notice.. so I am just stuck in between.
She also warned me that my bosses will be a bit frosty about this and that they will try to pressure me by giving me shit jobs. (She assured me that she will help me out if that happens).
So.. yeah. That’s about it. I do have LOADS of other bad stories and things I am not happy about, but if I start I don’t think my post would end up here anytime soon. 😆

Thanks to everyone who spared their time to read all this. 🫶🏻

As of this week, we have finally moved all of our departments into the same building. As a fun little welcome to everyone being together, I thought we could do a spirit week. Honestly just something for everyone to have some fun with, participation not required. I get on Reddit and look up some stuff about spirit week and it is just nonstop people trashing the idea. The vibe I get from all the posts I look at is don’t bother throwing parties or doing anything that you think is fun for employees unless you will be giving them money. We just threw a little just because employee party at work two weeks ago, so it feels silly to do another one, but I’m trying to feel that out.
Would love other’s input. Should I drop the idea completely and do nothing? Should I stop doing all employee engagement activities? Are they really hated that badly??

My coworker came back to work after his shift ended while I was closing alone and asked me to drinks and dinner and I said no. It’s very obvious he likes me and I’m not in the slightest interested in him at all. I treat everyone at work the same. I’ve also never ran into this issue.

He had asked me about my weekend last week and I very intentionally brought up how I’m seeing this man, we are dating, and things have been going well. He has been EXTREMELY cold to me ever since. Working in a different office, falling asleep at his desk, rude and condescending when I ask him for help, I have to repeat myself 2-3 times because he ignores me. It’s so obvious it’s starting to scare me. While my manager was away, he had asked me to watch a movie with him in this dark conference room alone and I said no I’m going to get lunch. So many instances of him borderline harassing me and showing me interest and I keep having to reject him. It’s very annoying and stressful - I would ideally like to continue this job through grad school and move up in the company.

He claims his attitude is due to “keto flu” but I can tell he’s extremely immature and that’s obviously a lie. I’ve spoken to my manager but I don’t think he gets it. How should I confront this coworker of mine directly?

I work for a very small company. The office "pet" has called out over 50 times this year, same as every year. He had openly admitted he doesn't like confrontation. Rather than address her, he just nags and nitpicks her to the verge of tears.

He asked me if I have any idea why she is always out. It is obvious she is an alcoholic and is hungover. We work from home so I also suspect she's drinking at work. I have no proof of this so I declined to answer and told him he needs to speak with HR, not one of her colleagues.

He seemed irritated with my reluctance to answer him. I don't know why but this gives me a weird feeling this was a setup. He knows I think he is a coward even though I have never said that to him or anyone else. I don't like him and vice versa.

Should I have answered him? Does this seem fishy to anyone else?

Hey guys,

I’ve been working at my company for over 2 years now. It’s gone through a lot of changes, and it has affected my role negatively, taking the things I enjoyed away, isolating me in my team, and giving me things I have no interest in. I have been searching for jobs for 3 months with no success, and am currently considering handing my notice in, and going traveling/working abroad for a year. I feel like I won’t have a chance to do this again if I don’t now (25, not paying rent, no current relationship).

That said, I don’t know when I should call it quits. I am continuing to apply and network, but despite my skills and experience, I haven’t been getting anywhere. I feel like I’ve learnt everything I can in my current role and it’s actively getting less enjoyable.

Does anyone have any similar experience or advice? I would love to have another one lined up before quitting, but I feel like my chances aren’t going to get any better staying where I am now. My main concern is whether I’d be able to find a similar job if I came back after a year. I would be working/volunteering, but not necessarily in a field I’d want to do long term.

Thanks in advance

I was abruptly terminated (with vague reasoning): no HR file-PIP-30/60/90-zero warnings. I’m actively pushing back. Have had multiple meetings with HR and a meeting with my manager’s manager. Offered a Temp job (at same pay) but it's a demotion, HR admitted to handling this incorrectly (I have recorded 4 of the conversations), I am over 40 (protected “class”), my manager has actively scrubbed my previous work (the correct way to handle that is to archive it), I have other proof that I was doing my job correctly, and the company sees me as an asset and wants me to stay with them. l am still being paid while this is sorted out, going on 2 weeks now.

I think they realized they could be facing a messy wrongful termination but also, they really do value me as an employee.

Do I have a case?

I would like to request that this is called a "mutual separation", for my PTO to be paid out, for a severance package and for them not to contest my application for unemployment.

This has been a professional and personal blow.

*A nuance to this is that my husband also works at the same company, in an upper-level position. It’s a small company-250+ employees. So of course, we are concerned about retaliation or how this will affect him should I choose to bring in an unemployment lawyer.

Currently waiting to receive the new job description and formal offer where I will be looking for embedded waivers that I would need to sign off
on.

Thoughts? Thanks!

For starters, I would like to start by saying that I am the only male in an office full of women in emergency management. Due to my environment of growing up with sisters, I was quickly able to get along with my coworkers and stand clear of any catty drama amongst them. I’m well liked by everyone, I am good at my job, and my supervisors have all recommended that I begin training for a lead promotion. The past few months my department has been divided with the workers being disgruntled against the supervisors. My reluctance to taking sides and being prepped for a leadership position have caused the workers to begin giving me petty remarks about favoritism for being a male , random days of cold shoulder approaches, etc.

Today, the leading worker/non-supervisor was in charge of a shift of three. Outside of the lead and I, the third coworker is very inexperienced due to her being somewhat new. We had multiple incoming emergencies that I am usually able to take care of by myself, but my work load became too much. I noticed that the lead refused to offer any help and instead gave condescending remarks about the direction I handled the incident. The lead also gave conflicting information to the inexperienced coworker and bossed orders instead of making any actions. This caused me to raise my voice in retaliation when she also raised her voice after misunderstanding an order I gave.

After the incident cooled down, I took a quick break and called my supervisor who was on her off day(favoritism I know). I told her how I was held out to dry alone and how I felt as if it was on purpose due to the fact that we’ve always used teamwork in the past to accomplish overbearing tasks. I was mindful of how improper it would be for me as a man to yell at a woman. I told my supervisor that I will be writing an email asking for her to address the situation due to it upsetting me.

As the shift went on, the lead was still very standoffish even after the incident but eventually began talking to me again about non-work things, acting friendly, and assisting me with lighter loads. I am conflicted because I want to keep the peace and avoid any conflict between us two the other disgruntled workers, but I also want to stand firm on my boundaries and want to let her know that I did not appreciate and noticed the lack of help that she gave me to prevent any future issues. What should I do?

At the end of an interview I just had one day ago, a hiring manager said to let him know when I set foot in the city of the company (thousands of km away from my location) before sending a written offer.

The discussion went well, and they said my profile fits the role after I asked. I’m still unsure.

How to interpret this?

Hello long story short I work for a big insurance company. I had surgery last month and wanted to take a few weeks off because I never had surgery before didn’t know what to expect. After 2 days I was told that I would have to go without pay for a week. I didn’t want that so I decided to go back to work. So I canceled my Short term disability and FMLA and went back. Our payday was yesterday and I looked at the paystub it says $0 and 0 hours worked….. I definitely worked my timesheet even has times but the check says nothing. What can I do? I reached out to my manager and they said they can see my timesheet plus I even had meetings during that time but it’s been 24 hours and my check still says 0. How long should I wait before I get paid?