Bitey Bite Bite

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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! 

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.

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.