Bitey Bite Bite

Why can't we all get along? There is this weird since of competitiveness that some older employees will feel against any new hires, especially ones younger than them. Why is this? Don't you want to have a stronger team? In the case of this travel agency, their older employee was not happy with their newest, younger, hire and she made her distaste clear. The new hire wasn't even there to replace here, she was just added to be part of the team. And yet, this Karen employee could not see that. So she made it her mission to make her new job a sour one. 

Finally, Karma came to work one day. A mistake was made with a VIP client. The new hire was the one who encountered it and she fixed it ASAP and easily. However, the Karen employee decided to take this as her chance to try to ruin this new employee and potentially even get her fired. So she brought out the boss and started yelling at her in front of everyone. When she was done with her tantrum, standing there with her smug face, the newer employee had the pleasure of letting her and everyone else know that the mistake was actually made by the her, the Karen employee. But don't worry, the new hire fixed it for you! 

Corporate jargon is one of those things you have to learn by experiencing it yourself. Like learning a foreign language, you always think a rigorous study plan and foreign literature will prepare you once you're thrust into a world that is alien to you. Most of the time, flash cards and an audiobook are not enough. You must dive headfirst into the culture, learn what it means to think like the language-speakers, and set your pride aside as you come to understand what you can and cannot say.

Finding PG, HR-approved ways to say "I hate you" and "Your idea is stupid" is integral to any work environment. Obviously, we're hyperbolizing a bit, but there is still something to be said of having to play a game reliant on diction and tone, all the while sneaking under HR's nose by the skin of your teeth.

The lost art of passive aggression has been found by Gen Xers, millennials, and Gen Z employees eager to stay true to themselves while staying true to their rent payments every month. So, finding ways to say what you mean without technically saying what you mean is the perfect way to put your foot down. Scroll below to read some employees' favorite ways to tell their colleagues to get out of their faces.

These employees had no problem saying goodbye to their worst job ever. Sometimes, you can plan out a 2-week notice… but other times, the conditions are so disruptive that you have no choice but to leave immediately. 

These workers all had unique stories about why they left their worst jobs ever, but there were definitely some areas of overlap. For example, several people talked about how their mean coworkers were really getting to them. One person had an especially strange case of this: they started working at a chiropractic office, and were told they'd have to stand all day long, every day. Now, that's not entirely unusual — a lot of retail jobs require the same thing. But in their case, they watched as all their coworkers did get to sit down all day in cushy chairs. This person even had a medical issue that should've prevented the directive to stand for 8 hours a day… but it seems like neither their boss nor their coworkers thought it was important enough to allow them to sit down. 

Other people realized they were getting swindled just as they started their jobs. If your boss asked you to deliver pizzas without getting paid as a training period, would you do it? Probably not, and one person here felt the same way. It'd be too easy for the boss to take advantage of a person they're not even paying. Just in case you needed the reminder, don't work for free! And don't be afraid to to quit a job you really dislike. A better job is out there! 

We all have that one coworker who never seems to work yet never gets in trouble for it… and some employees make a career out of doing that! 

Who knows how they do it, but some folks really do wake up every day, give 10% effort at work, and still manage to fail upward over and over again. Some of these people have learned that it's all about the appearance of working hard. If you sit at your desk for 8 hours per day, looking agitated and typing hard, perhaps the boss will think you're good at your job. Sure you, might just be goofing around on social media for 7 of those hours, but it's all about the way you're perceived. 

Some employees put a ton of energy into their laziness. For example, one call center worker quickly became the team lead after seemingly raking in tons of sales. He would spend all day on the phone completing these sales calls, so naturally, bosses didn't question him. However, they noticed that a lot of customers weren't paying up front, and instead, they'd be sent invoices. When they didn't pay those invoices… well, that's when the employees' game plan was discovered. Instead of actually taking to the phones and garnering real sales, this employee was pretending to talk on the phone for his entire shift, then fudging the sales numbers. Yes, he was fired, and it's a great example of putting far too much energy into pretending to be busy, when just calling real potential customers would've probably netted him nearly as many sales. 

Wouldn't it be fun to have a private driver take you anywhere you want?

Well, technically, you can get an Uber or a Taxi anywhere you want, but we all know that's not the same thing. An Uber driver is not remotely as nice or professional as a priver driver, and they are not there for your beck and call. If you had a private driver, you'd never have to wait for them; they would just be there for you when you're ready to leave.

And don't even get us started on the fancy-looking car.

We understand why the woman in the story below wanted to be driven by this private driver, except that she had nothing to do with the poor worker. They just happened to be at the same place at the same time. But just because a private driver is parked in front of your hotel doesn't mean they are there for you, and it definitely doesn't mean they have to take you where you want to go.

Not all AI technology is as it seems… just ask the customers who paid $100 a month for an AI service, only to discover the "service" was just 2 dudes listening in to their calls!

Taking notes during meetings can be really important, but it's also distracting. As you're sitting there, typing out the notes from your boss before you forget them, you're not 100% focused on the actual conversation at hand. Wouldn't it be great if someone, or something, could take notes for you, instead? While you and your coworkers could take turns being the notetaker, some tech bros have proposed an easier solution… or so they claim.

Although some video-calling services now claim they can take notes from your calls using AI tech (and do this for free!), there's apparently a demand for this service anyway. Having the ability to focus 100% of your energy on a call is valuable to many business professionals, which this startup capitalized on with their idea. They were selling a service that claimed that AI could take notes for any call you were on and send them over within 10 minutes or so. But, as you'll read below, that was far from the reality of the situation. Check out the full story, as well as the shock (and in some cases, admiration) expressed by commenters, all down below. 

Everyone knows what it feels like for someone to take credit for your accomplishments. 

If this brings back memories of middle school group projects, don't worry. We've all been there. However, most of the time, we expect those students who never pulled their weight to mature out of these practices. Unfortunately, most folks like this tend not to learn. You will likely end up working with these types of people professionally, and yes, they might even be your superiors.

In this instance, we have an employee at a mid-sized tech company who happily shared a presentation he had been working on tirelessly to his boss, hoping to earn some validation ahead of his performance review. The very next morning, the entire team gathered for a large meeting, wherein the author's boss loaded his subordinate's presentation with no changes whatsoever. He then proceeded to deliver said presentation as if the work were his own. Yes, the boss's superiors were also present for this meeting.

Keep scrolling below to find out how the author ultimately advocated for himself to let the record show who was actually putting in the work around there!

A regular at a Cardiff coffee shop repeatedly complained that her "extra hot" latte was either too hot or too cold, until staff sought a little lukewarm petty revenge. To the delight of the other cafe employees and regulars, her Goldilocks attitude was never seen again in the shop.

Apparently, when you reach a certain tax bracket, you're entitled to start harassing service industry employees. At least in San Diego, where I'm from, that's what the local Karens believe, because Karen customer behavior is almost a guarantee when you work in rich, fancy areas. 

While many customers who stroll through the front doors of their local small coffee shop are friendly and wonderful to the employees, wholeheartedly complimenting the housemade syrups and trying the latest dairy-free milks, some wealthy Karens just want to watch minimum-wage employees squirm under their scrutiny. Unluckily for this Goldilocks Cardiff Karen, these San Diego baristas weren't going to tolerate her entitled behavior much longer, proving that her pettiness could be matched with more pettiness… And a tepid, room-temperature, lukewarm oat milk latte. 

The layoff of an employee who was deemed to be "not critical" quickly turned into their former employer asking them for advice.

That's the funny thing about not being valued and being viewed as expendable. They won't realize their mistake until sometimes long afterwards. The proof is, as they say, in the pudding—or in this case, the backlog of missed deadlines, confused vendors, and unanswered emails. Meanwhile, you're stuck without a job despite the fact that you were exceeding expectations in your previous role, and some middle manager somewhere just decided that you weren't worth what you cost on paper. 

But, you don't know what you have until it's gone, and this employer quickly learned the hard way that the "expendable" employer they just laid off wasn't quite as expendable as they thought. "Leaner" isn't necessarily "meaner" when the weight you've shed was essential to the company's functioning.

That's the problem, too, with not only excelling at your work but also quietly going about it, excelling in productivity but not in communication: you'll often find yourself passed over for promotions or are more likely to end up on short lists you'd rather not end up on. Even as a manager is going about their day, making subconscious evaluations of the workplace, they're more likely not to think of or value you. Even if management is well-meaning, they just might not spot you if they don't know the intricacies of the work themselves.

This employee kept a meticulous track of the manager who spent months picking on his schedule, nitpicking his work, and handing out criticism just for sport. Just seemed to be very focused on making life harder for one specific employee: Him. 

So he writes up a long report and hands it to HR. HR agrees enough to move the manager off the team, but leaves the so-called performance plan in place, as if a new face will change the rules.

Filing a thorough report was supposed to clean up the mess, not just rearrange it, but If this story teaches us anything is that whistleblowing blows. Which, by now, should be a redundant lesson, because, well, every story about a whistleblower is a story about a person dealing with the consequences of doing the right thing.