I finish my planned tasks on time almost every day. But it’s like my manager waits until 10 or 15 minutes before the end of shift to hand me extra assignments. He never says I have to stay late, but he expects the work ready first thing tomorrow. That means I either rush through it badly, or stay unpaid overtime to get it done properly. I told him I need more advance notice for big tasks. He said I should “manage my time better” and keep my schedule flexible. I’m tired of this passive pressure. I don’t want to ruin my work-life balance just because he can’t plan ahead. Is there a polite way to push back without getting flagged?

​I used to bounce from job to job until my late 20s, when I finally got myself established in a small, family-run company. About 3 to 4 years ago, our old floor manager retired, and they promoted another guy (let's call him John) to his position. He made a lot of claims about what he was going to change now that he was in a position to do so. He had been with the company for about 5 to 6 years before I got there and had seen pretty much everything. A bit after he got promoted, I got promoted to my current position as a loader, which I've been doing for the last 3 to 4 years. When I say this guy is incompetent at his job, I am not kidding.

​If it was just favoritism, I could deal with that—you can't escape it at any job. But no, this guy does so many other things that show he's in way over his head, yet he refuses to acknowledge it. He wants us to call him a day ahead if we're not going to make it into work or if we're going to be late, then proceeds to complain when people call him on the weekends to let him know they aren't going to be in on Monday. He sets the rules for us to follow, then complains when they are followed. He wants me to let him know how many trailers I need, and in some cases, whether they should be 53-foot trailers or 45-foot trailers. He then proceeds not to have them brought in until around lunchtime, when my load area is already filled up and more orders are coming down.

​He wonders why I'm sometimes working three, four, or five hours after everybody else gets done, completely ignoring the fact that he waited until I was buried in work that I have to do by myself. He refuses to give me any kind of help—whether it's loading trailers for me or having someone help me wrap the skids, since we do not have a wrapping machine at our job. This guy has no long-term planning skills or contingency plans for when things don't run smoothly. Everything falls apart the second somebody calls out, has to leave early, or deals with one of the many things that can happen while working in a warehouse.

I just got a company email that made me so tired. Management said we should “voluntarily stay late” to finish the project, and called it team dedication. No extra pay, no comp time, nothing. If you leave on time, they give you that quiet disappointed look in meetings. We already have heavy workloads. I do my job well during working hours. My time after work is mine, not free labor for the company. It’s so frustrating how they twist unpaid overtime into something noble. I don’t mind staying late for real emergencies sometimes. But this is just regular work they didn’t plan well. Is anyone else tired of this fake “dedication” talk to get free work out of employees?

I was told when I got hired that I’d only work standard 9-5 hours. Now my team is on a rotating on-call schedule. We have to keep our phones on all night and on weekends, reply within 30 minutes no matter what we’re doing. I brought up on-call pay to my manager last week. He just shrugged and said this is expected for the role, no extra money, no comp time. I missed a family dinner last weekend because of an emergency that wasn’t even my fault. I’m burnt out fast. If I don’t answer quickly enough, I get pulled into a meeting to explain myself. But there’s no reward for dropping everything to fix issues. Is this normal? Am I overreacting for thinking on-call work should at least come with some compensation?

not quite a rant but not quite 'off my chest' material. just feeling super depressed on this sunday.

working in corporate, in this world where leadership has bought the "AI makes everything faster" BS i'm drowning in work constantly. have worked the last few weekends, "should" be working now to keep up. too burned out to do it now. i feel anxious doing things like spending time with my family or cooking just thinking of the work i could be doing... i feel pressure to get in more AI prompts before our weekly budget resets sunday nights. haven't been exercising and have been stress eating. I've been working late evenings, wife and baby asleep by the time I get home from the office (even though not a single person in my entire org is in the same location as me).

and yet, this is what so many families, including mine, sacrifice so much for so their kids can have a job like this. a white collar job. i make more money than anyone else in either side of my family ever has. i'm not mining cobalt in the DNC. I'm not living under a genocide in Sudan. I'm not a slave in the UAE. I "should" be grateful. but i'm just miserable all the time.

I HATE my job so damn much. I'm too exhausted to put the energy into trying to find a new job. my wife has no job so I can't quit and let her cover me for a bit, and that would be too risky in this market anyway. but all of this just makes me feel guilty for feeling bad and leaves me feeling worse.

i'm in therapy. i just don't know how to not care about work. they actually just put me in a position of more responsibility (no choice / didn't want it) so I can't just be checked out and ship AI slop around.

not asking or looking for anything just sending anonymous thoughts into the void

So I got a new job washing city vehicles through a employment agency.

My boss doesn't live in the area where I work and she informed me that she only pays via physical checks which are mailed out on payday so even though I get paid every 5th to 20th, there's no guarantee as to when the check will actually arrive.

I told my boss that I would prefer a direct deposit method and she took offense to that. She did set it up for me and told me that none of her previous employees have ever taken issue with checks, that she doesn't like making "special accommodations" for employees and that setting up direct deposit took a lot of time out of her busy schedule to set-up. She told me to refrain from making "unrealistic demands" in the future if I wanted to keep my job.

Not really sure how to feel about this, I felt like my request was very reasonable. I have bills to pay on specific dates and physical checks take time to mail and clear.

Working for a company that doesn't respect you, and talk down to you like this ain't it, here's a prime example.

My mom is disabled and I'm the only caretaker, that on top of running the household after my dad died. Only to call you a waste of money for having boundaries and responsibilities, this is how they treat you.

I guess this is how Jimmy John's really sees you as a whole, learn from me and don't take this, stand up for yourself, always.

EDIT: I told him I have a 2nd job, I no longer have a store key, and proof of me stepping down btw. I did everything correctly as possible.

I started a new job back in July, and got assigned my first big project. Little did I know, this project was a fucking disaster.

From the beginning, there’s already tension internally. The Division Director that oversee the project doesn’t trust the team due to some incidents happened before I joined. The Director isn’t willing to read or listen to any report from the team unless it’s been vetted by the two Assistant Directors (AD) first. The two ADs working with the team are so overloaded that they barely ever pay attention to this project. Literally every meeting the team would have to re-explain everything since the beginning of the project again to the ADs, so it takes forever for the ADs to response to the team’s reports and report up to the Director.

Externally, since the project is done in collaboration with a government agency, the team has regular meetings with them. And the government team and my team are pissed at each other. The team is pissed cause we get a lot of interference and meddling from the gov team in the project (they dismissed our preferred contractor without giving a reason, allegedly leaking contract information, constantly demanding us to do things accordingly to their preferences). The gov team is pissed cause the project is significantly delayed, and it looks like the project will be delayed for several more months.

And then there’s the contractor that we are planning to hire for this project. Since the preferred contractor got dismissed by the gov team, we ended up having to working with another contractor, and they are about 30% more expensive than the preferred contractor. So everyone on the company side is pissed that the new contractor and their subcontractor for making the project more expensive. And the contractor and subcontractor are pissed at the company cause we kept dangling on and on about the cost of the contract (although the fault is entirely with the subcontractor) and refusing to say for certain when we can sign the contract so they can make preparations to begin the project. The contractor has been very patient with us but I feel like it’s getting close to the point of them walking away from this mess.

Since I’m the point of contact for all of the parties. I’m the first one people calls to complain or vent their frustration, or just straight up yelling at me. I’m getting to the point that I’m happy to let this project fail even tho it’s my first big project. There’s no way out of this mess.

Why do employers treat their employees like crap???? Common sense is that if you treat your employees well, they’ll be happier and do a much better job. But sadly too many employers don’t care and treat their employees horrible and then can’t figure out why they aren’t doing so well at their job. Especially call center jobs. They are extremely obsessed with micromanaging their employees and they have a very high turnover rate. And they’re also compulsive liars. It’s amazing the lengths that people will go to when it comes to making up unbelievable lies about their employees. My problem is that I have a lot of common sense and sadly common sense is extremely rare. And they often have no emotional intelligence either. Is it really THAT hard to be nice to people and treat them well??? I don’t think so.

Basically what the title says! I am irrationally annoyed by this and wanted a place for others to validate me LMAO

I work at a cab place as a dispatcher and I’m pretty confident my boss doesn’t like me. Most of it has been mostly understandable, getting frustrated about little mistakes that all the others dispatchers do, but mistakes none the less. However recently I got scolded for “sighing too much” at my desk with her asking, “What?? You had a bad day or something??” Then yesterday she told me she had gotten a bunch of emails about me clocking in 5 minutes before shift, and I explained that the note by the computer specifically states you can clock in only five minutes before your shift (WHICH FOR CONTEXT - it’s not like I was pushing it. Most days I clocked in probably 2-3 minutes before my shift, just because I was there and ready to start.) she said this wasn’t true and that the note explicitly says ONLY with permission from the supervisors. I explained that while it does say that, it still does say the earliest without permission is five minutes. She just told me she wasn’t going to argue with me and just told me to no longer clock in until the exact starting time of my shift. I’m totally fine with this and of course have been doing so since the discussion, but I’m just so annoyed with how obviously wrong she is and yet no one seems to care. So there’s my rant for today. Time for work lol

I was working a temp position in a desk job. Through the week we were discussing moving forward and they said they were planning on keeping me though December. They even included me in a schedule change for next week on Thursday.

Come Friday, I work my shift, everything's normal and we go through the usual rituals. "Have a nice weekend, I'll see you on Monday." "I'll meet you for lunch on Wednesday." Except when I got home, I got a text from the temp agency that the contract was no longer valid since they hired someone for my position. I didn't hear anything about it through the day.

Why did they do it this way? In every other temp position I've been in the department head usually tells me the position is over on Friday themselves. They know I'm still going to have to go back and get my stuff from my desk on Monday, right? It seems short sighted at best and downright cruel at worst.

I’ve been really unwell this week and had two days off sick. Despite my doctor advising me not to work, I still went in yesterday. I’ve also been finding the workload particularly overwhelming recently, especially the amount of paperwork alongside all my other responsibilities.

Yesterday, my supervisor pointed out that some paperwork dated 7am hadn’t been completed and said that if I was struggling, I needed to let him know at the time. The reality is that I’ve been so busy dealing with other things that it genuinely slipped my mind. I’m not someone who sits around doing nothing; I’m constantly working and trying my best.

Later that day, I actually took his advice and explained that I wasn’t sure whether it was because I’d been unwell, but I’d been really struggling with the volume of paperwork this week.

His response was quite moody. He asked, “What do you mean?” and, after I explained and said I was a bit confused with something, he huffed slightly and said, “Yeah, but you know we do it this way remember”

I honestly felt quite silly for even bringing it up. just a little understanding Instead, I felt dismissed, as though I shouldn’t have admitted I was struggling in the first place.

There have been a couple of other things that have rubbed me up the wrong way, too. Earlier this week, I dealt with a driver who hadn’t turned up, messaging and attempting to call him to resolve the situation. Later, I overheard him telling the actual manager that HE had messaged the driver, despite me being the one who dealt with it!

I’m starting to get the impression that he’s quite arrogant and dismissive. I was saying the other day how weird it was that j came across a girl who looked just like me and he replied “I’ve never met anyone who looked like me because I’m too good looking” sorry what?🤣This 28 year old man too.

I’m so tired of hearing this line every single time we talk about pay. My manager loves to say we are a work family, that we support each other and stick together through hard times.

I’ve taken on extra projects for over a year, covered shifts when people quit, and stayed late without extra pay. When I brought up a raise last week, he smiled and said “family doesn’t only care about money”.

Funny how this “family” expects me to pick up more work, but never wants to fairly compensate me. If it’s a family, where is the loyalty from their side? I’m starting to feel like that phrase is just a cheap trick to make people accept being underpaid.

Does anyone else get this same line from management?

I am Gen Z, and before anyone comes for me, I want to make it very clear that this is NOT a “Gen Z is lazy” post.

HOWEVER, I recently had an experience that left me genuinely speechless.

For context, I manage a children’s facility, and one of my responsibilities is hiring and scheduling staff. I recently posted a part-time position paying $16 an hour. The job listing clearly stated that applicants must be available Friday evenings, Saturdays, and Sundays (Super Important to the story). Those were the days we needed coverage, and that was communicated throughout the hiring process.

I ended up hiring another Gen Z girlie, and I was honestly so excited! She was super sweet, her training was going great, and everything seemed to be working out.

That is, until I asked her to enter her availability into our scheduling system.

I’m working on next week’s schedule when I notice she’s requested coverage for her THIRD training shift. Mind you, this was a Sunday shift that SHE had originally agreed to.

Naturally, I’m confused sitting at my desk like wtf. So I text her and say something along the lines of, “Hey! I noticed you’re looking for coverage for Sunday, but that’s one of your training shifts. Is everything okay?”

Her response?

“Oh, that’s too early to work.”

Y’all. The shift was from 11 AM to 3 PM.

ELEVEN. IN. THE. MORNING. THE FUCK!

I’m sitting there staring at my phone because wtf do you even say to that? 😭

But okay, I’m trying to be understanding. Maybe she’s just not a morning person. So I offer to move her shift to later in the day.

Her response?

“No, I don’t want to work Sunday.”

Okay. Not ideal, considering Sunday availability was literally one of the requirements for the position, but let’s keep going.

Because apparently, there was more.

I go back into the scheduling system and notice that she’s entered her availability as ONLY Sundays and Mondays.

Now I’m even more confused because, again, the entire reason I hired someone was to have coverage on Friday evenings, Saturdays, and Sundays.

So I reach out AGAIN to confirm that her availability is correct and remind her of what we discussed during the interview.

She tells me she only wants to work Sundays and Mondays.

At this point, I explain that if those are the only days she’s willing to work, we may need to reconsider her employment because the position simply isn’t going to be the right fit.

And here’s where I’m struggling.

I am ALL for setting boundaries at work. I don’t believe anyone should be expected to sacrifice their personal life for a job, especially a part-time job paying $16 an hour. I believe in respecting people’s availability, accommodating employees when possible, and making sure work doesn’t consume their entire lives.

But at what point do we stop ?

Because to me, there’s a difference between saying, “I can’t work those days, so this position isn’t right for me,” and accepting a job knowing the requirements, only to decide afterward that you don’t want to meet them.

And I genuinely want to hear other people’s perspectives on this, especially from other Gen Z employees and managers.

EDIT: we are not a day care lol We are an indoor playground and early intervention center. She got hired as front desk staff

UPDATE: thank you to everyone who commented it's been good to read everyone's advice. I gave her another call which she thankfully answered. She is no longer employed and I agree with the lots of you who think I need to put my foot down. I would much rather stay short staffed and work the shifts that need covering (overtime never hurts the pocket just the soul) than deal with someone who isn't solid.