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15 Marriage Counselors Reveal the Most Common Mistakes That Couples Make

Marriage is really hard work. Just ask anyone who’s been there, and they’ll tell you all about the trials and tribulations, the ups and downs.

If you’re married and you want some good (FREE) advice, you’re in luck!

These AskReddit users who work as marriage counselors share the biggest, most common mistakes that couples make.

1. Very important…

“Expecting one person to be everything for them. You need friends, coworkers, a support system, and hobbies.

Keeping secrets or lies.

Failure to communicate effectively – this can be taught.

2. Don’t keep score

“Keeping score. A partnership is a team, not a competition. Whether a person keeps score of everything they have done, or everything their partner has done, it is a death knell for the relationship. This is one of the most common causes of resentment in a relationship, and you see it often when people use absolute terms to describe themselves or their partners (I.e: I always…, she never…). Remembering that each person has his/her own needs, abilities, skills, and boundaries is essential to a healthy couple.

Expecting that because your significant other knows you better than others and is around you most, that they are aware of all of your thoughts and feelings. Your partner is not psychic, and no matter how often they are around you or how well they know you, they cannot pick up on every nuance to determine how you are feeling and how they should respond. That is called emotional babysitting, and it cascades into a host of problems and unnecessary hurt.”

3. Listen up

“Not listening, most people listen to respond and don’t listen to hear. This is what I spend the most time teaching couples how to do!”

4. Some good points

“I have provided couples counseling at different points in my career. Some of the common mistakes I will often see are:

Expecting partners to be able to read their mind and anticipate needs and wants

Goes with the first one, lack of communication/comfort with discussing difficult topics. Or one partner being uncomfortable with discussion a topic which leaves both partners feeling frustrated or dissatisfied

Blaming their partner for all issues in the relationship and not taking ownership of their own role in dysfunction/issues

Not expressing gratitude towards your partner on a regular basis. Experiences and expressions of gratitude can have a really positive effect on psychological well being as well as relational strength.

Not giving intimacy in their relationship enough attention. This includes but is not limited to sex. Many relationships start with the “hot and heavy” phase where intimacy can come naturally. As this phase diminishes many couples do not spend the time and energy to consider how to maintain a healthy level of intimacy now that it doesn’t just come naturally.”

5. A bit of a different view

“Divorce lawyer here.

Talk. About. Money.

Talk. About. Sex.

If you’re marrying someone with a shitty credit score, you should know how and why they ended up with it, lest you find yourself in their shoes very quickly. A credit score can cost thousands and take Y E A R S to rebuild. Know if they have any tax liens or liability. Are they paying child support and do they have any kind of garnishment?

Who is going to be responsible for managing the finances? How many credit cards does the other person have and what are their balances? I’ve seen money kill a lot of marriages.

Another one a lot of people don’t think of is actually talking about sex, not just having it. Do you enjoy the sex you have? Would you like to have more of it? Less? Would you like to se it change? Do you or the other person have any weird kinks? Just have the talk. Different sexual wavelengths can be difficult to reconcile.”

6. Business talk

“Not a lawyer but a paralegal. I always tell people to never marry someone you wouldn’t go into business with.

Because marriage is a legal business. It is a marriage contract. Not like a contract you sign for internet service or to buy a car. But a legal contract nevertheless. One that creates a business relationship with the other person. And one that requires going to court and paying financial settlements to extricate yourself from. You have to get the court’s permission to dissolve the legal contract.

If you can’t imagine yourselves, I don’t know, opening a dry cleaning business together. Or starting the next great start up. Or running a B&B. Or opening a tire shop. Or running a multi million dollar media empire. Whatever it is.

If you think of that and think things like, “Oh god no, they’d drive me crazy. They’d have wacky ideas. We’d never agree. I’d have to make all the decisions and not tell them.” Or anything else that indicates fear and loathing of the idea of going into business together then DO NOT, I repeat in bold flashing lights DO NOT MARRY THIS PERSON. Because to marry them is to open a business enterprise with them.

People in the past knew that marriage was a business arrangement. They set people up with eligible singles from other families. They knew that it creates a legal and financial contract. And that people are more likely to be happy with other people who share their values around money and major life decisions. Yes sometimes people married for convenience or expectation rather than for love. But now we have people marrying for love in irresponsible ways. Not every love marriage is irresponsible, but enough of them are.

They say people divorce over money, but they don’t, they divorce over values. Because nothing brings out someone’s values like money, or lack thereof.

The decisions a person makes around money tell you more about who they are and what they value than anything else.

If you can’t agree with the person your partner is when it comes to money, if you can’t understand their priorities, their fears, their hopes, their dreams, their goals, and what drives them financially, or if you look down on them for any of that or think you can fix them, or if they hide any of it from you, then don’t marry them.”

7. Don’t lose sight

“Therapist here, have served couples.

Number one problem I see is overactive threat response creating anger and rigidity. People don’t stop to turn down their defense mode, and lose sight of love because all their energy is going towards being right or controlling the outcome. Of course that control comes from a place of fear, but fear and vulnerability feels too dangerous, so it typically gets expressed as anger, frustration, or rigidity.

Surrender to not having control, accept what’s in front of you, and cultivate compassion. Please. Because y’all rigid couples who just can’t prioritize empathizing with each other over your fear response are driving me nuts!”

8. Teammates

“As soon as couple stops being on the same team, fighting all the bullshit of life together, things fall apart. Get on the same team. Get behind each other’s goals. If you’re not on the same team, you’re just going to wind up annoying the fuck out of each other. All that bullshit of life is going to be beating you down and your life partner is just going to be part of it instead of a refuge.”

9. Don’t be harsh

“When your significant other brings something to your attention, that they need/want, don’t react harshly if it’s something they’ve refused to bring up sooner. Getting loud or defensive “Why didn’t you bring this up sooner!” will make them shy away from bringing things up again due to negative reinforcement/backlash.

This is especially true if they’ve been victims of any kind of abusive relationships.

Literally killed my marriage because I was an idiot and didn’t respond in an open, non-positive way.”

10. A unit

“One of the most toxic things I have found in doing marriage counseling is when couples think of themselves as individuals who happen to be together and not as a couple. (Not that I’m advocating enmeshment.)

That’s not really marriage. That’s having a roommate, or perhaps less than that even.

Marriage is a union of two people. That’s what the unity candle and sand and knots are all about. There is a bringing together of two lives that is inseparable.

If either member still conceptualizes themself as a solely autonomous individual whose actions and dispositions impact only themselves, things will go bad eventually.

They go bad because it results in a person caring more for themselves than their spouse. This is seen where couples spend money behind each other’s backs because “it’s my money, why does it matter?” When couples keep secrets from each other, which inevitably results in pain. This is seen when couples don’t stop to consider their spouse’s thoughts, feelings, desires, dreams, abilities, and strengths alongside their weaknesses.

The remedy to this is behaving as a unit in small ways and in large. If you’re getting something from the fridge, see if your spouse wants something. It even helps in arguments; no longer is it spouse against spouse but it’s the married couple against the issue causing stress to the unit.

When one person considers a course of action, their thoughts ought to be about how it impacts the unit.”

11. Challenges and speed bumps

“I work with couples and their relationships a lot, in my line of work, and do some forms of counselling though it is not my job or training.

But one of the common threads I see running in the midst of relationships/marriages that fall apart is a kind of selfishness.

People that don’t quite realize that marriage works best when you are both acting in the others’ best interest and seeking their happiness more than your own.

It crops up a lot, but not exclusively, in sex/intimacy: if your primary concern in sex is you, you are not going to build any kind of bond or intimate connection, and nor is it going to be much fun for your partner.

Marriage is a lot about sacrifice and the couples I see thriving are the ones who are each willing to make sacrifices for the other and for their family.

Couples who get married thinking that the coming decades of marriage are going to be exactly like the dating or the honeymoon phase, when they face major challenges or speed bumps in their life together, have a real hard time dealing with it, “But I thought I was supposed to be happy.” “

12. Unspoken rules

“Current Marriage, Couple and Family master’s counseling student here.

Unspoken family rules that you bring into relationship are HUGE.

Obviously you didn’t grow up together and depending on how you did you grow up you may have had completely different family of origin (FOO) experiences. It can be as simple as your FOO separated out laundry by color and your SO’s just threw everything in together so you have different family rules regarding laundry, to your FOO had the rule of “family problems stay in the family” and your SO’s family talked to people outside the family about all the problems freely.

Everybody has these rules, talking about them and uncovering them (without judgement) will go a very long way in maintaining and deepening connection. If you don’t talk about them it is easy to get into negative interactional patterns that are just rehearsals of how your FOO did things and not creating healthy, mutually safe patterns.”

13. Not just a utility

“Sexual incompatibility. Misunderstanding sex as a bonding activity. When one or the other believes sex is something one does to another as if it was just a utility.”

14. That’s not good

“Treating their pets better than their partners.”

15. Be mindful of the baggage

“Marriage counselor in TX:

Probably one of the biggest mistakes that couples make is forgetting that they’re on the same team, and they fight to win instead of fighting to resolve.

Focus on hearing and understanding each other, and engage in disagreements with an eye on coming together, and compromise will follow easily.

Also: sex is good, important, and okay to talk about. Couples make the mistake of thinking that sex is one of those things that they should just intuitively understand, but life doesn’t work like that.

Quick edit to add:

If you aren’t mindful of the baggage that you bring into a relationship, that baggage will make more decisions for you than you will probably realize. Talk about the skeletons in your closet!”

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10 Totally Awesome Facts About Keanu Reeves

Keanu Reeves has been in a lot of great movies over the years: Point Break, River’s Edge, Speed, and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure to name a few. But it seems he’s more popular than ever right now because of the huge success of the John Wick movies.

And now that there’s a new Bill and Ted movie slated for release in 2021, people are even more pumped on Keanu!

Here are 10 facts about the man, the myth, the legend.

1. Hockey player

Reeves grew up in Canada and was a goalie when he played ice hockey. He appeared as a goalie in the 1986 movie Youngblood and was even offered a tryout by the Windsor Spitfires of the Ontario Hockey League. Reeves decided to pursue acting instead.

2. International man

Reeves grew up in Canada but not many people know he was actually born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1964. He also spent some of his early years in Australia and New York City before he ended up in Toronto.

3. Declined

Reeves was on board to make a sequel to the hit movie Speed until he read the script and saw how bad it was. He apparently turned down between $11 million and $12 million to return and make the sequel.

4. Other interests

Reeves played bass in a grunge band called Dogstar from 1991 until 2002. The band released two albums and one EP.

5. Odd jobs

Before he moved to Los Angeles at the age of 19, Reeves worked at a hockey rink and at an Italian food store in Canada.

6. Pay cuts

He’s taken major pay cuts over the years to work with legendary actors, including Al Pacino in The Devil’s Advocate and Gene Hackman in The Replacements.

7. Riding high

Reeves is a motorcycle enthusiast and he’s paid the price over the years. Various accidents have resulted in a ruptured spleen, a broken ankle, and lost teeth, among other injuries.

8. Bummin’ around

Even though he became a big star in the 1990s, Reeves didn’t buy a permanent place to live in Los Angeles until 2008. He lived in hotels and even in on-set trailers for a long time.

9. A team player

Reeves is known as a lovely, generous person and here’s at least some of the proof. He made a fortune acting in The Matrix films, but he gave away $75 million to the special effects and costume teams, and he bought the entire stunt team Harley Davidson motorcycles.

10. The meaning of the name

In case you didn’t know, Keanu means “cool breeze over the mountains” in Hawaiian. Seems like a fitting name for Mr. Reeves.

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Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan Released the First Picture of Baby Archie

It’s the moment millions of people all around the world have been looking forward to with excitement. Nothing gets certain people more riled up than the personal lives of the British Royal Family, and this is a big moment for them.

On Mother’s Day, shortly after Archie was born, the couple released a cute photo of the little guy’s feet, but since then everyone’s been patiently waiting for more than a month to catch a glimpse of the baby’s face.

As a nice tribute in the Mother’s Day photo, Princess Diana’s favorite flowers, forget-me-nots, are seen in the background.

Archie was born over a month ago on May 6, 2019, and waiting for the official reveal has been excruciating for some folks.

Well, wait no more, because…here’s Archie!

At least, here’s most of his face. And, fittingly, the couple released the photo on Father’s Day, and it shows Archie cradled in Harry’s arms.

The baby’s full name is…wait for it…Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor. Sounds pretty royal to me. The little guy is seventh in the line of succession to the British throne.

You know that without a doubt we’ll get to see this child grow up in the spotlight. Royal Baby Fever!

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People Reveal the Scariest Things They’ve Ever Seen on the Highway at Night

These responses from AskReddit are going to freak you out in a major way. Trust me on this one.

No doubt about it: the highway system in America is CREEPY CITY, USA.

And these tales confirm it.

1. Top secret

“I was driving near Las Vegas at around 3am. I had been following a few black SUV’s along the highway for a good hour or so. They had Nevada plates that were single digit numbers in order, 1,2,3. Suddenly they all pulled off the highway down a dirt path.

There was no mile marker or cactus that would indicate a path there. It was just dirt. After pulling off the road they all turned their lights off. I didn’t stick around. It was creepy.”

2. Wonder what that was…

“My great uncle was a long haul trucker and he swears that one time he was driving down the road to see two guys pull a rolled up carpet out of the trunk of their car and throw it in the river. Whether that’s true or not I don’t know, but it’s still creepy none the less.”

3. Get outta there

“I am a log truck driver in the Pacific Northwest. We go up into the woods on logging roads and haul logs back from the loggers to sawmills. We start work very early in the morning (2-5am), so it’s night time obviously. One of my co-workers pulled away from the job and started down the logging road.

After a couple miles–after the load had settled a bit–he decided to pull over and throw his remaining wrappers around the load. As he is tying his load down, he looked back and saw a mountain lion watching him from ten feet off of the end of his trailer. He slowly backed up to his driver door and got in. By the time he looked in his mirror the lion had disappeared.

Not paranormal, but it’s damn sure creepy. We see lions and bears fairly often out there, but to be that close and out of the truck… We face different obstacles up in the woods than highway drivers.”

4. Stories from Dad

“My dad has several stories from hauling logs in Idaho and driving trucks through Utah and Nevada. My favorite is from actually just in his pickup going through Utah. He said there was a light keeping pace with him out in the desert on a moonless night. It kept pace for a minute before it disappeared and his truck turned off. He stopped and turned it on and pulled off at the next diner. The folks in the diner called it a common occurrence.

The creepiest is when he was hauling logs in Idaho and was coming down from near Coeur d’alene area during a snowy winter night. He was putting on chains before heading down steep grade and said all of the hair stood up on his body. It felt like there was something watching him. Halfway down the switchbacks he saw a large figure standing on a 20 foot tall embankment.

As he got closer it jumped down and the shoulders were as tall as the cab. In a single bound it leaped down and then leaped over to the other side of the embankment. At the time he thought it was a Sasquatch, now he says it was probably a “demon” trying to make him crash. He didn’t stop to remove the chains until he was well away from the mountain.”

5. Creepy AF

“I drove by a marsh every night when I was going home from work. One night I saw a car pulled over with hazards on. Dude was head to toe covered in blood. No crash, no injury, just covered in blood.”

6. Terrifying

“A good friend of mine told me this story years ago. He is a the stereotypical old big bad trucker. I’ve seen some weird stuff with him while driving in south Texas along the border. He never batted an eye, but while telling me this story he had goose bumps and a concerned expression. Which from this guy is about the equivalent of a trembling lip and shit stained pants.

I’ll tell this story in the first person as he told it to me.

Years ago in the late 90’s I was on my way from the house (central Texas) heading to Loredo to pick up a load. It was early morning, around 4 or 5. I had just come off a string of days at home, so I know I wasn’t tired.

I am on one of those two lane winding roads in the absolute middle of bum fuck nowhere, when i see something on the side of the road at the edge of my high beams. At first i just thought it was roadkill, as is usually the case. As I get closer, I see that it is roadkill AND there’s someone crouching over the deer carcass. I remember thinking either this guys taking the antlers as a trophy, or he’s fucking sick. As I got closer still I can now see that’s this guys eating the fucking deer.

He’s pulling chunks of meat from the stomach and bringing them up to his face. At this point he stops mid motion and looks up at me. Not at my truck, but at me. He/it stands up and that’s when I see that its fucking huge, brown, and covered in hair. I remember thinking at this point, oh fuck. This thing is standing on the tiny shoulder looking at me. By this point, maybe 3 seconds have passed and I’m about to the point in the road he’s standing at. I didn’t even think of stopping, in fact I’m starting to lay on it and get the hell out of there. As I’m passing it, its looking at me, again not at the truck, its looking through the driver’s side windshield at me.

He obviously has the intelligence to know that there’s a driver in here and knows where I’m sitting. As I start to pass him I can still see its head above the hood of an old needle nose Pete. (Old truck design where the hood goes straight out from the windshield, known for being tall and difficult to see around.) This thing is fucking giant. I remember seeing what looked like human intelligence in its eyes. It scares the shit out of me.

Sorry for the wall of text. It’s a story worth sharing though.”

7. DO NOT STOP

“I was 23, my newly married husband and I decided driving team would be a fun adventure after college – rather than jumping into the 9-5.

I was down in Arizona, on a long stretch of nothing about 4am when a guy pulled up next to me waving his CB (I never left mine on, listening to those guys BS was irritating.)

I turned on my CB and he told me I had a blown tire. I thanked him, figuring I would stop at the next truck stop.

He kept harassing me to pull over and check my tire for a good 40 miles.

I finally got to a next town and pilot truck stop, got out and checked my truck. No blown tires anywhere.

No clue what that guy would’ve done to me – but so glad I trusted my gut and didn’t stop.”

8. Cult gathering

“I was coming back home from a trip from Michigan and I saw these people wearing cult-like robes. One in town, one on a highway, and one in a park, all staring at me.”

9. A near miss

“Myself and 2 friends had to drive from Laredo, TX to Baton Rouge, LA one night in my Ford van. It was about 2am. There is a particularly long and dark section of highway just outside Laredo…no buildings, towns or lights for about 50 miles. I was in the right lane coming up on a truck and pulled out into the left passing lane. As I was slowly overtaking this long truck, my peripheral vision caught a sudden movement of this big truck towards the right shoulder.

I saw the truck was swerving to avoid hitting a person dressed in all white, white face…who’s arms were folded across the chest and eyes were closed as they walked across the highway. I swerved to the left and barely missed this ghostly looking person with my passenger mirror….can still remember seeing that the eyes were closed….that’s how close we came to hitting this person…”

10. That is scary

“My dad is a truck driver and about 13-15 years ago while resting at the side of the road he woke up in the morning seeing that his entire trailer was robbed empty. My dads a heavy sleeper but his cargo could not have been stolen without at least a forklift and everyone would have woken up by a forklift unloading a trailer.

My dad suspects the robbers used a pump to get some kind of chloroform into his cabin to make sure he couldn’t wake up.”

11. An omen

“My grandfather was in the Air Force and one night he was driving (back to his base maybe??? I can’t quite remember) and he saw a woman standing on the side of the road in a long white dress at about two AM. He circled back to ask if she needed help and she was nowhere to be seen. He searched for her for about an before giving up, and deciding to leave it alone.

When he decided to go on his way he had a strong feeling that he needed to switch lanes (he was on the road alone in the middle of the night so he had no idea why) and just ahead on the road there was a broken down truck with no hazards on that he would have hit, and probably been killed by, if he stayed in the lane he had been in. To this day he’s convinced the woman was trying to warn him, like an omen or something.”

12. A mystery

“Near the north end of mainland Michigan, I saw a car stopped on the side of the highway. We hadn’t seen a car for a while, it was 2AM. I commented to my buddy, “poor bastard”.

But as we passed the car, the lights came on and it got back on the road. Odd timing. And then, it was gaining on us.

I told my friend to speed, he did. He sped more and the car kept closing in. We were doing 120 and this guy was catching up to us.

We saw an exit with a hotel so we took it and drove right in front of the building, where it was well lit and we could see the front desk clerk.

The car got off that exit too. It drove into the hotel parking lot. Then turned around, and got back on the highway.

I’ll never know what that guy wanted from us. I’m fine with that remaining a mystery.”

13. Look out!

“Weeeellll, I’m not a trucker, but a motorcyclist which kinda makes it even more spooky. Drove home Frome my gfs house, just a 20min ride but it was 3am and the road goes through a forest without any street lights. So I ride through the forest, already giving everything my little 50ccm dirt bike had in it back then and suddenly on the side of the road, a fucking naked mannequin is standing.

I saw it appear in my headlights and drove by it only doing like 60kmh, it was scary as hell. A fuckin’ mannequin standing there naked on the side of a dark road in a forest at 3am in the morning. Damn, I still get the shivers…”

14. Mad dog

“This actually happened the other day in a random country road in Tennessee. Pitch black darkness and the only thing around was fields, hills and me, didn’t see any houses.

Anyway I was getting real tired since the day before this I just flew from Washington to Atlanta. Was driving from Atlanta to northern Indiana and out of nowhere I see a dog in the grass and normally this is fine but it’s eyes weren’t glowing from my headlights which for some reason really made me feel unsettled. Next thing I know it charged for the tire of my trailer snarling and barking(thank god I didn’t hit it) and i looked back and it was gone.

As bad as it sounds even if I did hit it I probably wouldn’t have stopped because I was in the middle of nowhere with no cell service.

I’ve heard stories of people finding some way to get people to stop in their commute in the middle of nowhere just to rob and/or kill/hurt the driver. It was midnight and I wasn’t taking the chance.”

15. Weeeeeiiiiirrrrdddddd

“Not a truck driver, but I’ve crossed the States many, many times in my career – I used to tour manage a band that consisted of four musicians and two crew, so it was a total of seven of us. We would often drive a white Sprinter van with a Uhaul trailer on the back, and if you’re familiar with Uhaul you know they have different pictures on the sides of them, often a state and something significant from that state painted on the side.

We were about an hour outside of Roswell, New Mexico at 2AM. It was in the summer – we were coming from having just played the New Mexico State Fair. In every direction around us it was pitch black; no lights from cities or even rest stops, no other cars, nothing. We have absolutely no phone signal. All of our phones say “No Signal” at the same time. It’s a two-lane highway, the only illumination coming from our headlights. We haven’t seen another car for a very long time.

Suddenly on the horizon we see a light appear directly ahead of us. We keep driving normally, and the light is approaching us quickly. We (rightly) just assume it’s another car coming our way on the other side of the highway, but then as the vehicle goes to pass us…

It’s a white sprinter van towing a Uhaul trailer with the exact same state artwork as ours on the side. Same tires. Same model van. Same trailer. Same everything. And as soon as we pass it, it’s gone.

All of us very uncomfortably said the same thing at the same time. “Was that—did that van have the same—what are the chances—“

I’ll never forget it. We couldn’t do anything but just uncomfortably acknowledge we all saw the same thing and none of us were losing our minds.”

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20 Times Canadians Completely Roasted America

Canadian folks really like stickin’ it to the USA, eh? But they’re also pretty on point, and they’re not at all soh-rry aboot it. Get it?

Nor should they be. Even Americans have to admit, these are pretty dern funny.

Enjoy these burns from our neighbors to the North.

 

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Ooooooh BURN!

Uhh…wait… I mean.. BRRRRRRRN!

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An Elderly Man’s Moving Advice to a Grieving Woman Went Viral for Good Reason

Sadly, we will all go through the experience of losing people we love. It’s part of life, but that doesn’t stop it from being incredibly painful and gutwrenching.

A woman on Reddit lost someone important in her life and she turned to people on the Internet to help her get through the tough time. The title of her post was, “My friend just died. I don’t know what to do.”

Photo Credit: Pexels

That’s when the self-proclaimed “old” person offered up their advice. Be sure to read his entire post, because it is pretty incredible.

“Alright, here goes. I’m old. What that means is that I’ve survived (so far) and a lot of people I’ve known and loved did not. I’ve lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can’t imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here’s my two cents.

I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don’t want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don’t want it to “not matter”. I don’t want it to be something that just passes.

Photo Credit: Flickr,michael_swan

My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can’t see.

As for grief, you’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.

Photo Credit: Pexels

In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.

Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.

Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too. If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.”

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

People were deeply moved by the old man’s eloquent words.

“I’m reading this now as I lay bedside by my mother who has had cancer for 6 months, and cancer won. She’s been on a morphine drip for the last few days. I’m trying to cope, and came across this. Thank you.”

“This is beautiful. You have helped more people than you know by posting this. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.”

“As much pain as it’s caused, the memories I have of my friends and family are much more pleasant. And when I feel like I’m floating, I hang on to those memories like a life preserver, and you know what? They work really well.”

Thank you for your thoughtful words, sir. I think they brought comfort to many strangers who needed them at exactly the right time.

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An Elderly Man’s Moving Advice to a Grieving Woman Went Viral for Good Reason

Sadly, we will all go through the experience of losing people we love. It’s part of life, but that doesn’t stop it from being incredibly painful and gutwrenching.

A woman on Reddit lost someone important in her life and she turned to people on the Internet to help her get through the tough time. The title of her post was, “My friend just died. I don’t know what to do.”

Photo Credit: Pexels

That’s when the self-proclaimed “old” person offered up their advice. Be sure to read his entire post, because it is pretty incredible.

“Alright, here goes. I’m old. What that means is that I’ve survived (so far) and a lot of people I’ve known and loved did not. I’ve lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can’t imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here’s my two cents.

I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don’t want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don’t want it to “not matter”. I don’t want it to be something that just passes.

Photo Credit: Flickr,michael_swan

My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can’t see.

As for grief, you’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.

Photo Credit: Pexels

In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.

Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.

Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too. If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.”

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

People were deeply moved by the old man’s eloquent words.

“I’m reading this now as I lay bedside by my mother who has had cancer for 6 months, and cancer won. She’s been on a morphine drip for the last few days. I’m trying to cope, and came across this. Thank you.”

“This is beautiful. You have helped more people than you know by posting this. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.”

“As much pain as it’s caused, the memories I have of my friends and family are much more pleasant. And when I feel like I’m floating, I hang on to those memories like a life preserver, and you know what? They work really well.”

Thank you for your thoughtful words, sir. I think they brought comfort to many strangers who needed them at exactly the right time.

The post An Elderly Man’s Moving Advice to a Grieving Woman Went Viral for Good Reason appeared first on UberFacts.

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Even More Tweets from ‘Thoughts of Dog’ to Give You Some Perspective in Life

The “Thoughts of Dog” Twitter account has more than 2.5 million followers for good reason. It’s good for your soul to read tweets from a wise doggo who’s great at dishing out advice.

Here are 15 more great examples of the deep thoughts from this very worldly pooch.

1. That’s all he needs

2. Let everyone know

3. You are the party

4. Life partners

5. The bar is high

6. One paw at a time

7. That is life in a nutshell

8. Not a crook!

9. That’s all I need

10. FOCUS

11. It means more

12. Don’t break the law

13. A fun game for all

14. All by myself

15. Don’t disturb the artist

Ahhhhhhh, I needed that…

The post Even More Tweets from ‘Thoughts of Dog’ to Give You Some Perspective in Life appeared first on UberFacts.

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Even More Tweets from ‘Thoughts of Dog’ to Give You Some Perspective in Life

The “Thoughts of Dog” Twitter account has more than 2.5 million followers for good reason. It’s good for your soul to read tweets from a wise doggo who’s great at dishing out advice.

Here are 15 more great examples of the deep thoughts from this very worldly pooch.

1. That’s all he needs

2. Let everyone know

3. You are the party

4. Life partners

5. The bar is high

6. One paw at a time

7. That is life in a nutshell

8. Not a crook!

9. That’s all I need

10. FOCUS

11. It means more

12. Don’t break the law

13. A fun game for all

14. All by myself

15. Don’t disturb the artist

Ahhhhhhh, I needed that…

The post Even More Tweets from ‘Thoughts of Dog’ to Give You Some Perspective in Life appeared first on UberFacts.

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21 People Explain How They Got Their Bosses Fired

This question on Reddit was quite intriguing:

“People who’ve gotten their bosses fired: how?”

Some stories were funny, and others were pretty shocking. How can people do those kinds of things in the workplace?

Here are 21 of the most interesting tales about someone getting their boss tossed out the door.

1. What an asshole!

He grabbed the back of my neck and said “If you ever say I’m wrong in front of a customer again I will beat your ass.”

I went to the GM and told him and my supervisor was relieved of his duties about 5 minutes later

2. Caught red-handed

I took a cell phone video of her taking money from the safe and putting it in her wallet. I knew she was doing it, and I also knew that the moment it came out that money was missing she’d blame it on me.

She was so stupid that she didn’t realize she should stop doing that while I was standing ten feet away with my phone out and facing her.

3. Well, that backfired!

The CEO publicly praised me for completing a task that my boss had struggled with, so my boss retaliated by forwarding all of his tasks to me in an effort to overwhelm me with work.

I actually found his job pretty manageable, which the CEO also noticed and fired him, giving me his job and office.

4. How do people think this won’t catch up with them?

It was my supervisor.

It got to the point that I had decided to quit. I had my resignation letter in my purse, but decided to let his boss know why I was quitting. Supervisor would talk about all the people on our team constantly, but only behind their backs. I got so sick of telling him to cut it out. My husband and I happened to work at the same place (different departments) and my Supervisor would make sexual comments about threesomes (with him – ewww), what hotel we picked for our afternoon delight, shit like that. It was so bloody uncomfortable. Apart from this he spent most of his supervising time outside smoking. Problem was Supervisor was “one of the guys” and I was the only girl.

Turns out his boss was disgusted, told his boss who lost his mind. They started an investigation which took three days. They interviewed staff – they corroborated what I said. They checked the security cameras, saw he was spending most of his work day outside smoking. And was fired.

When he was told he guessed (wasn’t hard!) that I was the person who complained and tried to get to me to “apologize that I took it the wrong way”. The best feeling was my co workers surrounding me as he was waled out. That was a lovely ending to it all.

5. Document everything.

Was working maintenance at an ice rink.

The rule for anyone who knows how an ice rink works is if the zamboni doors open, you get the fuck off the ice. Some dick-head decided to ignore the fact that they were open and that I was standing in the doorway, and decided to rip off one last slap-shot. The puck bounced off the glass and hit me in the head.

I was OK, but reported it to my boss, because we have to fill out an incident report for things like that. The boss asked “Are you OK?” I said I feel OK, then he responded with “Well, we don’t really have to report it then do we?” I reminded him of the protocol, but it was clear he didn’t want to do it. Since he wouldn’t do it, I sent a descriptive email of the incident up to the administration, because I felt there should be some sort of documentation/paper trail in case god-forbid I ended up having a brain hemorrhage or something a few days later.

The boss was fired by my next shift.

6. He doesn’t know how sound works?

Our desks were separated by a 5 foot cubicle wall. He was under the mistaken impression that it totally blocked sound. Thus I got to hear all his loud phone conversations, primarily his booty calls including those with his boss’s fiance. I figured it was none of my business and tried to ignore it.

Well there was a position in another department that I was interested in and as per procedure I handed in an application to my talkative boss. Didn’t hear anything further and followed up a couple of days later, only to be told that something must have happened to the application. Filled out another one and handed it in. As I return to my desk I hear the boss on the phone with a friend laughing about how he had just trashed my application again and how he was never going to let go of me.

I go to boss’s boss and angrily offer my resignation, telling him what I had just overheard, explaining that I was constantly hearing his phone calls like his booty calls like with <woman’s name> and <woman’s name> and <boss’s boss’s fiance’s name>. He got very quiet and told me to go back to my desk and he’ll take care of everything. The next day I come in and boss is gone. The day after, I have an interview with the other department (got the position).

I tend to avoid office drama, but really, he should have stuck to screwing his boss’s fiance, and not tried to screw me as well.

7. Damn! This is actually pretty vindictive…

Phoned him to tell him I won’t be at work for the rest of the week as my mum is terminally ill in hospital.

The next day (about an hour after she passed away) he phoned and asked why I wasn’t at work, I just hung up on him so I wouldn’t say anything that would get me in trouble.

The next day I sent the area-manager a Whatsap message explaining what he’d be done and attached a video of him breaking the freezer door while having a tantrum which cost the store nearly £5000 in lost stock and the repair costs (which he’d told the AM it broke on its own).

He got fired that day and I got 2 weeks off with full pay

8. Creepers gonna creep…

In college I worked in a take-out restaurant just off campus, and we were all employed by the school.

I was 17-18 years old (back in 2007/2008) and my boss, the manager, was a 40-something creeper. Hitting on me, touching me inappropriately (trying to massage my shoulders, tickling me, putting his hands on/around my waist) despite me asking him to stop. Then he friended me on Facebook, I declined, and suddenly my work schedule was changed. I was on shift during hours when I had class, and when I explained that problem, I got taken off the schedule altogether.

I told the assistant manager what was going on (which I was explicitly told by the manager not to talk to the assistant) and he reported what was going on to upper management– boom, manager was fired. I worried for a while if he was going to come after me for that.

9. Yeah, this isn’t gonna turn out well for you…

About 13-14 years ago, I was working as a web designer for a dot com. In our immediate group were a creative director, a creative manager, and 2 of us who were designers and we were all part of the marketing dept.

The creative director was a joke. Brought in by the previous VP of Marketing who he was friends with, he hardly did any work himself, and just played online poker waiting on us to send him things for approval. And he’d never stick around late when the rest of us needed to stay late to hit a deadline or deal with a crisis, etc. The creative manager, who’d been in charge for a couple years before the creative director’s hiring, still ran the day to day.

So the creative manager gave his notice that he’d accepted a new job, and when I met with the current VP of marketing to discuss transition, I mentioned that the creative director would need to step up and pull his weight. I guess a similar message was expressed by a number of people, and less than a week after the creative manager’s last day the creative director was fired!

This kind of sucked because we went down from 4 to 2 people in our group. I was appointed acting creative manager, and we eventually did hire one more designer. I left the company a couple months later, too, after the latest VP of Marketing was let go and there was going to be a 10th different person overseeing marketing in my 5 years there.

And the asshole creative director? He’d reached out at some point (looking for files for his portfolio, I think?), and it happened to be in the 2 week window where I’d accepted my next job but hadn’t yet started so I mentioned my new position. Well, he fires off a copy of his resume to the company president and tried to poach my new job out from under me! On my first day at the new job, the president mentioned that somebody else from that same company also applied for the job and forwarded me the application email to see if I knew him… saw that the date was after he and I had last communicated!

10. Turnabout is fair play!

I was fired because I “abandoned my job” while on short term disability, because wile on approved leave, they are a date for me to return, never informed me (by their own admission), and when I obviously didn’t return to work… i was fired.

The locker I had at work had my work boots in it that the company pays $90 a year towards. However there isn’t a pair under $100 available. So you always end up having some come out of your paycheck. At that point they are yours regardless of the company line. They disagreed and said they were thrown out, I reported them stolen, and the HR director responsible for getting me fired was fired.

11. A happy ending…

About 15 years ago, I worked at a major university in the IT department. After I was hired, it took me a couple of months to realize my boss was a sociopath as was his #2 guy.

Once I realized what I was dealing with, I just tried to keep my head down because I didn’t want to job hop so soon after leaving my last job. But they made that impossible.

We had a database administrator and I was interested in becoming a DBA so I talked to him a lot about what I should do to transition from a programmer to a DBA. The VP of IT, my bosses boss, would stop by and talk to me and ask me about my aspirations, so I told her about wanting to be a DBA and that I was actually taking night classes so I could. This was a woman who my boss referred to as “she who must be obeyed” in a totally disrespectful manner.

As the months went on, I saw more and more egregious behavior by my boss and his #2 toady. We had a large corporation consulting on transition to their database. This included a young guy who was doing the database install including ordering the right equipment and migrating the data.

We also had student workers in our department. They were students who worked part time hours. One of these was a young woman. The big corp young guy and the young woman started going to lunch together. Apparently this was offensive to my boss, who threatened both of them with termination for “fraternization”. The university had no such rule, my boss was just making it up as he went.

About 6 months after I was hired, the DBA quit. I went into our weekly staff meeting and at the end, my boss announces that I’d been promoted to DBA. My spidey senses were tingling because of his tone of voice and because this was the first I was hearing about it.

After the meeting, I went to his office to thank him and tell him I really appreciated the chance. He was very angry. Apparently, his boss had made him promote me. I had no idea.

The next thing I know, I’m being called into my boss’s #2 guy’s office. He tells me that performance reviews were coming up and I would have to be reviewed on job description of DBA rather than the job description of my old position. That is, unless I turned down the DBA position. Yep, he was threatening me to get me to turn down the promotion. I asked him to see the written description of my old position as well as the one for DBA. He couldn’t give them to me because they didn’t exist. Now, I can be a pretty stubborn bitch, and this really pissed me off. I didn’t do anything wrong and now my job was being threatened.

Part of my job duties during the 6 months of my employment involved working with the head of every department of the university, including the legal department. I had a good working relationship with every head of every department.

So I made an appointment with the university’s head counsel. I explained the situation to him including my boss’s boss making him promote me and my boss threatening me with my performance review. I told him that, although I was studying to be a DBA, I was really not qualified to be one without some hard work and if the university didn’t want me to take the position, I would absolutely turn it down. I also mentioned my boss’s nickname for his boss and the issue with the student worker and the big corp guy. Apparently, the student worker had already filed a harassment complaint so the head counsel knew about it.

He told me I had been promoted by someone (boss’s boss) who had every right to promote me and I should not worry about anything. He said if my boss gave me any more trouble that I should let him know.

A week later my boss and his #2 toady were fired. My boss ended up working at a small city college and is there to this day. I pity his employees.

I left the university about 2 years later and had a successful career as a DBA.

12. Boss gone AND more money?!

My manager wanted to prove I’m slacking off so he could write me up. So he watched CCTV footages then wrote, printed out and SIGNED a detailed 17 pages worth of Word document what did I do in the past two days. With timestamps (like, 07:59 arriving, 08:01 speaking with co-worker A and B, 08:07 sitting down to my desk, etc.). He told me that he’s not happy with my work ethics if I won’t improve my efficiency, I’m fired.

I took the papers and showed to his boss and told her that I’m not happy with my managers work ethics and his efficiency might be better if he wouldn’t watch 17 hours of CCTV footages to spy on an employee. She was terrified (it would’ve been a rock solid lawsuit for me – but I love my job) and we had to search for a new manager.

Also, my salary raised.

13. The ole email trick…

I left my last company due to a bully of a gm.

Many people were leaving over him causing problems, being sexist, racist, doing things people could easily sue them for claiming sexual harassment. List goes on. Everyone informed HR during their exit interviews, hell he even tried to make my exit interview not happen. Though they still weren’t doing anything. I had been at my new job for a couple months now and was STILL getting complaints from my old team almost daily.

So I made an email account and named Concerned company name Crew. Sent an email to EVERYONE who had an email account within the company explaining what he did/still did with events spanning from his start to the day prior.

They fired him within the week and my old crew thanked me.

14. Poachers getting punished…

One summer I volunteered to help a conservation society in East Africa. The aim of the project was to educate the local rural population about poaching and to get them to help us stop it from the ground up.

Anyway, I was staying with the lead ranger and his family and on numerous occasions he served us meat that I’m 100% sure was poached. He tried to tell me that it was pork, but it was dark and gamey with lots of small bones. I think that it was small antelope like dikdik or duiker.

When I returned to Nairobi I mentioned to my grandpa (his boss’s boss) that we’d eaten some odd meals. He investigated, and found out that my boss had a poacher friend who was selling him illegal meat. He was fired, I didn’t feel guilty. Poaching is awful.

15. And…. you’re gone!

I took a phone call on my cell when at my desk. Middle manager came up and screamed at me. Yelling about how I was not allowed to take calls for clients while at that office. I was a contractor and made it perfectly clear that I did work for multiple clients prior to doing work for this company.

The CTO’s office was 10 feet from mine. He came out and stood in his doorway listening to the rant. When the middle manager was done I just looked over at the CTO and said “it’s him or me and at the moment I don’t give a fuck which you pick.” CTO walked the middle manager out right then.

Funny thing: I didn’t hang up throughout the incident. And it was my wife on the other end. I was spending about 70 hours a week at their site digging their staff out of a hole they had dug themselves in.

16. The breaking point…

Complained for months about her breaking company policy (and thus state labor law, since the state considered a signed employee handbook to be a binding contract for both sides) — nothing. Tricked her into saying the things I’d been complaining about for months on a conference call with her boss and her boss’s boss, fired that day.

Context: My boss tried to tell me I couldn’t take breaks. The company policy handbook, which I had signed and thus became a binding contract by state law, laid out lunch and/or breaks based on length of shift scheduled for. When I pointed this out she switched to scheduling me by myself and then strolling by the store to check up on me occasionally, writing me up when she ‘caught me’ having closed the store in order to take breaks/eat lunch. Called her boss (regional director) and complained, got the write-ups removed, listened to her tell my boss to chill the fuck out and let me take my breaks, she still didn’t do it. Further (formal) complaints resulted in no changes. I knew there was a quarterly conference call coming up so I developed the habit of walking into her office and saying, ‘It’s time for my break,’ and making her say, every time, that I wasn’t allowed to go. She got in the habit of doing it kind of absent-mindedly in an increasingly aggressive tone. So then I did it again in the middle of the conference call and she blew a gasket, ranting at me about how many times she’d told me that I was not allowed to take breaks, under any circumstances, etc. The call, which she always put on speakerphone, went dead silent. It took her about 5 seconds to realize what she’d just done, and then before she could try to begin damage-control her boss politely cleared her throat and said, ‘Boss, I’ve told you before that that is incorrect.’ I grinned a big ol’ shit-eating grin and went back to work, and there was a temporary manager from another store there the next day.

Turns out she had had my formal, written complaints intercepted before they got to her boss, which I wasn’t aware was possible (apparently she had friends in high places), so I imagine that didn’t go well for her.

17. Gross!

He’d show up every day and tell us a tale of his sexual exploits. Whether true or not, none of us wanted to hear it.

If an attractive looking female comes in, he drops what he’s doing and stares at her, drooling liking a dog in a dog treat factory. After she leaves, he had to say a comment about her appearance.

After talking on the phone with a certain manager, he always comments on how nice her ass is.

He’d bully us employees and other managers. Called us bitches a lot despite us getting onto him for it.

My female coworker reported him. We all had a phone meeting with our district manager and HR. He was suspended until the investigation was over and they ruled to terminate him. Surprisingly HR worked for us that day.

18. Why can’t people be, yanoo… nice?

He was presenting a PowerPoint that I had put together to all the managers in the building. There was something he wanted to add at the last minute that he had never told me about, and when it wasn’t there, he verbally abused me for like 5 minutes straight. Yelling, name calling, telling me to prove to him that I had a college degree and wasn’t just making it up. I was a contractor so I was afraid to complain to HR because I assumed they’d just fire me, but a lot of other people in the room did.

After the meeting, I went into the share drive folder to find the presentation notes where the extra information was supposedly located. I watched the last changed time change from a day ago to the current time, then he immediately called and said it was right there in the notes file.

He was fired the next day for unprofessional behavior.

19. Everybody has encountered a “Linda”. Sorry in advance if your name is Linda…

My direct supervisor, Linda, was a cantankerous older woman with poor education and even worse people skills. About 3 months after I started, I got her so pissed off, just by doing my job, that she cursed me out, got up from her desk and quit.

I don’t even remember what I said that set her off. I probably asked her if she was done with her half of something that I needed in order to finish my half, and became exasperated when she wasn’t, because she’d been farting around all morning. It was a common occurrence.

After Linda walked out, our boss refused to hire her back when she begged (even though she’d been there something like 15 years), because “her attitude was so terrible and she’d become such a toxic, pathetic excuse for a human being.”

I got a pretty solid raise, most of Linda’s tasks (our boss was not unkind and took over some things herself, while giving me more practical things that I enjoyed doing), and even though my car was fine, she’d always have me drive her car to go make coffee runs, deposit checks, run errands, etc. It was a Toyota Solara convertible, and she’d tell me to take the top down and have fun.

I liked that job, I learned quite a bit, and if I hadn’t found something closer to home, for even more money, I probably would’ve been there quite a while.

20. Sometimes you just have to do it yourself…

I quit and his company collapsed without me. That kinda counts, right?

When I was 16, I had a stint as a small-time social media star on Twitter — not because I’m particularly interesting or anything, but for two reasons: a) I got on Twitter really early in 2007 when it was way easier to get followers and engagement due to the site being less noisy and more ‘stupid’ in terms of algorithms and b) I stood out from a lot of other minor Twitter stars because I didn’t let it get t my head; while a lot of them were egotistical and haughty, I followed everyone back, turned ‘haters’ into friends instead of retaliating, etc.

Through this fleeting fame, my former boss found me. He said he was setting up a regional media studio to help small- and medium-sized local businesses with their social media marketing, and he planned to eventually franchise the business into other cities. He hired me on the basis of my large social following (81,000 followers at the time). Obviously, having a large social following doesn’t automatically mean you know how to market businesses on social media, but I adapted and studiously researched how to do my job properly.

My boss didn’t come from a creative background or a marketing role — he came from a property background, and was just sort of winging it in finding an alternative source of income after the housing crash. Being as young as I was at the time, I didn’t really think about any of this stuff. The outcome was that I never received any training, had no real guidance in what I was doing, and was generally left to my own devices. Younger me thought it was great! I saw it as ‘freedom’, but looking back, I realize it was far too much freedom.

The side effects of this disparity between my social media skills and his inability to communicate creative ideas manifested themselves as people trying to cut past the business and come straight to me, to ask me directly as an individual whether I’d do work for them, rather than giving my boss the money. I was respectful (or naïve) enough to open up to my boss about this, and that’s when things started getting a little bit manipulative. He told me I could go my own way or remain part of a business that’d soon be growing across the country.

Fair enough, I thought. So I stayed, and one year in (I was 17/18 at this time) I realized that managing brands via social media had naturally morphed me into something of a graphic designer. A lot of my time was spent creating eye-catching visuals in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign etc. and so I suggested to my boss that we expand our media offering to include logo, graphic, and print design, and visual branding consultancy. Again, I received no training — I worked all day and studied by myself late into the night.

This pattern snowballed over the coming years. By the time I was 21, I was a social media manager, visual branding designer, copywriter, photographer, video editor, and web developer — all skills I nurtured independently with no input or guidance from my boss. The business was still operating in just one city, and my boss had started spending less and less time in the office. I still didn’t realize this wasn’t particularly normal, until clients who came to the office to meet me constantly asked where he was.

One day, a client went as far as to say: “You’re basically running the business at this point!“ It was a huge ‘glass shatter’ moment for me, and I suddenly realized that, yeah, although I wasn’t actually managing the business and its admin work etc., without me, there wouldn’t be a service or product to sell. What’s more, my wages hadn’t gone up, even though my ‘this is great, I have so much freedom!’ mindset had motivated me to continue working on stuff related to the business when I got home.

As I was nearing 22, the owner of the building where the business’ office was located asked me if I’d help him fix his computer (it was just running really slowly because he hadn’t managed his files very well). Not really thinking of it as work, I agreed, and headed into his office after work to help him out. As luck would have it, my boss walked in to hand over that month‘s rent, so he saw me there. He looked surprised, but didn’t comment — he just gave the dude the rent and left the building.

The next day, my boss wasted no time in probing me about what I was doing. He was speaking to me like a cop would speak to a suspect, asking me how long I’d been doing work for the landlord, what kind of work I was doing, why I hadn’t folded the work into the business, etc. I explained I was just fixing up his computer, and he leapt into a lecture about how we needed to keep all work inside the business, or else we would never be able to grow into other cities.

I turned 22. I’d been there for five years, my wages hadn’t gone up, I wasn’t allowed to do any work outside of the business, I hadn’t witnessed any of the growth I’d initially been promised, my boss was only in the office 25% of the time, and I saw him uploading Instagram Stories from him lunching, working out at the gym, walking his dogs, taking day trips etc. while I was at the office managing everything. A lot of the time he didn’t even warn me he’d not be in the office. It became the norm that if he didn’t turn up, I’d be running everything for the day.

Because I’d grown with the business from my youngest working age, I didn’t know any different, so all of this felt completely normal to me. And because I worked all day and all night and had no firm social life, I never got any outside perspective. Until one day, on a whim, I opened up to the landlord about it. He hadn’t even realized I was the one doing all the work — he figured it was split fairly 50/50. He said the amount of work I was producing was on the same level as an agency with three or four employees.

I started managing all of the branding, social media, and website maintenance for the landlord’s business, but didn’t broadcast that news to anyone. As I was nearing the age of 23, I met my now-fiancée, a perfectly feisty woman who, as soon as I told her about my situation, passionately advised I start my own media studio. This is where I entered the ‘long breakup’ period of my job, where I got increasingly depressed at work and physically felt my productivity slow to a near-halt.

My boss noticed, but never talked to me about it face-to-face. He started sending me irritated emails full of swear words demanding explanations for why I hadn’t delivered certain work by certain times and dates, while he was off sunning it up at the beach. It was like someone had pulled out his cork and let all the toxicity out in one torrent. My girlfriend hated him, and gently pushed me to the point where I felt like I was ready to confront him about the dead end we’d wound up in.

I asked a few of my friends about it, just to get a wider set of viewpoints on how I should go about it. They asked me things like, what does your contact say about you leaving the company and working with other businesses independently? Legal stuff, y’know. And that’s when I realized my lack of training over the past six years had also left me ignorant of the formalities of employment — I never had a contract! The real kicker was, I never had employee liability coverage either. My boss wasn’t even doing the admin stuff properly.

Obviously, that meant he also had no control over me when it came to contracts, so I literally just walked in (without my laptop — I’m now just realizing he never provided equipment either, yikes) and sat there waiting for him to arrive. Thankfully, it was one of the days he decided to turn up. He went and sat down in his chair, asked me where my laptop was and why I wasn’t working etc., and so I just straight-up told him that I was leaving the company to start my own media venture.

He laughed a patronizing laugh and simply said, “alright, good luck then.” Part of me felt like this was normal, because he was usually quite cold like that, but another part of me knew that there should have been some sort of emotion and deeper discussion in that moment. I wanted to say “so that’s it, then?” to try to flesh the talk out, but that really was it. He just turned to his computer and typing away as if I wasn‘t there. So I just turned around and left, went home, and that was it.

He did WhatsApp me a message later that day (all his caring and considerate communication came through digital means — perhaps he hired someone on a zero-hour contract to inject emotion into his texts?) asking if we could meet at the pub for a proper goodbye. And we did. It was a nice gesture, but it felt very awkward and forced, as if he’d spoken to someone about it and they’d coaxed him into doing it. He shook my hand, wished me good luck (much more genuinely this time), and we parted ways.

Three months later, I’d tripled my income as a freelancer. All of those clients who’d try to come to me directly over the years — it was like a floodgate had opened, and they all came rushing to me. I hadn’t told them I’d left, but obviously, they realized it themselves when they went to the office and I was never there. I felt bad about ‘stealing’ clients away from my former boss, but what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t just abandon the people I’d been working with just because of morals. That‘d be immoral, if anything.

I continued working with the landlord and even traveled with him a few times to build my solo filmmaking portfolio by documenting his brand’s work across the UK, including his talks at business seminars. We developed a very close working relationship, to the point where just my work for his company was earning me more than all the work I did for my former boss. He started sharing a few bits of gossip with me about how my old boss had begun paying rent later and later. I figure perhaps his cash flow had something to do with it, but the landlord also showed me an email my old boss had written in which he’d expressed his anger at the landlord for ‘colluding’ with me and pushing me to leave his company.

The further I distanced myself from the company, the more I realized how toxic he behaved towards everyone he came into contact with. I could never see it from the inside. Every time I checked the old company’s website, a new service had been removed, because it wasn’t something he could offer anyone anymore.

Back in November 2018, the landlord told me that he was kicking my old boss out of the office after he failed to pay rent for three months. A few weeks after that, the landlord proposed that we go into business together to create a separate media studio solely focused on the industry his business operates within. He said that we’d take the old company’s office once my former boss had moved out, and that I could also use that office for my own freelance venture, free of charge.

One year after leaving, I’ve taken 25% of my old boss’ clients, occupied his office, and quadrupled my income.

There’s a part of me that feels guilty about all of this — he’s a guy who didn’t quite know what to do after the housing market crashed and tried something out which didn’t go too well. But at the same time, I can’t feel too bad for someone who I believe took advantage of me for half a decade. If you treat someone with disrespect, you end up with very little. If you treat someone with respect, they give you a free office and offer to start a new business with you.

TL;DR: boss never did anything properly — no training, no contracts, no insurance, very little respect, not much guidance, empty promises about business growth, etc. Everything I learned independently resulted in me quadrupling my income and taking over his office within a year of leaving his company.

Damn! That last story was EPIC!

Good for him!

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