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According to a study of over…
According to a study of over 11,000 individuals in Norway, bosses spend a notably larger amount of their work hours on social media compared to their subordinates.
People Who Quit A Job On Their 1st Day Describe What Happened
One of the main reasons that people “rage quit” their jobs – meaning they leave in a dramatic fashion when they’re fed up – is usually due to poor management and abusive treatment.
In August of 2021, we saw the largest amount of people quitting their jobs at once in what is now known as the Great Resignation. Some left due to low wages and poor management, some left because of the pandemic, and some wanted to do work they actually loved doing.
While many of these people quit after working for quite some time, there’s a great deal of people out there who quit on day one of their new job.
Sometimes you start a new job and instantly you realize that it’s not going to be the right fit. Whether it’s red flags with management or the work isn’t something you want to be doing, there are so many reasons to leave.
We went to Ask Reddit to get the truth on why people left their job the moment they started.
Redditor redmambo_no6 asked:
“People who quit their jobs on the first day, what was your ‘I’m outta here’ moment?”
Here’s some of the best responses.
Had to pay for the microwave.
“When the microwave in the lunch room was coin activated.” – CaptainArsehole
“That’s real? What the ever loving f*ck?”
“That warrants loading that thing up with quarters, filling it with silverware and setting it to ten minutes on your way out.” – larry_flarry
“I work in building management and am personally responsible for many of the amenities tenants have in an office, and I can’t even imagine the conversation on that one.”
“I had a hard time putting in a cold brew and kombucha machine that was pay per use, I feel like if you are going to put something in an office it should be free, or just don’t offer it.” – BuffFlexson
Management has issues.
“Worked in a hotel for a day.”
“No one told me where anything was. Got chewed out for it.”
“Guests enjoying their meals told me to pay no mind/I was doing a good job and that my boss is a c*nt.”
“I told the manager that I was quitting and wouldn’t be doing the next shift.”
“I arrived the next day, returning a work uniform and my supervisor approached me and yelled at me for being late. I told her I already quit but if I was working, technically I was 5 hours early for my shift.”
“Absolute nutcases.” – O5CR
“The not getting told how to something then getting told off for doing it wrong thing happened to me. I was so mad.”
“Got told to put something on shelves by checkout. Asked if there’s way any specific way it needs to be done? Get told ‘No, idiot, it’s not hard you just put as much as you can fit on the shelf’. Stack stuff on shelf. ‘Why didn’t you follow protocol around displaying stuff here? You have to count exactly how many you use for stock control and display them a certain way.’”
“Thought that one was a one off but the next day I ask what I should be doing after a busy period? ‘There’s nothing to do for a bit. Make us all coffee to practice using the machine.’ Half way through making coffee ‘Why haven’t you done really important job? You don’t have time to be taking coffee breaks!’”
“This was my trainer vs the manager. Turns out the trainer didn’t want someone else working with her so she sabotaged me and set me up for the manager to catch me doing the (wrong) things she’d told me to do.”
“I told them they clearly have some issues to work out among themselves and quit.” – Few-Evidence-7534
They were watching.
“I got a job at a Build A Bear knockoff at the end of a mall that wasn’t very busy. My interview with the owners was interesting. They were an older couple who said that they had wanted to open a Chick Fil A, but you need about a million dollars to do that.”
“My first day, one other girl was working, and she didn’t really talk to me. I had basically no training and she disappeared into the back. I was standing at the register area, which was underneath a giant storybook mushroom. A mother and her young son walk in and start to look at the bear skin options. I greeted them and left them to look around. They ended up leaving after a couple minutes and my coworker reappeared from the back with the cordless phone and handed it to me.”
“It was my boss. He told me that when a customer walks in, he wants me to come out from under the mushroom to them (‘come OUT! from the mushroom!’). After he finished speaking to me, I hung up and went to my coworker and asked about the phone call. She said the place has cameras set up and the owners watch them from their house and call in a lot. I did not come back to work after that day.” – pocketradish
“Not mushroom for improvement there.” – FreudianAcordian
“Owner didn’t seem like a fungi.” – TrippyReality
They had been robbed.
“Fast food chain: I was 17.”
“I found out during training that the place had been robbed 3 times in the past month and 1 employee was seriously injured.”
“Not worth the $5/hr. (This was the US state of Georgia in 2004).” – ThunderFlash10
“I worked at a KFC when I was 16. I remember the training orientation video told us over and over not to be a hero if you get robbed. Do they really think we’re gonna take a bullet for them? Like we’re gonna scream ‘Not on my watch!’ and dive over the counter?” – casino_night
They didn’t take breaks.
“Took a summer job at a textile plant and the trainer said, ‘Forget about taking a break if you want to stay caught up.’” – p38-lightning
“Reply forget about being caught up.” – Big-Red-Husker
“Especially because ‘caught up’ is an arbitrary standard.”
“Breaks, however, are mandated by law and measurable.” – TootsNYC
They didn’t want to pay the $40.
“I applied for a job at my longtime favorite restaurant(celebrated my birthday there every year).”
“Owner asks me to come in for basically a try out, as I communicated I was looking at other job possibilities. I come in and they just stick me on dishwashing for an hour, no biggie. Then there dishwasher doesn’t show up, so the kitchen manager asks me to stay one for their lunch rush, says I’ll get paid for the hours. I do, kitchen staff was nice so I was happy to help out even though I figured I’d be taking a different job. I fill out a time card at the end of the shift and tell the manager I probably wouldn’t be back, he understands and thanks me for the help.”
“Fast forward a couple weeks and he tells me to email the owner after I ask him if I should pick up my measly paycheck. I do, she basically tells me to f*ck off over text. Tells me it was ‘staging’ and that she told me I wouldn’t be paid. I respond that I understand that but that I stayed an extra 3 hours which I WAS told I’d be paid for. She stops responding. I decide I want to be petty over the 40 bucks so I get the state labor department involved. Dude goes in there and makes her pay me for the hours including the first ‘staging’ hour. Couple weeks later I got my 40 bucks, never went back to that restaurant.”
“Firstly, ‘petty’ is not how I see it two years later. I’m VERY glad I did this and sharing the story with others in my city I learned this practice was very common with local restaurants. Hopefully others learned to stand up for their labor too from my small experience.”
“Secondly, this restaurant closed down a couple weeks after I got that paycheck. The owner made a long winded complaint on the FB page about how the food culture had ‘changed’ in the city and her restaurant didn’t fit in anymore (total bullsh*t, they were ALWAYS popular. Most people theorized the terrible mismanagement and employee abuse had caught up to her).” – sleepdyhollow
“You’re not petty, I wonder how many other people they fleeced for free labor.” – FaustsAccountant
“You would not believe what restaurants get away with. And they’re so blatant about it.”
“It’s such an insane work culture. I’m glad I experienced it but the thought of doing it everyday makes my job being a welder now a total cakewalk.” – providenthound
The employee had to pay for training.
“My very first job was at a little drive in restaurant close to my high school. I showed up to work the first day, they lady said I had to pay her $50 for training. She showed me around the place and said that my pay would be $4.50/hour as a carhop(this was in 2010), and all the tips I made went into a bucket with all the other girls’ tips. At the end of the night, she counted up tips, kept 20% for herself and split the rest up evenly among EVERY employee. Also, part of our job was one day a week we had to spend 4 hours cleaning her house. It seemed super shady.”
“I literally left after listening to her go over all these rules. My dad was pissed until I explained, and another girl confirmed and my dad agreed I did the right thing.” – tlr92
“Shady and highly illegal.”
“Tip pooling is legal but is supposed to be only with other tipped employees, her skimming 20% off the top is not legal.”
“Pretty sure you can’t charge someone to train them for a job you hired them for.” – -Work_Account-
Hired to do one job, told to do another.
“I was hired at a chain restaurant to be a hostess. I was so excited because my last job was washing dishes and because of my eczema, I had to quit. It was too painful to do that job. So, I arrived at my new job dressed up to be a hostess and those mfers took me back to the kitchen to do dishes because the dishwasher just quit. I noped out of there real fast!” – Ismygrayshowing
“13 years in restaurants, I can say if you have any skin condition stay out of restaurants not because of your skin but the chemicals some places use for their dishwashers. I’ve seen people welt up just from industrial detergent.” – scootiesanchez2038
Even the customers knew it was bad.
“Went into an Italian restaurant for my first day of work and I got 3 red flags on the very first day.”
“1- The manager said he had lots of hours for me and getting shifts would be no problem. Every single other employee told me that they were struggling for hours and that they had no idea why they hired me.”
“2- Everyone said the manager was an asshole. Even the customers.”
“3- It was my first day there, and I actually had to teach the woman training me how to do one or two things.” – Stevie-Avail
“Probably hired you to replace that woman.” – RonStopable08
They were pushing a sale that should never happen.
“‘Salesman’ for Kirby vacuums. First sale call was to a single elderly woman who was supporting her son in hospital (they got us in the door by offering a free carpet clean as a demonstration). The supervisor training me pushed and pushed to make the sale until this old woman was in tears. Just as she was about to sign the paperwork I asked if she actually wanted to vacuum and she said it was lovely but she couldn’t afford it. I took the paperwork away from her and said not to worry.”
“Outside I told the supervisor I quit to which he replied I would’ve been fired anyway. No love lost. I hung around for half an hour playing on my phone to make sure the supervisor left because he was a real piece of work.” – Pokestralian
“Oooh I have a Kirby story! I worked for them when I was 17 – not selling the vacuums but setting up appointments for the salespeople. They had the shadiest way of getting their salespeople into people’s houses. They went around town with raffle tickets where people could sign up with their name, address, and phone number for a chance to win some cash prize. The kicker? There was no contest. It was just a way to get these people’s info.”
“When I would get the filled out raffle tickets I was instructed to look at the zip codes and throw out any from the lower income part of town. Then with what was left I had to make calls. I had a script where I would tell them they were still in the running for the cash prize but in the meantime, they had won a free one room cleaning. I’d get the details on which room they wanted to have done and set up a day and time for it. Their free room cleaning was a Kirby salesman pitching to them the whole time.”
“The whole thing was so dishonest I quit after a couple weeks.” – SavaRox
Not only do some of these jobs sound terrible, a lot of what happened was illegal.
With all the abuse, misuse of power, and poor wages, it’s no one these people quit on day one. If they stayed any longer it was bound to be stressful.
People Explain Which Jobs Are A Lot Less Fun Than People Think
It can be difficult to figure out what you’re going to do as a career for the rest of your life. In fact, the job you’re working in now might have started out as, “Just that thing I’ll do until I find the real thing I want to do.”
Usually, these careers are filled with long hours, difficult clientele, and a secret load of hardships the outside world is not privy to knowing. Unfortunately, as it turns out, the “dream” jobs, the ones people spend all day wishing they had while they work their dead-end feeling jobs, may not be as great as some hoped.
The smells. So. Many. Smells.
A Redditor wanted to know what jobs may not bring as much joy as some think when they asked:
“Which job is a LOT less fun than most people expect?”
Imagine The Smells. Now Imagine Them Every. Day.
“Zookeeper.”
“Don’t get me wrong, it’s awesome to be around so many amazing animals and care for them…”
“But the smells are ridiculously, insanely foul.”
“I have a really strong stomach and it’s still tough for me…we’ve had some interns quit over it.”
“I was warned about the smells when getting into the field, but thought ‘oh I’ve volunteered at animal shelters, I know what animal stink smells like’”
“Nope. Not even close.” ~ wekoo9
So, I’m Not Like Indiana Jones?
“Paleontologist. You don’t get to work with full dinosaur skeletons and do all kinds of awesome expeditions.”
“You’re mostly sitting at a desk looking at some pictures and logging stuff on your computer, maybe examining a fossil occasionally.”
“If you’re lucky you can go on a real dig, and OMG SPEND HOURS IN THE HOT SUN DUSTING OFF ROCKS!!!” ~ MidwesternMonkey
Someone Has To Make The Donuts
“Baker. Coming into work at 3/4 am so you can have a six am baked goods is miserable.” ~ haireypotter
‘”o00Oo0h y0u MuST L0vE tHe wAY U SmëlL WhEn ù G0 h0Me!’”
“nope…I go home smelling like burnt oven” ~ Vdd993
No “Smoke On The Water”
“Working in a music store ( musical instruments )”
“Your days are spent listening to 50 different people play 50 different riffs poorly simultaneously, as if they’re all putting on their own concert.” ~ [usernamedeleted]
“Some of my (least) favorites:”
“Person who thinks playing well and playing loud are the same thing.”
“Person who wants to make sure you know they are very smart and you are very lucky to be in their presence.”
“Person who goes to absurd lengths to test out drum sticks to make sure they’re pitch matched without knowing how to execute any of those techniques. Extra points if they’re just going to shred them to splinters in a week anyway.”
“People who act like you’re in their way because you’re trying to do your job.”
“People who assume you couldn’t possibly know anything about the instruments you play and sell all day long.”
“Side note – I mostly loved my time working in a music store and I enjoy helping people but the people who come in with aggressive egos and nasty attitudes are insufferable.” ~ JessicaMessica
No Running!
“Lifeguarding. Everyone expects Baywatch, act, saving lives all the time. But It’s usually just sitting there blowing your whistle telling little sh-ts to stop f-cking around.” ~ Theholynun
I Just Wanted To Smash Stuff
“Demolition”
“Everyone wants to break shit with a sledgehammer. Everyone is tired of lifting that sledgehammer by 5 swings.”
“Nobody wants to load the broken stuff into bags or a wheelbarrow and take it to the dumpster.” ~ Bill_S_Preson_Esq
The Key Is Not In The Wall!
“Gamemaster at an escape room.”
“It’s the same repetitive script, resetting the same stuff, giving clues and hints about the same things.”
“The patrons are often competitive families who argue, obnoxious impatient 13-year-olds, college students who have been drinking, idiots who break sh*t and touch sh*t that I SPECIFICALLY TOLD THEM NOT TO.”
“They never remember your initial instructions. If something gets broken during one group, you have to hurry and fix it before the next group.” ~ Reddit
You Know How Frustrated You Get When You Have To Replay The Same Level Of A Game?
“Video game tester.”
“You aren’t spending your time playing completed fully realized games. You are playing the same level of a game over and over seeing if there are bugs.” ~ Mr_frumpish
“Also, you are probably not going to test the next GTA, but something like Barbie’s Super Happy Funland 3, or some other game aimed for kids 8 and under. And you’ll have to play it for 8-10 hours a day, every day.” ~ __Hello_my_name_is__
“Lets see if I can clip through the wall in position 131, 875, -121”
“Lets see if I can clip through the wall in position 131, 875, -122”
“Lets see if I can clip through the wall in position 131, 875, -123” ~ RoboNinjaPirate
It’s Insane How Much We Don’t See On Screen
“I have seen this question before and then it was zookeeper at the top comment too. Nice.”
“Anyways, there’s this making-of Frozen 2 mini docu. Most animators work weeks for a minute of animation of one character, if not less.
“At one point they decided to leave out a piece that one person had solely been working on. Must be crappy to be part of the credits without being able to say “this is my part!”.” ~ ArrrSlashSubreddit
“I couldn’t believe it! It was even crazier to me when Sterling K. Brown recorded an entire song and it got scrapped. It’s insane how much ends up on the cutting room floor for a movie to be just right.”
“I was so psyched for the animator that did that end scene for ‘Into The Unknown’ though! She killed it.” ~ heronlyweapon
The Magic Never Leaves, It Just Changes
“Being a Character Performer at Disney.”
“Don’t get me wrong, there are some amazing perks and truly magical moments. I know I’m super lucky and tons of people would love to be in my shoes.”
“But the day to day work is EXHAUSTING in ways I never thought possible. Guests are ridiculously abusive…I’ve had things said and done to me I never would have imagined.”
“The company isn’t always great – it highly depends on your leadership. And there’s so much focus on your body and face (good and BAD) that it can be incredibly depressing and difficult emotionally.”
“Plus, you have to accept that there’s very little upward mobility. Most people “grow out of it” and it’s rough to know that one day you’ll get “too old” or “too fat” and you will have to start all over in a new career field.”
“So you constantly are thinking either, 1) what you’re going to do when you leave, 2) how you’re going to keep yourself there.”
“I personally knew it would be temporary, and I now only work there seasonally while I have a “normal career”. But Disney has a way of sucking you in.” ~ TheMarvelPrincess
They say do what you love and you’ll never work another day in your life.
It’s clear after taking a look at these entries, that is not the case and coming home smelling like burnt dough and elephant feces is not the life many thought they wanted.
Doctors Confess How They Behave When They Are The Patient
Something funny that I’ve always wondered… who’s the doctor for my doctor? Does that doctor have a doctor? And what about THAT doctor?
Wouldn’t there be an imbalance of some kind eventually? Does every doctor have a doctor in some never-ending loop? This has to be one of life’s greatest mysteries, right?
Here’s another question: What do doctors talk about when they go for their own medical checkups and yearly physical exams? Do they correct each other? Argue over results?
Oh, to be a fly on the wall…
As humorous as this is, remember: Doctors are people, too! They have to go to the doctor just like the rest of us (even if they refuse to answer my question about this seemingly never-ending loop of doctors).
But there might, in fact, be an answer!
Doctors were candid about their own experiences at the well, doctor after Redditor Still-Tangerine2782 asked the online community:
“Doctors of Reddit, what’s it like when you go in for a doctor’s appointment?”
“Do you and your doctor discuss what’s wrong with you like it’s a group project? Do you not go at all because you’re your own doctor?”
“It depends on what I’m going in for.”
“It depends on what I’m going in for. As a background, I’m an oncologist so I’ve trained in internal medicine before. For most internal medicine-type stuff, I don’t bother going in unless I need something that I can’t easily get for myself (e.g. labs or images).
“For specialty stuff I wasn’t trained in, I go in and try to give them the best history I can, but let them do their own thing.” ~ alkahdia
“Fastest consultations ever.”
I don’t get involved in the management. I let the doctor seeing me lead that unless they missed something huge and I would just double-check.”
“The main difference is I can present the whole history and relevant info in about 30 seconds flat and the doctor with that info can just give me the management plan in about the same time.”
“Fastest consultations ever. Very methodical.” ~ triple_threatt
“I don’t go often but when I do…”
“Doctor here (neurologist) I’m not good at going to the doctor. I don’t go often but when I do I usually just STFU, especially if it’s a field of medicine I have no idea about (like say…derm).”
“That being said, the doctor usually knows I’m a physician as well, and so the language tends to be more technical.”
“I also find that we practice less defensively with each other since we can be more open (“We could do ABC tests but honestly what you probably have is X so take this and if it doesn’t get better then we can do ABC”).” ~ Telamir
“Academically minded people tend to ask lots of questions…”
“The pace and density of the conversations is different, I’m sure.”
“I’m an emergency physician who has, over time, treated various physicians in my community including internists, surgeons, radiation oncologists, some from my hospital and some not. Keep in mind that each specialty is quite different from the others.”
“The Rad Onc, for example, thinks and speaks differently than the Ortho Surgeon, and I felt like my treatment of each of them was really quite similar to treating a professor of engineering.”
“Academically minded people tend to ask lots of questions and research stuff while you’re out of the room, as compared to populations that request a more paternalistic bent and just want you to tell them what to do so they can get on with their day.”
“I’m careful to credit that the number of hours that went into my family physician’s training is the same as mine; simply a different topic.”
“She knows tons of stuff about management and screening for chronic disease that I don’t, and I … well I know how to intubate people, manage a bad LSD trip, or use a jar of bubbles to distinguish between kids that are scared and kids that are head injured.” ~ procast1natrix
“For the most part…”
“I’m an ER doctor, and sometimes I have other doctors as patients. For the most part, they’re pretty good patients because they can give a good description of their symptoms in a way that’s useful to me.”
“They usually ask good questions and are well equipped to have an informed discussion about their diagnosis and treatment.
“Sometimes it’s hard for me to dial back my ‘patient talk’ where I simplify medical terms for laypeople. Sometimes it’s challenging if their area of expertise is totally unrelated to the issue at hand and they don’t recognize their limited understanding.”
“The worst patients are those who have just a little medical knowledge and think they know everything. Some version of: ‘My aunt is a nurse, and she said a need a whole-body MRI for this runny nose…’”
“As far as self-diagnosing, I usually deal with my own minor medical issues. If I noticed signs of something more serious, I would go to someone else.” ~ Yeti_MD
“It’s actually a strategy I’ve adopted…”
“Doctor here (family medicine).”
“I self diagnose most things, but for my 1-year-old daughter I decided a while ago that I don’t want to do that for her. So her pediatrician doesn’t know I’m a doctor – I never told her. I want her to treat me like any other parent, and explain everything to me like I’m 5 years old.”
“I’m afraid of being too nonchalant with my daughter’s health that I’ll miss something (or the doctor assuming I know more than I really do).”
“It’s actually a strategy I’ve adopted since on myself; if I go to a doctor (say a gynecologist for a routine check-up) I sometimes just don’t say what I do so I can legitimacy ask dumb questions about things that I should really know – or so that the other doctor won’t leave out important info that they assume I know for fear of insulting me.”
“On the other hand, my regular doctors do know, such as the gynecologist who saw me through my pregnancies, and that enables more complex and nuanced discussions about health decisions, as in debating questions and giving me options that he wouldn’t necessarily do with it he patients, because he can be sure I understand the medical pros and cons well once I’m given a basic explanation.” ~ HermioneGranger8888
“It is a bit dependent…”
“Doctor here – it is a bit dependent on the field of medicine involved.”
“For example, I don’t know much about neurological issues so if I went to see a neurologist I certainly wouldn’t be chipping in.”
“For more generic conditions I have previously offered my thoughts to my doctor about what it could be. Ultimately I still go to the doctor as they can prescribe drugs/order tests for me that would be difficult/questionable for me to do myself.” ~ drbigmac69
“When we do go in…”
“Doctor here. In general, we are not good about going to the doctor. For me, it’s physicals about half as often as recommended and that time I had strep a year and a half ago that didn’t resolve with whatever antibiotics I had in my medicine cabinet.”
“When we do go in, it is like a group project. We usually hash things out together but ultimately I am going to defer to someone with more expertise than me in that area who can make an objective decision.” ~ nellyann
“I always go to someone who doesn’t know me…”
“I always go to someone who doesn’t know me, and I wouldn’t say that I’m a doctor as well. On the other hand, my significant other is a doctor too, and whenever we feel something we do discuss it like a group project in which he always refuses any treatment until his symptoms get to the very worst.” ~ eatfart420
“It can be weirdly stressful…”
“I try to act like any other patient. Medical people can very much sabotage their own care by taking shortcuts or perhaps declining to approach their own problems the way other patients do.”
“It’s a mistake. I have seen harm done that way. I don’t come in for trivial things like self-limiting infections or things that are harmless because I know that they are. But I do go see my regular doctor for problems that really bother me or for routine exams like anyone else.”
“It can be weirdly stressful to be the doctor or the patient in this kind of interaction. I’ve learned to not let it bother me when I am the doctor seeing other doctors. It can be harmful to the doctor as a patient if you let that kind of interaction get to you.”
“I try not to generate stress for other doctors who see me and know what I am. That could be detrimental to me.” ~ Zapranotho777
“I keep my mouth shut…”
“Forensic pathologist here: I keep my mouth shut and let my doctor be a doctor. I have a pulse, so I am not the expert here. Doctors that self-doctor are scary and arrogant, in my honest opinion.” ~ TheresNoIinAutopsy
Well, it’s safe to say I learned a lot.
These answers are remarkably insightful. Next time you go to the doctor, you’ll have a newfound appreciation for them and what they do.
Doctors are people just like you, with concerns about their own health. Given their experience and knowledge, it also takes a lot of humility to just let other professionals do their jobs.
People Break Down Examples Of The Laziest Person Doing The Most Difficult Job Best
Microsoft founder Bill Gates once said:
“I choose a lazy person to do a hard job.”
“Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.”
The idea is actually somewhat sound, although an efficient person might be a better choice.
The quote speaks to the concept of “work smarter, not harder.”
Choosing someone who will find the shortcuts to solve a difficult problem can be better than putting your most ambitious person on it. The most complicated way is often not the best way to complete something.
But just because a billionaire tech mogul said it and it sounds good on paper, doesn’t mean it works in practice.
So Redditors lauvnoodles and Slimer425 both asked variations of:
“There’s a saying about giving the hardest job to the laziest person because they’ll find the easiest way to do it—what is your best real-life example?”
Macros, Not Micros
“I knew a guy who had a low level data/reporting job. He had several daily/weekly work responsibilities, including a bunch of reports that needed quite a bit of tweaking from raw data to finished product. But like I said, low level.”
“We didn’t find out until way later, but he had set up macros for each of his major responsibilities where he could. Once set up, he’d just run the macros to do his work, but then he’d (smartly) hold off on delivering the reports until just a little before the deadlines.”
“He’d hit every assignment and was seen as reliable. He also would complain about the workload so people would leave him with that work. I doubt he did a full hour of work a day after he set up what he did.”
“Eventually he left the job for one with better pay. But damn did he work lazy.”
“Also, he was smart not to reveal until the end, because had he told them about it he would have gotten a pat on the back and would have been given a whole other workload, on top of maintaining those macros/etc…”
“Dude milked the job, not the other way around.” ~ daithisfw
Automate
“Any good IT guy will find a way to automate his job so he can sit around browsing [the internet].”
“I left my last Sys Admin Job for a better paying job and the next guy called me and asked how I was doing the work of 3 people. He was going through the daily playbook and was so far behind…”
“I asked him if he was going through the Manual playbook, or the Automated playbook, as I had left both on my desk. Evidently my former boss had taken the automated one to do the work in the interim and never told the new hire about it.” ~ Zooloph
“I remember I worked in a small IT department in college and the head admin had EVERYTHING automated. He’d spend the whole day playing games or watching YouTube but he still performed all of his duties in a timely manner.”
“One day we played a full game of Civilization V while monitoring the progress of a script that updated everyone in the office from Windows XP to Win 7. All of the work got done on time and correctly so we really weren’t doing anything ‘wrong’.” ~ Bearlodge
Know Your Equipment
“Was a temp.”
“Got hired for the day to print 30 packets with 100 pages each.”
“‘Why would it take a day?’ I asked.”
“‘Our printer doesn’t collate the pages so it will take you the day to sort the pages into the 30 packets,’ they said.”
“Right.”
“It was a standard office Xerox printer. It took me all of 30 seconds to find and click the ‘collate’ button. Clicked the ‘staple’ button while at it.”
“All got printed by itself into nice stapled packets and I got paid to browse internet for the day. They thought I was a genius for ‘fixing’ their printer and gave me glowing recommendations to the temp agency that led to more jobs.” ~ wilksonator
Math Is Your Friend
“At my last job, a truck suspension shop, we did inventory every December and it was someone’s job to count all the washers and screws of every size.”
“It was my first inventory and I casually mentioned that they should just weigh one screw or washer, then weigh them all and divide the weight to get the count. Everyone looked at me like I had given them the key to the universe.”
“Counting washers and screws went from a day or two, to just a few hours.” ~ codymreese
Automation Might Be Your Friend But Not Your Coworker’s
“I inherited a job where the last person spent half their time manually typing numbers into Excel. I turned a bunch of 5 hour jobs into 5 minute jobs and made the job really easy.”
“I was only in a 1 year assignment and spent a lot of it automating everything and got a promotion afterward so it all worked out.”
“Still though, using technology right can get rid of a lot of jobs. I work in corporate finance, and we can do the same stuff with a team of four that 20 people were doing 30 years ago.” ~ munchies777
“A college kid picked up an office job over one summer. He became friends with an older lady at the front desk who always needed help figuring out Excel.”
“He kept finding shortcuts for her, and eventually wrote scripts for her that took a load of work off her plate.”
“By the end of the summer he had made her job so easy that they decided they didn’t need her to do it anymore. They fired her.” ~ seancurry1
Outsourcing
“My brother gave my oldest nephew 10 dollars a week if he did all his chores without needing to be told or complaining.”
“One day he gets home early from work and sees the neighbor kid tossing a bag in the trash. He asks him what he is doing and the kid says he gets 5 bucks a week to take care of a few chores.”
“My nephew outsourced his chores.” ~ Downvotesdarksouls
“Now all he needs is to undercut his employee.”
“Scare him straight by telling him the kid down the block will do it for cheaper and this quarter the numbers are lower than expected so take the pay decrease or leave.” ~ AlDaBeast
Let The Machine Do The Work
“I plug clocks in at midnight so they’re already set.” ~ january21st
“Trip the main fuse in the house at midnight to do all the appliances too.” ~ niallw2101
Use The Shortcuts
“I worked ‘goods in’ for an aircraft manufacturer as a summer job at university. Parts would arrive, we’d open them and key in all the details into a terminal.”
“That bit was long winded.”
“I discovered the terminal keyboard had assignable shortcuts, and set up a bunch of them for all the boilerplate items so that keying in an item was about six keystrokes.”
“Saved myself and my workmate hours every day, which we would spend pranking each other, other warehouse staff and staff at other sites.” ~ john_C_random
Skip The Heavy Lifting
“Years ago as a student I got a job stocking shelves. Guys were carrying the heavy boxes, putting them on the floor and bending each time to pick up the items to put on the shelves.”
“I was maybe a light 100 pound (woman) and carrying the boxes was just killing me physically.”
“So one day I had an idea. I put the box on an old desk chair and rolled it around.”
“No more carrying and no more bending!
“Funny thing is that, instead of doing the same thing, most of the guys called me lazy and kept carrying the heavy boxes. Just to prove how strong they were.”
“Now they have special rolling carts to do the job because of all the injuries from lifting and bending.” ~ sonia72quebec
K-I-S-S Principle
“I began a job where 11-12 people each touched a small piece of one process. More time was spent doing the hand off through email between each of us than the actual work.”
“I suggested several steps it made more sense for me to handle completely instead of handing them off in an email. Soon others suggested the same for their pieces of the process and some people were identified as just in the process to ‘give them something to do’.”
“We now do the same process with only 1-3 people involved and it takes a fraction of the time. It went from over 20 busy work steps to about 5 efficient ones.”
“I’m not sure whoever set it up could have made it any less efficient. Keep It Simple, Silly!” ~ Reddit
So Why Are Things Inefficient?
“I never understood why a boss would want you to do a job that you can do in 1 hour, stretch it to 8 hours and let you do that. If the attitude of the corporate world wasn’t this bad, many things could be so much easier in life.” ~ Reddit
“Oh it’s easy. It’s because they don’t know how to measure productivity. They don’t understand what you do, nor how long ‘things’ take.”
“So they rely instead on the assumption that looking like you’re working is basically the same as ‘being productive’.” ~ sobrique
So it seems work smarter, not harder is pretty sound advice that a lot of workplaces are completely ignoring.
What about where you work?
People Explain How Much Damage They’ve Ever Done With A Single Typo
We all know it’s worth the extra few seconds to scan that email draft or go through an essay before submitting it.
And yet, we’re often so excited it’s done we just hit send without a second thought.
Then, in a bizarre example of masochism, we read through the whole thing after it’s too late to change anything.
Of course, it’s during that powerless read-through that we see it—the most embarrassingly timed and placed typo ever.
Redditor DoesntUnderstands was apparently in the mood to have people relive all that cringing.
He asked:
“What is the most damage you’ve ever done with a typo?”
These Redditors made the same mistake.
“g and t are very close on the keyboard and for this reason ‘regards’ is not my favorite email closing.” — AdeptAdaptor
“I mistyped ‘regards’ on an angrily worded email. I was told by my manager that, no matter how annoyed I was, I shouldn’t call people that. It’s hard to explain that it was an accident given the tone of the email.”
“Always take a second and proof read any angry email. And then don’t send it. It isn’t worth it.” — the_hair_of_aenarion
This kind of mistake came up a lot.
“My father in law had just died. I text my other half saying, ‘how’s your dad going?’ Instead of ‘how’s your day going? He was not impressed.” — pooches4life
“Asked a co-worker in a group IM if he’d mind me using his d*ck as mine didn’t seem to be working properly.”
“I meant dock, for my laptop.”
“It wasn’t something I got in trouble for but it’s one of those typo’s that will probably come up in conversation for the next several years.” — phormix
“I used to work for a museum booking group visits and educational programs for tour companies and schools.”
“Was working on a reservation and they had only told me how many students were in the group, but I also needed the number of adults. So, I sent an email to the teacher:
” ‘Hello *teachername*, we’ll also need to know approximately how many sluts will be visiting from your school.’ “
“Luckily, they had a sense of humor:
” ‘Not sure how many of us are sluts, but if you meant “adults” it’s going to be around 8 or 10.’ ” — smokehidesstars
One mistake almost reached a large audience.
“I worked in the architecture industry for many years. One of the aspects of the job, when we were designing a new building in a community, was to present our plans to the public in a place like a community centre or a school gym, and they would be able to voice their concerns.”
“The presentation materials would usually take the form of panels printed on foamcore board and placed around the space; these presentations are called public consultations.”
In one instance, we had printed about 30 boards with the title ‘X Project Public Consultation’ at the top, only the ‘l’ had been forgotten in the word ‘public.’ Hilarity ensued.”
“Luckily the mistake was caught before they placed all the boards, and they were quickly reprinted, which cost a lot of money. If it had been ANY other letter we would have let it slide.” — ToothbrushGames
This one came before they even had the job.
“Submitting forms for a job, got a real awkward call back – ‘Did you mean to check this box saying that yes, you’ve been been involved with illegal distribution of controlled substances? Because you checked no on all the other questions about criminal behavior…’ “
“Nice of the guy to give me a chance to correct it, at least.” — BitterFuture
One Redditor’s screw-up could have been costly, literally.
“My first finance job had to do with managing corporate cash. I was moving funds from one account to another and accidentally hit an extra zero. I ended up moving $30MM instead of $3MM.”
“Luckily it was between internal accounts, so it was easily reversible, but I didn’t know that at the time. I shat my pants and my boss let me panic for 30 seconds before fixing it.” — Fandorin
Another person was lucky enough to catch people before the holidays.
” ‘Sorry for the incontinence.’ “
“I meant inconvenience, of course. It went out to a group of managers who reported to my boss.”
“We were going to have really limited office coverage for the holidays, so one of their usual processes was going to be delayed, and I was asked to send the official email about how we were going to do business during the couple of days after Christmas.”
“Fortunately, they were great people and we all laughed.” — liniyedf
This typo had the look of some blunt, harsh truth-telling.
“Typing up minutes to a meeting, ‘(company name) was sh** for 10 days over Christmas period and only responded to emergency jobs.’ “
“Not shut, sh**. To be fair all the folks representing that company agreed that their response times were shit due to the fact that they were shut.” — SparkieMark1977
And there is the old double typo.
“Several years ago, I asked my mom if we could go to ‘butt shows’ that weekend. I meant ‘buy shoes.’ “
“No joke, it changed BOTH words to form the most unfortunate sentence ever. I hate my fat thumbs, lol.” — survivetothrive01
Not all cringey mistakes, though, involve a keyboard.
“I wouldn’t say damage to other people but more my self. Was in a mod interview via text for something and the owner just flat out asked me ‘Will you abuse your powers?’ and I meant to say ‘I absolutely will not.’ But I forgot the ‘Not.’ “
“I cringed at my self so I just backed out of the mod interview. Haha.” — TheThirteenthNeef
For a second, this one was tragic.
“A couple years ago my grandpa had surgery for pancreatic cancer. What my mom MEANT to text me is ‘the surgeons will give an update soon’ which instead somehow came out as ‘the surgeons will give up soon’ ” — Tokidoki99
But as far as “damage” goes, this one might take the cake.
“Years ago I took down the entire web infrastructure of a large (millions of daily users) company with a single additional . in a line of PHP code.”
“Does that count?” — recaffeinated
It’s a list that ought to convince us all to double check the things we type before we send them.
But let’s face it, we’ll never do that.
And we’ll just keep cringing along.