No personal cell phones? Okay. This employee took his malicious compliance to the next level after getting scolded one too many times for using his cell phone on the job. 

I get it… It doesn't look good for a hotel receptionist to scroll memes while the line at the concierge starts to grow. Smacking your gum, rolling your eyes, and scrolling endlessly really isn't something you're supposed to be doing at work, but as many of us forget, our phones are actually super useful little tools. We've grown accustomed to traveling around all day with a tiny computer in our pocket that it's easy to let slip their more convenient functions. The front desk reception guy in our next tale knew all the ways his phone could help out clients, but after his manager got on his back about using his personal device on the clock, he decided to use the second language translating tool at his disposal. 

Keep scrolling to read how an employee turned a spiteful MC into a memorable guest experience when a traveler needed help with a quick translation.

Sure, honesty may seem like the best policy, but this Karen of a mother took things way too far.

At first, when reading about her seemingly genuine concern over her teenage daughter's body insecurity, one might think that this is an attentive, caring, and decent parent. However, when her daughter asked her to honestly tell her the truth about how she looks, this Karen thought it would be a good idea to tell her that she is, in fact, only average-looking. Her supposed point was to inform her daughter that most people in the world are average-looking, but as one might expect, this "truth-telling" moment did not sit well with a 14-year-old. 

When the mother shared her side of the story on Reddit, people eviscerated her in the comments section, and rightfully so. Keep scrolling below for the full story and for the best reactions from other mothers and daughters. For more, check out this post about a husband and wife's heated argument over money.

Just doing what you told me to do, boss

It is truly mind-boggling how some employers will treat the workers who are essential to the success and operation of their business. They gamble that they can pay them below market rates and keep them exactly where they are and that their workers will continue to be milked like the cash cow that they are… After taking on increasing responsibility in their boss's small business, this worker knew it was time to move on to greener pastures. They did what they thought was the right thing and gave their boss their two-week notice, prompting a meltdown that they could not have anticipated. 

As commenters in the original thread noted, this begs so many questions. Like, if they were so important to the business why didn't their boss recognize that and reward them for it? Surely, there were chances and opportunities for their boss to give them a promotion or even a partnership in the business that they were so essential to. Still, their boss's general laissez-faire attitude and seeming reluctance to lift a finger to support their own business has spelled their own doom. It seems that they were totally complacent and happy to let the employee do all the work while they raked in all the profits.

This manager is being totally ridiculous, and he doesn't even realize the full scope of what he did. 

Sticking your neck out for a friend can be risky. In this person's case, they recommended their friend for an interview at their coffee shop job. They figured this friend would be a shoo-in for the role. To be a great barista, you need to be upbeat and positive when interacting with customers, be able to put drinks together quickly, and work well under pressure. U/BAAAUGH was completely exasperated by the way her boss treated that friend she recommended for the job. 

The only person who should be embarrassed by the way things went down is the boss. It almost seems like he's worried that his staffers will steal coffee or something. First of all, most baristas do drink coffee at their workplaces, but it's a cheap item, just let them have it! And secondly, if that's the boss's biggest concern about a potential employee, maybe he should spend some more time behind the counter, preparing orders, and learning what it actually takes to thrive in a cafe environment. 

Up next, read about this scorned ex who yanked a $600 gift card back from an ex just to get back at her. 

Just like landlords, tenants have rights. When a conniving landlord decides that they are above the law and impede on your rights as a tenant, there landlord can't expect you to keep quiet.

When something seems fishy, it likely is. Always trust your intuition, but even more so, trust the evidence you have and do something with it. The more power that landlords have, the more they're willing to do whatever it takes to pull a fast one on you and every other tenant they have in the future.

The tenant in this story is moving out of their unit and it is their last month paying rent. They noticed their cleaning supplies were gone from their apartment, in addition to two set of blinds and a shelf they had installed in their closet for storage purposes. They first thought their neighbor might've taken their belongings, but they noticed their landlord posted an advertisement of their unit and they had never approved of him coming in and taking photos to post on apartment-seeking websites. When they confront him, instead of fessing up, he demands they pay another month's rent. Scroll to read.

At 18, you are an adult in every sense of the word. Sure, your frontal lobe hasn't fully developed, and you're going to make a whole lot of bad choices over the next seven or so years, but the difference between 17 and 18 is that you're going to be solely responsible—and accountable—for those decisions. That means the way you engage your personal relationships and the decisions you make for your future are on you, despite your relative inability to properly rationalize them and your lack of experience in making them.

If you're fortunate and privileged, you'll still have the support of parents, guardians, and other mentors who push you in the right direction. If you're even more fortunate, you get to spend these years in a structured simulation environment called "college," where you get to engage with other frontal-lobe-ly challenged "adults" where you can go on adventures and make all kinds of terrible decisions that you'll look fondly on and/or regret for the rest of your life. But regardless of whether or not you attend this life-simulator, you're going to have to start getting your act together and taking responsibility, which is why the behavior of this 18-year-old, despite her tragic background, needs to desperately be adjusted.

This stepmother has been really struggling to develop a closer relationship with her 18-year-old stepdaughter, who has not adjusted well to her blended family, saying horrible things about her stepmother, who she has known as a parental figure for most of her life. This tragically complex situation is probably a signifier of some underlying trauma that the young woman is dealing with, but it prompted the stepmother to turn to this online community to see whether or not she was in the wrong for telling her stepdaughter to leave their home, to which the young woman complied.

Is it really so difficult to be kind to the customer service person trying to troubleshoot your problem over the phone? I get it, everything's falling to pieces on your end, but it doesn't make any logical sense to be unsavory to the one person who can actually help you.  

This Karen in our next story proved that being aggressive over the phone doesn't get you everything you want, and sometimes it can get you fired…. Or maybe even investigated by the Feds. 

Imagine, this customer service employee was about 15 seconds from clocking out for the day–it was Friday at 4:59:45 PM and they were grabbing their coats on their way out and the blasted phone rang. Seeing that the number was from an internal caller, as in, someone within their company, the employee thought this would be a simple thing to solve and that they could make quick work of their coworker's problem. Except, the woman on the other end of the line wasn't looking for solutions, she was looking for a customer service rep to break the rules for her. 

Keep scrolling to see how a 40-minute IT support call turned into an apology letter, a box of chocolates, and an immediate, dishonorable resignation. 

Let this story serve as a friendly reminder to stand up for what you were hired for in the first place. If your boss tries to impose new rules and regulations, new responsibilities, and new expectations that were not expressly written in your initial contract, then you are well within your right to advocate for yourself. That means advocating for a raise or promotion if you feel compelled to do so. It can also mean enforcing what's currently written in your contract if you do not wish to accept the new changes. Be prepared to receive some pushback, of course, but again, you have some leverage here.

This hybrid employee was hired with the expectation that he could spend two days working remotely, which was convenient for his family and young kid. When his boss suddenly decided to adjust those expectations and demand that he come into the office five days a week, the employee stood his ground and said he would only do so if he were granted a 15k raise. This led to a difficult negotiation process, but folks like us are proud of the original poster (OP) for not backing down. For more stories like this, check out this post about a company that tried to steal a job candidate's idea.

Hosting family events is no small thing. Letting people into your intimate space who you have a close and (possibly) troubled history with, resulting from problematic relationship dynamics, presents all sorts of problems. It's basically like opening a Pandora's box of sorts of complex family trauma. Usually, the problematic ones will be rogue cousins or uncles who you just don't see eye to eye with, but occasionally, it will be your own problematic parents.

This woman found herself at a breaking point with her emotionally manipulative mother, who she says has a severe victim complex. While she was hosting the family's (Canadian) Thanksgiving, her mother's passive-aggressive jousting prompted her to strike back, countering her mother's monologue about parental sacrifice with her own attacks, calling out her mother's behavior. This, of course, put a damper on festivities, with some members of the family siding with the woman and others siding with her mother.

This teenager is not going to waste her breath trying to convince her grandmother to watch her end-of-the-year school concert. Instead, she had a quick conversation with Grandma, and then turned off her phone!

In life, you'll learn that a lot of people are flaky. Being the friend who actually shows up to events time and time again isn't easy, but it's so worth it to deepen your relationships with those around you. It's a sign that you care enough about that person to carve some time out of your busy schedule and attend their function. For this kid, all she wanted was to invite her grandmother to one of her events: an annual school concert for the choir she participates in. But this grandmother continually makes up last-minute excuses for why she can't go to the show. Instead of just telling her grandkid that she isn't a fan of live shows or that she's just plain uninterested, she's been letting her down for years. This year, the 15-year-old put her foot down in a sassy yet polite way, and at least one of her parents has her back. 

Up next, the internet was rather critical of this 22-year-old employee's tactic to get their colleagues to reply to their emails, because they "decided to start including the Chairman/CEO…on all emails." 

When one leaves a job in which they didn't like their boss, there are two things they might hope for any future interaction with said boss – Either no interaction at all and completely severing any connection with that person, or getting to see them one more time and proving to them just how much that boss missed out on by letting them go.

Out of those two options, the best stories obviously come from the latter, much like the story we have here. OP (original poster) was contacted by their former toxic boss and was asked to retrieve old passwords for an email and Instagram account. Considering how OP left that company, they weren't too eager to help their former boss, especially since they were still owed $10k of unpaid commissions. The people in the comments were quick to tell OP to use this opportunity and get that money in exchange for the passwords.

Keep scrolling to read the full story. Up next, check out this story of a job candidate who got a second chance by creating a new email address.

Meals are undoubtedly one of the most important daily chores, along with sleep. Being properly fed is one of the things that everything else in a successful and happy life stems from. But providing healthy meals for your family isn't cheap… Have you seen the price of groceries these days? And the time it takes to cook and clean for an entire family can't be understated. So, undoubtedly, the combination of those two things, the time and the price of the actual food, would be supremely valuable. 

Of course, you can just trick your sous-chef brother into cooking for your three children instead. Surely, if he's willing to do it once for free, you can just ask him to do it again and again. Even when it comes to family, there's a limit to the favors you're expected to perform, and there's a point where demanding favors just becomes freeloading and entitlement. 

Who knew that evil stepsisters were still a thing? One would think these two teenagers would get a grip and be kind to the Cinderella of this story, rather than lean into the Evil Stepsister caricature. Unfortunately, however, they could not help themselves.

This Redditor was traveling with his family for a memorial service, and his wife booked a hotel room for his daughter Shiloh and two stepdaughters to share. Things went a bit south when the stepdaughters insisted that Shiloh sleep on the floor. When the original poster (OP) discovered that this was going on, he told Shiloh to pack her things and immediately booked her a separate hotel room.

This ultimately backfired as the two stepdaughters went crying and complaining to OP's wife (their mother), accusing OP of playing favorites. The fact that OP's wife had the audacity to not hear and empathize with her husband's side of the story leads us to believe that this second marriage is unlikely to work out. For more stories like this, check out this post about some Thanksgiving drama.

It seems like the only way to prevent cheating in an age where we all have little computers in our pockets is to completely isolate a person, give them a pencil and some paper, and unleash their class assignment. But since we don't exist in a vacuum and high school classes have upwards of 30+ kids per 45-minute class period, you've got to be like this teacher in our next story, who was far more clever than that. 

Being a teacher in 2024 is probably one of the most challenging jobs. 

Teachers are overworked, under-appreciated, and likely underpaid for their version of professional cat-wrangling. Not only are the kids feral, but they're becoming far more witty to cut corners in class. However, wiley, lazy, and arrogant teenagers make the perfect target for a well-laid trap in the form of a hyper-specific creative writing assignment. 

Keep scrolling to read the satisfying tale of a cheater getting exposed for their lies and thrown to the wolves simply because they were too entitled to attempt their school assignment.

Learning boundaries is important, even if it means being disappointed—not everything is always going to go your way. Sure, when you're one year old, something you were interested in suddenly disappearing might be the worst thing that's ever happened to you, but it's important to learn that lesson now because once you're older, learning that same lesson gets a lot more inappropriate and embarrassing. There's a big difference between a 12-year-old throwing a public tantrum because they didn't get what they wanted and a one-year-old crying for the same reason.

With parenting, there's a delicate balance to be struck between giving kids the best childhood possible and making sure they learn the right lessons. One day, that kid is going to be an adult. Never being disappointed by anything during their development as a kid is going to lead to them becoming a spoilt teen and then a full-grown, entitled person. And at some point, it's going to be too late to set them on the right path without serious self-evaluation. 

As commenters have noted here, the teen is the real parent in this situation… and the stepmother's response hints at a possibly unnecessarily hostile attitude toward her stepdaughter.

First and foremost, pet owners are very protective of their animals. Rightfully so, as you never know what kind of crazy is lurking around the corner. It's in the owner and their pet's best interest that they don't let just anybody hang around their animals or watch them unsupervised. 

If someone wants to be in an animal's company, they better go adopt their own! It's not up to pet owners to fulfill an entitled person's pet fantasy for a day, especially after they refused to do so on multiple occasions. The pet parent in this story experienced this first-hand.

An entitled neighborhood mom asked the original poster (OP) if they could lend her family their cat for her daughter's upcoming birthday party. Cats are not similar to dogs in the way they interact with humans, and the pet owner politely refused. They didn't want to put their cat in an uncomfortable position. The entitled mother doubles down and exclaims that the pet owner "owes it to the community" to have their cat, Mochi, attend her daughter's birthday party. 

The pet owner thought she got it through the mother's head that no means no, but the mother shows up at their doorstep with her daughter in an attempt to guilt-trip them. Scroll to read.

People are, of course, entitled to their own fashion sensibilities, even when said sensibilities are not exactly the choices you would make. To each their own, as they say!

When we think of oddball fashion choices, the first thing we tend to consider is a bizarre outfit or haircut, but let us not forget about the impact eyebrows can have on the whole picture. If the eyes are the windows to the soul, then the eyebrows are the curtains that frame those windows… and let's be real: anyone who has been to their grandmother's home knows what an odd choice of window curtains can do to the entire aesthetic.

Here, we have a collection of bold eyebrow choices that may not entirely work, but they are, at the very least, difficult to forget. Keep scrolling below for the full compilation, and when you're done, check out this list of amusing exam fails from students who didn't exactly study.

The entire family is giving this woman the side-eye after she did something strange during a gift exchange. 

Instead of getting an individual present for every member of your family, some families choose to do Secret Santa gift exchanges. It's a good way to add some fun to the typical present exchange. Everyone is assigned a family member to gift a nice present to in secret. Then, when the present is opened, the person usually finds out who gave it to them. It's a sweet tradition that allows each person to be really thoughtful about their present without breaking the bank. After all, it can be way easier to give one $50 present to one person rather than 10 or 15 individual gifts to everyone in the family. 

This person is being called out for acting a bit stingy. If she was having financial trouble, maybe she should've quietly talked to the Secret Santa organizer. Instead, money troubles or not, she's making a bad impression on everyone else, and commenters agreed that what she did was kind of tacky. 

Up next, this neighbor decided that she had an issue with one family's boat: it was in view, so she decided it had to be moved ASAP. 

Working retail is a hectic and endless stream of customer interactions that balance on a knife's edge, with any one of them threatening to teeter off into a full-blown customer meltdown with possibly little to no cause. It's a way of living that leaves you emotionally drained and completely exasperated, while weekends end up giving you just enough time to self-isolate and prepare for your next shift.

Meanwhile, despite claiming to have the customer's best interest at heart, upper management makes decisions that only serve to maximize their own bonuses and profit, putting you directly in the firing line for even more hostile interactions with customers. They'll enact some broad-sweeping policy that flies in the face of logical reason and expect you to follow it to the letter, vaguely implying serious consequences should you not blindly obey and refuse to listen to the insistence of everyone that their plan is a bad one. Then, acting like it's the worker's fault when they receive customer complaints about their policy. That's what this retail worker shared experiencing when they recounted this story from their days in retail, facing down belligerent customers whilst handling bizarre directives from their superiors.