When you know you are a valued employee, one your company cannot afford to lose, you have a lot of leverage when negotiating benefits and pay. The problem is, unless you actually threaten to quit, companies will not be in a rush to give you more than they think you deserve, which is usually much less than what you do deserve. 

So employees threaten to quit, and some manage to get what they want from their current company, and some end up actually quitting and getting a better deal somewhere else.

The employee in this Reddit story (OP, original poster) got the best of both worlds, since they already had another job lining up when they handed in their resignation letter. Their boss, who previously refused to give OP a raise, decided to reject the resignation and offer OP exactly what they wanted, which meant OP now had two offers, and a big decision to make.

Scroll down to read how the story ends. After you are done, click here for a story of a food company that refused to listen to their QAs' advice, and launched a terrible new sauce nobody wanted.

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.

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.

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. 

There's divorce, and then there's burning every bridge you've ever built! This stage mom of a 16-year-old is sharing her story about what happened when she and her husband decided to call it quits via email, and it is a messy story. 

I suppose every divorce is messy in its own way. Some couples face cheating allegations, with one partner losing trust in their spouse. Others realize they're just not compatible anymore, and have different life goals. And of course, it's always more complicated when family is involved, whether that's having a bunch of kids or having parents who live at home (or both). 

It's not like you can totally keep the public out of the loop when you divorce your spouse. You'll have to pack up everything you own and move, sign legal documents, and face big life changes. Still, the way this stage mom went about it had people on the r/AITAH subreddit calling her out for her behavior. Check out the full story below and see if you side with her or her husband. 

Up next, read about these employees who got fired almost as soon as they started the job, like one dude who refused to wear safety gear, telling the supervisor "no" to his face! 

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.