If there’s one thing many bosses have in common, it’s assuming everyone’s happy just to have a job. They continue to live in their own delusional world, even when over half of the workers in the US are plotting to take their skills elsewhere. They carry on feeling confident in their ability to build workplace camaraderie and team spirit when in reality they patronize, exploit, and micromanage. What about respect, you ask? They’ve probably never heard of it.

Well, it’s about time they take a hard look at the mirror. A week ago, Redditor CasperTFG_808 reached out to the Ask Reddit community inviting fellow members to open up about their “the punishment will continue until morale improves” work stories. The question deeply resonated with hundreds of employees who quickly rolled up their sleeves to reveal the most inexplicable working conditions and horrible managers they ever had to deal with.

Below, you’ll find responses that prove there’s definitely a kernel of truth in the old adage, “people quit bosses, not jobs.” We handpicked some of the most blood-boiling responses from the thread, so continue scrolling and upvote the ones that echoed with you most. If you have any terrible work experiences with employers who blatantly ignored your needs, be sure to share them with us in the comments!

• Read More: 30 Times “Raising Morale” Completely Backfired For Management, As Shared In This Online Thread

#1

We were all swamped with more work than we could complete and mandatory meetings would happen often that were to discuss why we were behind and what they could do. One guy actually spoke up and said STOP HAVING SO MANY MEETINGS AND LET US WORK, EVERY MINUTE OF THIS MEETING IS PUTTING ME FURTHER BEHIND!. They literally called another meeting 30 minutes later to discuss how the last meeting was not a positive experience for them.

Image credits: Corndog1975

#2

Worked in a fintech company in the UK in the 90s. It grew to around 1000 people, building towards IPO.

HR decided we needed a company magazine to boost morale and give us a sense of community.

First issue landed and the cover story was, perhaps predictably, a profile of the new CEO. A decent guy fairly well liked up until they point, worked his way through a few roles in the company.

Except the angle they decided to focus on, to show us his human side, was how he was getting tired of his current 55ft yacht and was hoping that the efforts of we, his minions, would reward him with enough bonus to be able to upgrade to a 76ft model in time for summer.

Reader, I do not believe it has the desired effect.

Image credits: TheoCupier

#3

Each of us had to go into a room with the COO and a general manager and watch a youtube motivational video with them. It was one of those narrated videos where it’s some person drawing cartoons and text on a whiteboard. Like all you can see is a hand and the whiteboard in fast motion.

Anyway, the theme of the video was that you should be following your passion and pay should be secondary and not a motivation. After the video they then asked us, individually, “would you like to ask us to lower your pay?”

As if that was the take away we should be getting from the video. It was totally absurd.

Image credits: watabby

#4

We had to take a survey and one question was “Aside from getting a pay increase, what would make you feel more appreciated in your current position?” And we all wrote down things like birthdays off with pay, less overtime, allow coffee/soft drinks while we are working, increase breaks from 10 minutes to 15 minutes.” We all handed in the surveys.

They did not implement a single suggestion.

Image credits: Nobody_Wins_13

#5

Not me, but had a friend whose supervisor got upset bc she heard people chatting while getting their lunches out of the fridge and making coffee. Her solution? Lock the break room at 8 a.m. (so you needed to come early if you want a cup of coffee), and lock the bathroom so people would need to approach her and ask for the key every time they needed to iuse the facilities. Imagine being in your 30s/40s and having to ask permission to use the bathroom.

Image credits: Always_Trying01

#6

Not really me, but my brother who worked in same place before me

The company had a very bad way to handle finances, often would delay the payment on our end, but theirs were always in time.

One day my brother got feed up and said they better pay them on time, they thought it was a empty threat and delayed.

On the same moment the payment didn’t get in, him and his co workers all shut down the computers, took the phone off the lines and sat around. No one were to answer calls, e-mails, clients, schedule deliveries and anything.

The thing is, if THEY didn’t work, things could still be solved, but their work was exclusively dependent on our end, if we didn’t take the clients/deliveries, they couldn’t transport or deliver anything.

They got desperate and threatened to terminate everyone, but then how the office gonna work with 0 people? Nor would be legal since it was the law here that everytime the payment got delayed the worker didn’t have to work that “extra day” he’s not being paid, or they would have to receive double for it because of the delay.

Not even 2 hours in, everyone got paid. They alwyas had the money, they just didn’t care about the workers.

#7

Not exactly a beating, but once my company got all the devs together in a room and told us we have to innovate. We were confused.

Them: We need you to innovate.
Us: What do you mean, innovate?
Them: Innovate! Do innovative things. Companies that innovate see higher profits!

VP proceeds to draw a graph on the whiteboard. No numbers, just “profit” on the y-axis and “innovation” on the x-axis, and a line going diagonally up and to the right.

Them: See! Innovate!
Us: What do you want us to innovate?
Them: Innovative things. When you are working, think innovatively.
Us: Do you want us to stop what we are working on to do this innovation?
Them: No no no! Keep doing your work. But also think about innovating while you do it.
Us: You know, some of the work we already do is innovative.
Them: Can’t be, or we’d be making more profit.

I left the company soon after this meeting.

Image credits: khendron

#8

I once worked at a company where morale was very low due to extreme micromanagement, low pay, and having to provide tech support for a product that frankly sucked.

So they called us into a series of meetings to “discuss” the issue. The guy leading the meeting asked us as soon as we sat down, “Who here is happy in their job?” And like one or two people raised their hands.

He then said, “Well in this economy, you’re lucky to have a job at all. Meeting over.” And then he left.

Image credits: Salarian_American

#9

Story Time

I used to work retail for a big box office supply chain, you have a 50/50 shot at guessing which one, as there are only two left. Anyway, leading into Black Friday around 2018, my store manager was really making a big deal about cross selling, ink subscriptions, protection plans, the usual stuff.

Well Black Friday comes, and this was the first Black Friday weekend I worked in 10 years that didn’t offer and sort of additional compensation for the staff working that weekend. The shifts were usually 9-10+ hours, and we’d get food catered in for the staff. There also used to be incentives for “top sellers”, that was taken away as well…

The staff got nothing, and in natural fashion, our numbers that weekend were the worst in the store’s history, by a HUGE margin. Our store manager had a meeting with all of the store and read everyone the riot act about how disgusted he was at our numbers being so low. IE – If you don’t take care of your employees, they won’t take care of you.

The store manager threatened “serious repercussions” for those that didn’t go above and beyond the remainder of the year to make up for the lost sales over the weekend. More than 1/3 of the staff quit before the following Spring.

Come to find out later on, the store manager withheld all of these “extras” for the employees, because if the store spends less than a certain amount of petty cash on lunches, dinners, bonus programs, etc. The store manager gets a nice fat bonus at the end of the year…

#10

We had multiple people quit, repeated leadership meetings about bad attitudes, low morale, etc. (Height of the pandemic in a essential workplace) I suggested a monthly meeting with all the staff to check in, see what they were concerned about, ask if they had suggestions, to lay off on unnecessary contests for things that were LITERALLY NOT THE JOB, and generally try to lower the stress on people in general, learn what the key problems were, and show appreciation and that we cared. The manager was pressuring everyone to get a certain number of donations for rotating charities per day. It was stressing everyone out and several people said they were uncomfortable as we were in a poorer neighborhood and times were tough for a lot of people and they were not comfortable asking people who were barely scraping by to donate. This was discussed by leadership as insubordination, and the person who refused to ask people on foodstamps for donations was written off as a “bad apple”. My suggestion to have meetings to talk about their concerns was shot down bc “we don’t want them bringing negative things up” the solution the rest of leadership decided on was to ban the daily meme email bc it was “negative” (just normal “oh God its Monday” stuff), to “shut down” any negative talk and if we heard anyone complain or they brought it things up to us to tell them to focus on work, the contests that were not the actual job, and to have disciplinary meetings with anyone who complained or did not comply.

Literally the entire staff quit.

Image credits: o2mask

#11

They sent a survey about what our perceptions about the workplace were. Voicing some issues with some areas was 100% going to get you in trouble so I complained that the survey was not anonymous, anddidn’t complete most of it.

Some days later I was personally contacted by 3 people wanting to find out what was wrong. They completely missed the whole point

Image credits: madkeepz

#12

I was a nanny for this Instamommy.

I worked 10-12 hour shifts. And normally came in earlier as well as staying later because Mom only wanted the baby for her Instagram. I was exhausted and looked exhausted. She asked me about it. Thinking she was being nice I told her how tired I was.

The next day she had a floor mattress in the nursery right next to the diaper pail. She wanted me to start sleeping there since it was unsafe for me to drive home as tired as I was.

Image credits: cleaning-meaning

#13

One job I had the office manager changed up the bonus structure so all regular staff had the opportunity to raise their base pay by up to $8/hour. There were no bonuses for supervisors (which I was), but, my team was so good that they all hit their top bonuses so all my direct reports made more money than me, without anywhere near as much responsibility. And I kept getting pointed out for training such an amazing team while I kept bringing up the fact that I didn’t get any bonus for having the top team and that I was the lowest paid person there. Oh how I hated that manager…

Image credits: CharlieTuna_

#14

They would update the dress code every time anyone came in wearing anything the boss didn’t like, even if it was entirely appropriate for work. Bill got a new tie for Father’s Day and it has bright green stripes? All-staff email the next day banning “distracting colors.” There were only like 15 employees all working in one small building, too, so it was obvious who the boss was targeting each time.

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Image credits: Much_Difference

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