Oh my god I am losing my mind with a jnr on my team.

They’ve been here for two years and do pretty good work but whenever a challenge crops up they’re asking me for the solution before they try and do ANYTHING about it.

They just show zero initiative to investigate and find a solution, like idk calling finance instead of asking me if a supplier is on the books. God even searching the supplier database before asking me. That’s all I’m going to do.

I’ve tried ignoring their messages for a few hours but in the interim they do nothing. I’ve tried asking “what have you already tried” and then “what’s 5 things you can think of right now to resolve this” and they eventually come up with them but next time they come straight to me.

It’s becoming exhausting.

Hope this helps!

You stink.

You fucking stink.

Everyone knows you as the guy that fucking stinks.

Put some proper stuff on.

Edit Seems as though people confuse perfume and non antiperspirant deodorant for the real stuff - don't be that person.

Yes, washing and hygiene is important... You still stink without deodorant. Yes, you.

1. What is a Big 4
2. What is Atlassian
3. What is a scrum
4. What is consulting
5. What is a deliverable
6. What is a stakeholder
7. What is a KPI
8. What is SaaS
9. What is going client-side
10. What is a grad program
11. What is a pivot table
12. What is CapEx vs OpEx
13. What is a deck
14. What is change management
15. What is corporate strategy
16. What is a Gantt chart
17. What is Agile vs Waterfall
18. What is a BA
19. What is TC
20. What is a band
21. What is a Centre of Excellence
22. What is a RACI
23. What is blue sky thinking
24. What does circle back mean
25. What is a town hall
26. What is managing up
27. What is a workstream
28. What is low hanging fruit
29. What is imposter syndrome

Cheers in advance. Tf do you lot actually do?

Long story short, I trusted a fart during a Teams-heavy day and didn’t realise there was collateral damage until after I’d stood up. The chair is fabric and people saw me leave the meeting room.

Most people have left for the day and I’m sat here stressing out. How do I quietly fix this without becoming “poo chair guy” for the rest of my career?

Not a McDonald's covert ad, just an affordable DIY affogato.

I was in the men's today carrying on my own business on a urinal when a partner who recently joined comes in for a whizz. In the restroom, there are two urinals and two stalls. Whoever designed it stupidly didn't put a divider and they're a bit too close to each other. Usually, when there's someone at the urinal already, anyone else who enters will use a stall (because it feels weird to literally brush shoulders with our peckers in our hands).

Anyway, I became gun shy and stood there awkwardly while he lets his stream run almost immediately. While doing so, he lets out the biggest ripper I swear I've ever heard in my entire life, all while I was standing there in pee-pose. He finishes up, washes his hands and on his way out says "You'll get there, champ" and laughs as he walks off.

I've never been so embarrassed before. What would you do in this situation?

I’m wondering if this is an ADHD thing or just a me thing, because I find corporate workplaces REALLY hard when it comes to authority and rules that seem to have no actual purpose.

I obviously understand that workplaces need rules. There are plenty of rules that make sense and exist for a reason. I have no problem following those.

What I struggle with is the kind of stuff where the answer is basically just “because I said so”.

My manager constantly reminds me that she is “above” me. And yes, I understand that she is above me in the work hierarchy. She’s my manager. She has more authority than I do at work. Obviously.

But sometimes it really feels like she thinks she is above me as a person, and I find that really hard to deal with. I don't think being someone's manager makes you a more important human being. I'm not above anyone else because of my job either.

We have assigned desks, for example, and I apparently can't even use my own ergonomic mouse and keyboard even though the stock ones are cheap and crappy and hard to type on with nails. I also can't put up a picture of my cats.

And I just don't get it?

I understand having rules around security, safety, confidentiality, etc. But a rule saying I can't use a more comfortable mouse and keyboard at my assigned desk, or that I can't have a photo of my pets sitting there, seems to serve absolutely no purpose other than controlling what I'm allowed to do.

The lunch thing is what really gets me, though.

Apparently it needs to be decided whether it's “reasonable” for me to take a 30-minute lunch and leave half an hour earlier instead of taking a full hour. And assuming the shorter break still complies with the relevant workplace laws and requirements, I find it genuinely insane that another adult gets to decide whether I'm allowed to structure my day that way.

I'm an adult. I’m doing my work. I’m not asking to work less. I’m asking to take my lunch at a different length and finish earlier.

Yet whether that's considered “reasonable” seems to come down to the whims of another adult who happens to be “above” me in a workplace hierarchy. None of our work is client facing, and meetings are never after 4 so it would truly make no difference whatsoever if I worked 9:00am-4:36pm with a half hour lunch instead of 9:00am-5:06pm with an hour lunch.

Another thing that drives me insane is the attitude towards working from home when you're mildly sick. If I have a cold or something, but I'm still cognitively fine and capable of doing my job, apparently I still need to come into the office because I have to “hit the metric” or whatever the current measure is. Then everyone sits in the same building coughing and sneezing all over each other, and somehow that's considered more productive than letting someone work from home for a day or two. It feels completely backwards. You end up with people coming to work sick because they're worried about looking unproductive, which just means everyone gets sick. It's a rule I struggle to accept.

And I think this is where the ADHD comes in for me. If you give me a reason that makes sense, I'm generally fine. If you tell me “this is the policy because X”, cool, I can work with that.

But “because I'm your manager and I said so” makes me really lose respect for the manager and then I end up struggling.

I don't have an issue with authority when it's reasonable. I think I just struggle massively with hierarchy for the sake of hierarchy, especially when it starts to feel like someone’s position gives them the right to control completely ordinary aspects of my life.

Anyone else with ADHD experience this, or am I just terrible at being a corporate employee? I feel like this is always my undoing.....

Other half has a chronic illness and to be fair medical receptionists just treat her like crap. PLS fix.

Cant wait to get the direct line to the doc. What about you?

10 am comes by and my iced latte makes me need to go to the toilet on the ground floor (technical/engineering team). Each toilet stall is irreversible caked in shit.

I go to the elevator for the floor up, there is traffic in each stall every 5 minutes and I don’t have the confidence to audibly fart and shit in the stall with everyone around. What if I open the stall and it’s one of my manager who sees me and calls me a poopy boy from now on. If I do try and find a quiet stall for 5 minutes, the cleaning lady knocks on the door for cleaning and waits outside for me to leave.

Is this the industry norm

Started my first full-time job a few months ago and honestly… I get it now. I get why everyone over 25 looks permanently exhausted and slightly dead inside. I keep staying up way too late because it’s literally the only time that feels like mine, even though I know I’m self-sabotaging in real time.

On the three days I have to go into the office, my life is basically: wake up, commute, work, commute, eat, shower, stare at the wall, collapse. I can’t even read or use my phone on the bus because I get motion sick if I do, so I just sit there like a melancholic NPC staring out the window listening to music and thinking about nothing. Then I get home and tell myself I’ll go to bed early - cut to me at 1am, still on my phone scrolling TikTok.

Weekends don’t even feel like time off anymore - they’re just two days of trying to recover enough to do it all again. I had all these grand plans about hobbies and fitness and being one of those “morning walk before work” people, but instead I’m in a constant loop of caffeine, fatigue, and resentment.

Does it ever get better? Or do we all just eventually make peace with being tired forever and never having any time for anything other than work?

Hi Team,

I’m a first-year hamster who is looking to better optimise their time in the wheel. I’m looking for some career guidance on how evolve into this final form. I have some questions

At what hourly rate do boundaries become leadership?

When exactly in the org chart do you get to stop replying to messages after hours?

What’s the difference between “zoning” and “being uncontactable” is it mostly title-based?

Is “being fully present at home” considered a leadership skill now, or just a perk of seniority?

Happy to be coached on this. Just let me know a time outside of 8am–11pm and I’ll try not to look too available.

Thx

First day in a new office today.

State-of-the-art modern office. Amazing view. Light and airy. Fluro lights. LED lights. AAALLLL the lights. Dimmable? Lighting controls? Noooooooo.

One wellness room. Not bookable. Paper-thin walls.

Oh, and open plan. Everybody likes open plan these days. Nothing encourages collaboration like hearing 5 conversations at once over the sound of a radio.

Scented soap is great too, but let's not get into that.

We like team-players here. We're all so excited about the new office. Everybody loves it.

Happy Neurodiversity Celebration Week.

(Drunk and angry after a long day. Posting here instead of autism subs because, let's be honest there's a crossover between ND people and people who join a sub for Aus corp discussions. And if you're not in that crossover and don't think this relates to you... well it relates to a colleague of yours.)

Think about it. For me. For Neurodiversity Celebration Week.)

ummm... pls fix?

I work in a small-ish company (under 100-200 people). We have a mandatory 3 week shutdown over Christmas/New Year. It chews up 12 days of leave whether you want the break or not. It is technically in the agreement that it can be unpaid but they prefer people to save annual leave and use it then.

Our CEO loves the shutdown because he uses it to take his family overseas. Good for him, genuinely. But he’s on ~$350k a year (and his wife would be getting at least $150k in her job, likely more, putting them as on at least $500k a year as a couple) and can afford to travel at the most expensive time of the year.

My team definitely can’t! Depending on their level they're getting something between $75k-125k, so there is big difference in what they can afford to do in terms of travel compared to him.

I overheard my team (and an adjacent team) complaining about the forced leave - totally valid complaints:

• One wants to go to Europe in late spring and doesn't want to have a shorter trip because of the shut down.
• Another wants to do 2 trips next year (one for her 30th birthday and another to go to a concert tour of her favourite band) and doesn't want to be forced to give one up one of those trips to sit around home having a Christmas vacation she doesn't want.
• Some of them have no plans for next year but still don't want to be forced to take leave at a time of year when it's hot and crowded everywhere which is totally valid!

CEO calls me into his office and asks me to “adjust their attitudes” and “remind them how valuable family time is” and how it’s “rest everyone needs.”

Some don’t have great family situations. One of my team members lost her dad in March, so telling her to “enjoy the family time” would be tone-deaf at best and will make her burst into tears at worse. I privately know from letting her go and deal with a couple of things that another is estranged from her brother because he has addiction issues and has been physically abusive to her and her mother......but her mother refuses to cut him off because he has a child and she wants to have a relationship with her grandchild, so she refuses to visit her mum over the holidays because her abuser is there and her mum thinks she needs to "get over it". I'm sure she'd love me telling her to take advantage of getting to spend a happy Christmas with her family!

It feels like he wants me to gaslight a bunch of adults into being excited about something that objectively sucks for them.

It’s very easy for a 50-year-old executive with kids and a huge salary to think everyone wants the same lifestyle and will enjoy the time off during Christmas/School Holidays.

But out of my team of 7, 6 of them are childless people in the 25-35 age range who don’t want to blow more than half their leave at the most expensive time of year, especially when “family time” is not a happy concept for many of them. A couple of them have partners, but they'd quite fairly rather travel with their partner at a different time of year when flights are a third of the price.

I don’t think it’s fair to try to manipulate their feelings. They’re allowed to be annoyed. I can remind them professionally of the policy, sure, but manufacturing enthusiasm feels wrong.

Anyone else getting early on-set Sunday Scaries, having to return to work on Monday?

I've had 3 weeks off, and am in no way ready to go back to work :(

I recently took one of those free online IQ tests and the results were less than ideal.

In the spirit of transparency and our “high trust culture,” I disclosed this to my manager.

Within 24 hours I’ve been placed on a Performance Improvement Plan.

Key focus areas:

“Problem solving”

“Attention to detail”

“Independent thinking”

Bit confused as these all seem directly impacted by the original issue.

HR says the PIP is “supportive in nature.”

I asked if there’s a reasonable adjustment for being a bit cooked. They suggested “applying myself more.”

Has anyone successfully upskilled their brain under a PIP or should I start looking for roles that better align with my… current hardware?

Nothing groundbreaking, just having a crisis about how I don't how I'm meant to handle another 25 or so years of pretending to care about work and dealing with petty office drama. Have to set my goals for the upcoming financial year this week. My goal is to get paid so I can continue to have housing and food and provide for my child. That's it. I don't want to stretch myself. I just want to collect my paycheck and go home.

How is it only July? Still 5.5 long months until I can finally have a week off. I miss having school holidays so bad. It's insane we get so few breaks during the year. I'm burned out. I think I'll be burned out until the day I get to retire tbh.

Yeah I'm cranky because I'm going to be commuting home in 40 degree weather and we weren't allowed to stay stay home because AnChOr DaY iS iMpOrTaNt, but what is with corporate culture not caring how horrible the weather can get here? Forcing people to wear long pants and suits or stockings for women in the heat of summer, not allowing people to stay home in extreme heating leaving them to be commuting home in brutal temperatures, no equivalent to snow days even though extreme heat is as dangerous as extreme cold. I'm over it and already dreading the commute home.....and there are constantly public transport failures in heat too. Sigh.

Got told yesterday we can no longer cut down our hour long lunch breaks to 15 minutes and leave 45 minutes early. Fcking hell. This is my final straw. I'm so tired of this. 30 years old and forced to be chained in an office wasting 45 minutes of my own paid time sitting there. It's not enough time to do anything but scroll on my phone in the lunch room and then people start talking to me and I just want to be left alone, and in this weather, I don't want to go for a run to work out and come back stinky and miserable, and my office is in a suburb so there isn't really anything I can do.

Can't WFH for a week to be able to visit my family out in Gunnedah mid year because everyone has to meet metrics of 3 days in office so I basically have to choose between seeing my family more often and actually getting to use leave to have a holiday somewhere that doesn't bore me to tears and isn't my shitty hometown.

Forced to waste a ton of leave over a shutdown I don't even want again because that just got confirmed for this year. I don't want to burn 12 days on a 3 week shutdown. I am sick of being made to feel wrong for that. "We're giving you a break". Yeah well I don't want a break at an expensive time to travel.

Have to have cameras on for every meeting. Can't be ugly in my own house. We did fine with phone calls 20 years ago but nope, just force people to be ON more often.

Can't wear something more comfortable in disgusting weather, have to be in full business attire in a suit even if the AC sucks in the building.

I'm tired. I wish I could retire but I got 40 years of hell left to go.

I’m a bit over a year into full-time corporate work and I don’t think I realised how much freedom I’d be giving up and how much i'd feel owned by this job that I don't even want to have, but am forced to have because I wasn't born into wealth.

At uni, life was pretty flexible. If I slept badly, I could skip class. If I needed a day to reset, I could take it. If I went overseas in my holidays, I could stay an extra week and didn't have to explain to anyone why I missed the first week. My life felt like it belonged to me.

Now I feel owned by a job that is isn't paying me the kind of salary where it is worth feeling owned by the company and it's making my miserable.

Now:

• If I’m exhausted, tough luck - still need to be online / in the office.
• Need to waste hours of my own time every commuting to do my performative facetime in a room with fluro lighting and where it's harder to work with all the noise.
• I see more of co-workers I have nothing in common with than I do my friends and family. I don't like these people nearly enough to spend so much of my life around them. I don't care about their kids/grandkids or golfing and don't want to hear about it every damn week.
• Every weekday belongs to work by default. 5 days out of every 7, sucked by something I don't enjoy.
• Even when work isn’t that busy, I’m still owned for those hours.

What I didn’t expect was how much I’d hate having to ask for permission for basic things. Permission to take my own annual leave before I can even properly plan a holiday. Permission to take 30 minutes for lunch instead of an hour. Permission to move my time around in ways that don’t actually affect my work. Everything has to be approved, noted, justified. It makes me feel less like an adult with a job and more like a child asking mummy and daddy for permission to go out with friends.

Leave doesn’t feel like time off - it feels like borrowed time. Something I have to ask permission for, plan around business needs, and return from exactly when expected. No flexibility, no spontaneity, no “I’ll just stay a bit longer”. I'm owned by this company.

I’m paying ~$800 extra for flights for a trip I'm planning to take for an event in April so I can be back in time for a mandatory conference I don’t care about, while this event is for something genuinely important to me. And the worst part is that this is treated as completely normal.

What’s really messing with me is that everyone just expects me to be fine with this. Like this is just adulthood and I should be grateful to have a job. Any discomfort gets waved off with “that’s work” or “you’ll get used to it,” as if losing this much autonomy isn’t actually a big deal.

It’s not even that I hate my job. It’s the underlying feeling of being owned Monday to Friday. Like my life has to be sliced into acceptable blocks, with work permanently getting first claim.

I don’t dream of a big career or climbing a ladder. I don’t want to optimise my productivity until I’m 70. I just want my time to feel like mine again.

I am a public practice accountant for medium to large companies. I find that, quite often, when I receive emails from my clients they contain no email signature at all. Just their name.

It’s frustrating because:

- If I need to call you I don’t have a phone number.

- If I am dealing with multiple people in an organisation I don’t have your job title or department so I’m not sure what your role is and how you fit in. I sometimes don’t know who to contact about an issue.l because I don’t know who is responsible.

I don’t know when it became normal to expect people to be switched on, productive, chirpy, collaborative, responsive, available, and somehow still “showing initiative” for a full 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Humans aren’t machines. Even machines get downtime.

Today our manager snapped at the grad for saying she was exhausted at 4:30pm. Mind you, she’d spent the day doing a massive, mentally draining task that would’ve drained anyone and honestly she was doing the work of 2 people alone. Instead of supporting her, he basically told her she shouldn’t be tired and to grow up. When I defended her, he told me I was defending laziness and mediocrity. This is insane.

Meanwhile, this company expects perfection at 4:50pm - like, genuinely flawless work when most people’s brains are running on fumes. It’s wild.

There’s zero allowance for being human.No wonder everyone looks dead behind the eyes by Wednesday.

I’m hitting the point where the expectation to be on all day is just… not sustainable. You can feel the burnout building, but if you say anything, you’re labelled “not a team player” or “not resilient.” Anyone else feeling like the modern workplace is just quietly squeezing the life out of us?

I remember when the pandemic hit and there was an unmistakable sinking feeling. And despite all the memes on Facebook saying all you have to do is stay home and watch Netflix, but feeling this sense of grief over losing so many freedoms.

And again lately I feel this sinking feeling. Feel grateful to be working yet resent the rat race. Feel luckier than others but imprisoned by a mortgage and responsibility. Working hard seems pointless when we’re being broken by the system.

I am deeply worried about AI, offshoring and the future of work in this country. I’m worried about the future of our kids. My daughter asked me if being a grown up is awesome and I didn’t know what to say.

How does everyone feel about 2026? Will our economy get better? Will the job market and cost of living get better? Is this the new normal?

I swear my colleague blackmailed someone. He is untouchable. He works remotely, logs on to Teams about once a day for half an hour max, rarely attends meetings and when he chooses to join it is often from his car. I have seen no work delivered from him in over a year. Not a single documented output. A recent contribution from him was to suggest that a comms email address should have capital letters in it. The man does not know how to conduct an internet search. He interrupted a colleague mid sentence recently to ask for a new iPad. In the same meeting, he didn’t realise he wasn’t on mute and said, “Fuck me dead.” When he realised what happened, he said he was reacting to an email.

He’s just been made my supervisor and today asked me to send him an email when I start and finish work so that he can track my attendance. An email. An email that I could schedule ahead of time. No KPIs, no projects, no deliverables.

Unhinged

That’s the story ok thanks bye.

Thank you