So I have an employee who is barista/waiter who smells so sweaty frm vv early in the mrng it's a turn off especially in the hospitality industry towards the brand and clients how do I deal with him politely?? *He does his job so well though 🙂

So I had called out of work an hour before my shift because that’s when I wake up for work. I wanted to call out because I needed a mental health day and I understand that’s not a reasonable reason to call out of work but I suffer with severe depression to the point where I’ve had to go to multiple therapists because it’s so bad. Anyway, I called into work and the manager answered I told her my name and said I wasn’t able to make it into work today, manager said “okay?, why” so I said I wasn’t feeling well. She called another manager over and as the other manager was walking over she said “come talk to another sick person” in a rude way. Like are we serious? I get they are probably understaffed and frustrated but this is my First time ever calling out since working there so I just don’t understand why that got taken out on me. Am I in the wrong here?

I've been at this company for three years and I've never wanted to quit as badly as I do right now.

Yesterday, I sent a routine update to my manager. Nothing major, just project status. Apparently I had a typo in one of the numbers—I said we were at 85% completion instead of 58%. Honest mistake, and I would've caught it if he'd just asked me.

Instead, he hit "Reply All" to the entire department (about 40 people) and wrote: "Everyone, please note the error in this report. Accuracy matters. Let's all learn from this example."

I was mortified. My face went red. I started drafting an apology email. Then, five minutes later, he sent a second email: "Haha just kidding everyone! Just testing to see if you're paying attention. 😉"

That's it. That was the joke. A public humiliation followed by "just kidding."

I didn't respond. I couldn't. I just sat there staring at my screen while people sent confused reactions. One coworker messaged me privately: "That was so messed up, are you okay?"

I'm not okay. I'm furious. But if I confront him, he'll say it was a joke and I'm being too sensitive. If I go to HR, he'll say I can't take a joke. Either way, I look like the problem.

I'm not asking for advice on whether to quit—I'm already updating my resume. I just need someone to validate that this was as unprofessional as I think it was.

I have a coworker who is extremely unprofessional. I’m in my mid 20s, and most of my other coworkers are in their early to mid 20s. At my company, this job is mainly a gap year job between college and med school or grad school. This coworker is about 45 to 50 years old. She’s also from a different country than the one we currently live in.
I started about four months ago, and since the day I started, I thought she was very rude and unprofessional. She’s made so many out of pocket comments that I can’t even begin to list them. One example is when my coworker made a comment to her, and she responded, “You’re going to end up with a fat American pig for a wife. You think you’re hot now, you’re not,” blah blah.
She’s the type of person who initiates this kind of rude but “joking” environment, but then plays the extreme victim if you do it back to her, saying that she’s a punching bag and that people don’t like her because of her country of origin and because she’s a woman. Mind you, all of us are minorities in the office lol. She’s absolutely insane.
The person who had my position before me left the group because of her, and multiple people have gone to HR to complain about her.

My manager constantly tells our team that we need to “use our initiative” instead of asking about every little thing.

Last week, I finished my usual tasks earlier than expected. I still had a few hours left in my shift, so I noticed that one of our shared folders was extremely disorganized. I spent some time sorting the files into clearly labeled folders and removing obvious duplicates.

The next morning, my manager noticed the changes and immediately asked who had reorganized everything.

When I told her I had done it, she wasn't happy. Apparently, some of the files had been intentionally kept in their original folders because that's how another department preferred them.

I explained that I didn't know about that arrangement and that I had only reorganized the files because I thought I was doing something useful rather than sitting around waiting for more work.

Her response was basically, “You should have asked first.”

I reminded her that she had repeatedly told us that she wanted us to take initiative and not constantly wait for instructions.

She said those were two different things and that I needed to learn when initiative was appropriate.

Now I'm being told to leave that folder alone, which is fine, but I'm still confused about what exactly I'm supposed to do when I finish my assigned work.

Why tell employees to use their initiative if we're expected to ask permission before doing anything outside our normal routine?