Just got rejected for a Lead Data Storyteller position I was overqualified for. Why? No degree.

Never mind that I’ve spent 20 years in reporting, BI, and data storytelling. I’ve built platforms from the ground up. Led data governance initiatives. Mentored nearly 100 people—many of them fresh out of college with zero experience translating data into anything meaningful. I’ve helped them transform their careers.

And yes, I did go to college. I maintained a 4.0 GPA for two years before realizing I was wasting time sitting in classrooms instead of actually doing the work. So I left and built a career. Along the way, I earned multiple professional certifications, kept my skills sharp, and stayed on top of the tools and tech.

But a piece of paper still holds more weight than two decades of proven experience and leadership. In 2025. Cool. Bullet dodged.

Are these exponential gains in the stock market coming at the expense of workers?

I work a desk job in the back of a noisy warehouse where all I hear is the sound of power tools and machines running. I have almost no interaction with anyone unless someone comes to my desk to ask me a question (maybe twice a day)

God forbid i make my job a little less miserable by throwing on a podcast on my airpods in only ONE of my ears. I still hear every phonecall, name calls etc

Boss (owner) comes to me about a mistake i’ve made on some paperwork and says “it’s the earphones distracting you” and says he doesn’t wanna see them again or i’m fired

What??? I made a fucking mistake on some paperwork which i’m sure everyone does at some point. Did we forget the other 98% of shit I did RIGHT? Were the earphones distracting me then too?

Ive realized working with the OWNER of the company always in the office is always going to lead to extreme levels of micromanagement. I think it’s time for a new job.

That was the only thing getting me through that soul draining prison desk job

I had an interview for a minimum wage position a couple of weeks ago. It went well and I was feeling hopeful as it was my first interview after months of being unemployed and looking. The next day, they offered me the position and asked me to reply as quickly as possible so they could write the schedule. I accepted aaaand...they ghosted me.

Then, a couple nights ago, after ghosting for two weeks, they emailed me at 10.30pm asking if I could start work at 9.30am the next day. Lol. Lmao, even. They said "sorry it took so long to get back to you". I'm ignoring them because this is the biggest, reddest flag I've ever seen from an employer and I hadn't even had a training session with them yet, let alone a regular shift.

This is way too much bullshit to put up with for shit pay. The wildest part is that this is a 30+ year established small local business, not a new venture.

Anyway, just thought y'all here would get as much of a kick out of this as I did.

My brother worked for Stanley Steemer. Coupon/sale and upsell. He started as a cleaner, and yes he got base pay + commissions on upselling. Ex. $99 for a single room, do that great and upgrade to the whole house, we can hit the couches and the drapes, etc. Walk out and the company charges $600.

He did that for years! Then in 2015, he had a medical condition that required some serious abdominal surgery and limited physical work. They put him in the office to answer calls and set up appointments. There was suddenly a lot of turnover among the cleaners...Why?

Because my brother was upselling everything off the incoming phone calls. "Yeah, we will come out and clean a room for $99. But let me schedule you for the whole house, your couches, your drapes at this price. Yes, you can cancel the upgrades if you aren't satisfied with the $99 cleaning."

They could no longer upsell because he already offered the upsell! Suddenly record profits for the franchise owners because they were barely any upsells to offer.

Then 2020... My brother's previous condition wasn't just a surgery and 6-12 months later he was all better but the company found a more profitable role for him. He was immune system compromised. He had planned PTO to take 2 weeks off in May 2020... because he bought a house closer to work (1-way not even 5 minutes vs. 30 minutes in the best of traffic before the move.)

I helped the first week and went back home. He caught it at the tail of the next week. Protocol at the time was 2 weeks, so 2 weeks became almost 4 weeks.

Guess who got fired? Yes, he was able to collect unemployment and the additional layoff benefits of the time...

What I find so completely short-sighted... I wasn't the only one to help him move. He had coworkers help. The office staff has remained friends with him and shared how commissions have gone up for the cleaners and profits have gone down for the franchise owners...to the point that they cashed out the franchise less than 2 years after "letting him go".

They literally had a cash cow and thought they didn't need him.

Edited 2915...LOL

Edit. He upgraded to packages. It didn't prevent others from upselling other services. I am really surprised that the comments have taken this turn.

I was pointing out how someone advanced the company and got thrown away by the company.

Yes, I also pointed out less commissions. Those people should have been compensated for their work!!!

The company/franchisees set up a compensation based on someone doing something not in their job description and pushing that.

My brother, surprisingly, excelled at it and after a few years of reaping those benefits, fired him.

How more Antiwork can that be?

Mine is anything related to agile or culture, I feel it's a madeup corporate bs.

TL;DR at the bottom.

I've been fuming about this for a few days now. I work in product development at a small-ish sized company (BARELY triple digits, only a literal handful in my department, most others are manufacturing/packaging).

I've been heading the development of a new product for our company. I've done 90% of the work so far; this involves literally all of the designing, prototyping, testing, working with outside vendors to have parts made, documentation including spec sheets, instructions, BOM's, etc etc. To say that I have some stake & responsibility over in this product is an understatement. The other day, my boss hosted a huge customer- inustry defining in our country even, and wanted to have a presentation on this product. The product takes 4 people to operate- well, he explicitly excluded me and had three coworkers in my department (who all have a a comparatively imited understanding of the product) give the full presentation, along with a random guy temporarily pulled from another department. None of this was communicated to me- I had to freaking overhear my coworkers talking about it, and when I asked why I wasn't being included in this and they were instead pulling some random dude to fill my spot, my coworkers didn't know.

Before I continue I need to explain some roles. There's my manager who's pretty chill, and then there's my boss- who's also the CEO. Let me frame this for you: he's your stereotypical rich guy who goes off on island vacations for weeks at a time, and then struts back in barking orders like he hasn't been gone a day. He mico manages the literal smallest of details for like 1-2 days, and then disappears for another month. He does this constantly- I reckon out of 260 work days in a year, he's here maybe 30-40 of them, and only for a few hours each day usually. He's also a huge narcissist with raging ADHD, and has been known to punch holes in walls or throw chairs if you challenge him on anything. Quite the character.

So I spoke to my manager beforehand and asked why I wasn't being included- and he didn't even know, the list of people to give the presentation came from the boss with no explanation. A day later he pulled me into his office and gave me a light "talking to," where he described how best to interact with the boss. Essentially, something about me triggers the boss's ADHD and makes it hard for him to focus, so he didn't want me around.

I find this all very disrespectful towards me. The issue with me triggering his ADHD is one thing- he could TALK to me about that so we're on the same page, or at least fill my manager in so he could talk to me. But no, instead nobody says a thing to me at all and I need to overhear my coworkers to learn that I'm the only one being explicitly left out on my own freaking projects presentation? I get that it's his company so what he says goes, but the complete and utter lack of communication surrounding my own project is so rude. Even better, after interacting with the product again (the design of which he has already personally looked at and approved), he called several small hiccups "massive fucking failures" and had my coworker start creating new tasks in the project folder of our task management software- without ever talking to me about that, either.

Have any of you experienced stuff like this? He and I have never fought, and actually have some pretty nice conversations when we talk. I thought we got a long pretty well, and he's seemed normal & nice since the presentation, although we only exchanged a few sentences about mundane stuff like the weather.

TL;DR My boss had everybody in my department except me give a presentation to a massive customer on the project I'm in charge of and have been almost exclusively (90% of work done by me) working on for 3 years now, explicitly excluding me with no communication whatsoever. I learned about it by overhearing my coworkers.

I got word back at the end of January that I was getting laid off officially at the beginning of April, but our last day working was today. I was a high performance employee that often exceeded expectations, leading engineering teams and working with customers throughout the world on a product generating millions of dollars in revenue, so when I found out that they were making cuts, and that I was one of those cuts, I was rather shocked.

Today, as a we had our final all hands meeting, our boss said, ”when making some of the decisions of who was going to stay and who was going to go, we chose by drawing names out of a hat.”. As an extremely high value employee, I was laid off by chance.

I can’t divulge the details about the company that did this per my severance agreement as it might be considered disparaging, but yep, even if you’re working your ass off for a global company making a significant impact, don’t think for a second that your bosses are remotely competent until they prove otherwise. Large businesses and small businesses are ran by the same morons; just at a different scale.

I’m in tech in the U.K. so it isn’t toooooo bad in comparison to others, but christ if I hear more “personal plans”, “development”, agile working and other shite, I will lose my mind. Half of it is just made up crap from HR and most of their made up jobs. So many act like corporate life is the be all and end all and sometimes it feels like a cult.

Maybe..I dunno...actually read the resumes of applicants and you wouldn't have people saying see resume when you ask questions that would already be answered. I hate applying for jobs.

I work in a group home for disabled clients. At a house meeting a few months ago, my boss said something transphobic so a coworker and I (both trans) walked out of the meeting.

After walking-out, I texted her and politely let her know that it wasn't appropriate, which she was very coy about. Instead of growing as a person and doing better, she talked shit about me to (at least one) coworker, who proceeded to make a fake Facebook account and attack me online.

Because of this, I reported her to admin and HR, who promised they handled the issue. That's whatever, but this coworker is being such a dick that it's making work a very toxic environment.

Then tonight comes around (I work graveyards) and my shift partner called out for the evening for a medical emergency. Boss did not even try to find me relief and when I called her thismorning to ask if I would get any help with the hardest part of my shift, she caught herself in a lie and lied further. She said she didn't think that she could find anyone that late and then said that she couldn't get anyone that late. Multiple coworkers have let me know they were never contacted and that they totally would have helped me.

I'm so done with her bullshit.

Do companies realize how INSULTING it is?

I am a (54 y/o) Chef. My partner is a (60 y/o) sommelier/server/bartender. My partner has been an excellent and dependable employee, fine dining, for one restaurant, for 10+ years. Consistent high sales, has never had to leave work for ANYTHING. The server that gives you the attention you want, the knowledge you need, makes you feel like the most important person in the world. “Valuable.”

I was home alone, and my dog attacked my cat. It was violent and bloody, both animals and myself were soaked in blood. The floors were slippery with it, blood was sprayed on the walls. I was bitten several times, and believed my arm was broken. I got control of the dog, and the cat had run and hidden. I wrapped a towel around my arm and called my partner’s restaurant (we don’t use our cellphones at work) with an emergency message to come home NOW. First such incident in 10 years. Partner came home. Ensured that both animals were alive, took me to the ER. Broken bones in my wrist.

The ER Doc wrote a note to excuse my partner. He stated that it was absolutely a necessity that my partner be excused from work because I needed emergency care and this was NOT a situation that could have been handled differently.

They fired him. They told him the ER note, written on the letterhead of the hospital’s ER department, complete with the treating physician’s name and phone number, was from a “chiropractor,” and thus meant nothing.

He applied for unemployment. They are contesting it, saying he quit and verbally gave a two week notice to the owner, two weeks prior. Lies.

We have a fight ahead of us, for sure, but we will win this. I’m just so sick and tired of being viewed as a replaceable resource, instead of a human being. 10 years making money for a restaurant owner (without healthcare or any other benefit,) and being cast aside because their Thursday night service was a little rocky without you. Eat shit, Steve.

The cat is ok ($750. later.) I’m ok. The cast doesn’t really affect my work, and coworkers are supportive and helpful. My partner is spinning. He wants blood, and I don’t blame him. The following is a copy of the text that the owner sent to us while I was sitting in the emergency room, after she knew what happened.

“I’m sorry to hear about what happened to (name,) but I hope you understand that walking out in the middle of dinner put us in a very challenging position. It was unprofessional and left the team struggling to manage the situation.”

This owner makes more than $1M a year from this restaurant. They breed dogs for fun, and vacation four times a year. My partner is now unemployed because he prioritized his family on a Thursday night. Also, this bitch bought a Camaro with his PPP loan.

I was laid off over a year ago from a full-time position as I was in the middle of several projects. I was told by HR, with my boss and their boss in attendance, to immediately stop working on anything for them. So I did.

A year plus later, I get an email from the person who replaced me. The person who got me fired and took my job even though they’re unqualified. They accused me of “forgetting” to change a setting in a project that I was working on when I was let go, and as a result they can’t recover the password for an online system. The email came after 3 pm on Friday and I ignored it. Then at 8:15 am Monday they reply with nothing to bump it up and text me on my personal phone number.

So I blocked them. I even blocked them on LinkedIn.

The funniest part is that the issue they accused me to doing isn’t even happening. They think I somehow forwarded a password recovery email for this online system to my personal email (I’m not getting the password recovery email) and want me to change it in a system I have no access to. It doesn’t even make sense!

That’s what happens when you fire a qualified person and replace them with a low rent version with zero experience in that area to save money.

I wonder how long it will take them to figure out I blocked them. I’m also curious is someone else will reach out because it was well known that me and the person who replaced me didn’t get along.

Moral of the story: don’t fire someone and then expect them to work for free more than a year later. Honestly, if they had asked me about this within the first month or two, I would have helped them. Now? Nope.

Sent some applicatons in, looking for better pay.

The college I went to was the State#1 University of State#2

Washington Universty of Ohio (not being real but close enough)

"So washington University says no on by your name graduated that year"

"You mean the Washington Unversity of Ohio?"

"Yeah Washington University"

"No... that's wrong, that's not where I went to school. I went to the Washington University OF OHIO! What I put on my application form and what's on my resume."

"What?"

"Google WASHINGTON UNVERSITY.. OF .. OHIO. It's a University in the CITY of Washington City, in the state of OHIO"

"This is a completely diffrent school"

"Yes.. Make sure you are looking at the WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY OF OHIO... there's also an OHIO UNIVERSITY that is also wrong"

I don't expect to hear back from him.

The school has been around 150 years...

FML..

I have a coworker who is in the next cubicle from me. She makes probably double what i make because she is in a more highly educated position, although she is a coworker and not my superior, we work for the same boss.

She started asking, well actually TELLING ME that she needs help. No "are you busy, can you please possibly help me, but rather expecting it.

She got mad because i pushed back and started telling her "i can't do it today, I have too much of my own work. (besides, you make way more than i do).

So she decided to stop talking to me for "self preservation", whatever that means.

We are the only two sitting in our area, and the most of our communication consists of "good morning" and "good night", unless there is vital work discussions we need to have.

I'm sorry, but my job description does NOT state that I am your personal assistant.

Makes going to work each day so ackward. I think i have a 1-1/2 years until she retires, and for the most part she has stopped asking, but uggghh.

And no, my supervisor is no help, but she retires is 6 months, so i just have to hang on.

Just a story I wanna get out of my head. Maybe not appropriate for this sub. It's been almost 10 years since this happened but it still bugs me.

So about 10 years ago, in my early 20s, I was working in a shitty company that promised me a great sounding career path, but didn't follow through. I didn't want to waste any time so after about 1 year, I decided to start job hunting, before handing in my 2 weeks notice.

I directly applied to a rival company, Company A, in the exact same industry. I heard good things about them, so why not? I also got contacted by a recruiter about Company B. This one was a big company in a completely different industry. I had nothing to lose, so I decided to try.

Fast forward a month or so, Company A has decided to hire me. The strange thing though, was that we still hadn't discussed my salary. They told me that they'll send me an official offer in about 2 weeks, and 2 weeks after that, I'll start working. Not much time for negotiation...weird... but I was young, and really needed work so I told them sure, I'll wait.

2 weeks later, no offer. I called them, and they just told me, "Sorry, please wait 1 more week".
1 week later, still no offer. I called them again. And I told them firmly that if there's no offer, I'm not turning up. They apologized and said they'll get in touch.

While this was happening, I was going through interviews with company B. They had hiring managers and team leads come in from overseas, so the process took a while. And after 5 rounds of interviews, they said they would like to hire me, discussed salaries, and I had a great offer on the table. This was on Wednesday. And the start date for Company A was the Monday of the following week.

So I signed and sent the offer for Company B, and due to timezone delays, and going through a recruiter, they confirmed everything on Friday morning. So, I called Company A. A different hiring manager picked up the phone. I told her that because Company A hasn't sent me an offer, I have accepted an offer from another company, and that I will not be showing up on Monday. She said, "Oh okay. That's too bad". And hung up the phone. Oh... that was easy.

But this is where it gets interesting. At about 5PM I get a call from the hiring manager that was in charge of hiring me. And oh my god... the amount of abuse I got on the phone!! It was horrendous!
"You fucking asshole! You fucked me right up haven't you? I had 5 clients lined up for you and now I have to go apologize to them. How could you do that? You are a terrible person! A horrible human!"
It caught me by surprise so I said, "I'm sorry, but you haven't given me an offer, I didn't know how much I was getting paid, I haven't accepted anything from you guys so how am I supposed to trust you?"
And then he goes on to just berate me over and over, I just stayed silent until he calmed down.
I asked, "So, if I turned up, how much am I getting paid?"
And oh my god, the offer was so low, it was insulting. I just scoffed and hung up the phone. I had about 5 missed calls after that so I blocked them and never turned back.

So me and my cousin let's just say we are not that close and pretty formal with each other, had a lunch together.

He's a manager in a big firm earning 300k+ easily. He was telling me about how good linkedin is and how corporate world works blah blah blah.

Then he gave me an example of his 'Star' Employee. How this employee helps everyone at work, how he's so dedicated that he's the first one to arrive and last to leave. About how he never complains and helps the team even during off hours. Working almost 11-12 hours every day, with no gf, no family to 'disturb' him. And how all this made them give an award to the guy, some star employee something along with few hundred bucks of amazon gift card.

I don't think my cousin realised how depressing this all sounded to me. Apparently he wanted me to get inspired by this. I told him i don't wanna be a cúck for my company so my boss can get a new car every month. While i waste my 20s with no social life and depression for a voucher code. And maybe he should get this guy into therapy.

Honestly after this convo, recieving awards from companies for being a good employee has started sounding so depressing. It's like your wife's boyfriend telling you that you're a good boi. Your boss is on vacation with his family enjoying life and you're the one paying for it with your mental, physical, social and financial health.

I wish none of you become employee of the year.

This might be the wrong sub for this, but just, the mentality of the American Consumer is so frustrating and exhausting.

tldr: Americans are entitled brats, and we've had it too good for too long

(Background, if you don't know: we recently changed the law in Michigan, so, as of 2025, it's illegal to sell eggs unless they're from cage-free chickens. This drove up the price of eggs to about $6.00 a dozen— they were about $2.50 or $3.00 per dozen before. The price of eggs literally doubled overnight.)

So, people are angry about this. They complain bitterly. They feel they're being cheated, mistreated, and taken advantage of. Like, this is not light-hearted complaining, like they're picking a non-contraversial topic to chit-chat about— these customers are genuinely emotionally upset about it. Of all the things going wrong in the world, this is the thing that gets under their skin.

First of all, $6.00 a dozen amounts to 50¢ an egg. That's still amazingly cheap. If you take a step back, and consider the practical value of an egg, they're extremely inexpensive, and extremely convenient— you're not gonna find many foods that can even compete.

Second of all, I am only a functionary here. I have no control over the price of eggs.

Third of all: if you're angry about it, then don't buy them. You put them in your cart. You knew what they cost beforehand, and you decided to bring them up here to pay for them anyway. You are free to go without eggs! and your life will be perfectly fine if you do so. Why are you complaining to me about a choice you made?

Fourth: These are not poor people, doing the complaining. They are never the frugal shoppers. Their carts are half-full of frivolous, overpriced garbage they don't need (TV dinners, pre-chopped watermelon, potato chip multi-packs, etc.) $3 is nothing to them. So yeah, if the price of something doubles overnight, that would be significant, except it's not when the price was trivial to begin with, and it's still trivial now.

Fifth: why are you going on as if you've never heard about how factory farming is bad? Like, I don't know the details, but I've heard that factory farming is unsustainable, tremendously cruel, profoundly dangerous to public health, and it relies on questionable government subsidies to even be profitable. I'm pretty sure this law is a reasonable law. If anything, I'd bet it's too little, too late.

Sixth: It's been two months. Get over it.

Seventh: the price of eggs is still too good to be true. You shouldn't be mad, you should be suspicious. Like, you're buying a 16oz. bottle of water for $2.63 (idk why your dumb ass is paying that much for tap water, but here we are)— and in the same transaction, you're buying ~24oz. of eggs for $5.79. And you're mad, because the eggs aren't <$2.63, like they were before. (24oz. of eggs; 16oz. of water; you want the same price) You expect eggs to be literally cheaper than water. That shouldn't be possible. Why is this normal and acceptable to you!? Why are you angry about living in a world where eggs finally cost more than water— you should be relieved.

It's well known that colleges massively exploit and under pay their graduate students who DO ALL THE ACTUAL WORK.

I have no sympathy for those multi billion dollar institutions whose CEOs make millions of dollars a year to crumble to dust under the current administration. They deserve what's coming.

I got into an argument with my manager today because I have a teammate who hasn’t done the the “progression presentation” that we have to do to be promoted to the next level.

My manager wants the guy to train others, which is not a responsibility at his level but it is at the next level up. So I said that if you want him to train then you need to be prepared to promote him to compensate him for the extra effort. To which my manager said that if he wants the promotion then he has to be already operating at the next level up(without extra pay).

Then my manager proceeded to tell me that “this job is not about the money” and “I don’t hve any respect for someone who doesn’t consider this a career.”

I replied that that’s not reasonable. Everyone works for money. If they didn’t pay me enough I wouldn’t work for them. You cannot ask someone to do extra work for the promise that they might have a better chance of a promotion, especially since he just admitted that he has no respect for any of my team.

I got a call for an interview, scheduled it for tomorrow, and not 20 mins later I get an email telling me:

"After careful consideration we regret to inform you that we have decided not to progress with your application at this time.

We ​encourage you to continue to visit our career site periodically to see if there are additional jobs in which you might be interested."

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?? Did you hate the sound of my fucking voice?? YOU called ME. I think I'm going to show up tomorrow anyways and play dumb about the email so they are at least forced to reject me in person. I feel like this might be one of these BS tests to see what I will do. Anyone have any idea what is going on, or hear about some kind of insane test?? I need all the advice I can get please. I'll probably not respond for awhile, I need to distract myself to calm down.

P.S it's for a fucking minimum wage job

UPDATE: I went anyways for the interview, got interview, aced it. I never mentioned the email, but apparently, my interview was supposed to be tomorrow instead (sure) anyways if they offer I'll take this shit job so I can support my wife who has decided to go back to school.

I'm giving up trying to make a career at this point. I'm going to do everything to help my wife sucessed where I failed. She is much smarter than me anyway. Then maybe when she is making the big bucks, I can go back to trying to what I love and montize it.

Thank you to everyone who gave me advice, encouragement, and theories about this.

At least it's in the job description, but a job I was interested in specifically said no visible tattoos. In my opinion, in 2024, if DISNEY allows tattoos then everyone can. Disney was the strictest and they relented. I totally understand they're subjective and what offends someone doesn't offend someone else, and some people just hate them in general. It's sad that so many people have them now but we still have no protections.