35 Toxic Work Environments Employees Exposed In Photos
I’ve had enough jobs to know the phrase “workplace culture” can mean wildly different things depending on who’s running the place. At one end you have got ping pong tables and catered lunches. At the other end you have got passive-aggressive notes in the break room, managers who cc the whole company on a single email, and motivational posters that somehow make everything worse.
Most of us have been there. Some of us are there right now, reading this on our phones in the bathroom because it is the only place we get a moment of peace.
These toxic workplace photos capture the kind of environments that make people take the long way to the break room just to avoid management.
1. Not Enough To Do Your Job, Gotta Love It Too
2. This Motivational Quote When I Walked In This Morning
3. What My Company Gave Us All This Morning
Work at a warehouse and came into work this morning with these at all of our workstations. Cheap multibillion dollar company didn’t even get us a full sized candy bars.
4. My Workplace Posted This Infuriating Sign Today
5. Can’t Afford To Give Us A Pay Rise, But They Can Afford To Do This
Somehow, I find this more offensive than the year they sent everyone in the company a biodegradable pencil with flower seeds in it.
6. When Work Decides Corn Hole Is Better For You
7. Ain’t This Illegal? It’s A Restaurant, Working In Front Of The Grill And I Can Not Go To The Bathroom Or Drink Water?
8. The Reason I Won’t Say Where I’m Going
I recently left a minimum wage job, and despite him asking me in multiple ways over several days, I refused to tell the franchise owner where I was moving to.
This is the reason. This is a hole he kicked into the wall when a new hire quit after one shift. The Band-Aid was made by a coworker as a joke. It was the result of a temper tantrum by a grown man in the brand-new building; he told us to “make our own.”
9. Company Is Shaming Me For Not Gifting More Money To “Our” (Their) Boss For A Christmas Present
10. My Boss At Work Plays The Same Playlist Everyday For The Past 6 Years
I feel like I’m in my own personal purgatory.
11. A Competing Company Is Offering Us 20 Percent More To Work For Them. Management’s Response
12. My Girlfriend’s Job Gave Her A Fake Raise
So about a week ago my girlfriend was excited to tell me she had been given a raise at her job. Apparently raise has a different meaning now than more money in your paycheck. Since when does anyone appreciate a recognition card.
13. Manager Took Us Out For A Treat And Just Bought This One Serving. We Were 5 People
We’ve had a very busy week working around a new database system and we all have been putting extra hours to get used to it and set it up. It has been really difficult and time consuming because it’s really really complex and unclear in a lot of aspects but it was finally done. We were all happy and manager decided he wanna treat us.
He brought us all to a nearby café and ordered this. Just one dessert for 5 people. Please don’t come at me for being greedy or something. This man earns double triple than us and then acts like this.
14. Hours Majorly Cut, Asking TMS To Go Home Early, Retracting Shifts, Etc. This Goes Up In The Breakroom. Read The Room?
15. Just Saw This In A McDonald’s
16. The Fact That Someone Thought To Call Alex Out Like This Only Confirms They Made The Right Decision By Walking Out
17. Am I Going To Get In Trouble For This? Perhaps
18. Law Firm Memes
19. Mandatory Work Colors
I don’t trust a middle manager to be able to tell the difference between royal blue and cobalt at a moments notice. But that’s easy. If they don’t like you it’s cobalt.
20. It Was Teacher Appreciation Week And They Said Dinner Would Be Provided
21. The Teacher Appreciation Gift My School Gave Me
It’s just a printed out picture of a letter board.
22. My Availability Has Always Been Strictly Mon-Fri. I Spoke To A Manager When I Saw This Sign And Was Told I Will Be Working That Day, Regardless Of My Availability
The schedule is now up, and I have been assigned a full shift that Saturday.
23. The Windowless Room I Work In Does Have A Window, But It’s Above The Drop Ceiling
24. My Workplace Is Infested With Mold, Especially In The Air Vents. I Work In Food
It’s in every single air vent in the store (approximately 16). Management refuses to draw attention or do anything about it. I work in food as well. It’s a health hazard, and nobody is doing anything about it, and unfortunately it’s most likely in the vents themselves, so you can’t just “sweep it off with a broom” like one of the managers has done. Not to mention that releases mold spores everywhere.
25. How I Found Out I Was Losing My Job
I was out shopping for Christmas presents when my former director accidentally sent a message to a Teams group chat that included me and another manager. It clearly wasn’t meant for me to see.
The next day was supposed to be the company Christmas party, and I had been asked to help out with planning and running some of the events. Even though I didn’t normally work in the office on Fridays, I wanted to make the effort. I had only started the job a couple months earlier and was looking forward to bonding with my new coworkers since we were all never really in the office at the same times.
This all came after I had already helped them automate a lot of their CRM processes and clean up a massive database. In hindsight, that probably led to me automating myself out of a job. I had just left a company I’d been with for nine years, and now this?
I went straight home, drafted an email to HR, and thankfully managed to hold onto the job for another week while they tried to sort things out. Shortly after I was fired. There was huge layoff, with around 800 people across different departments losing their jobs. The company ended up outsourcing all of those positions to a firm in India.
26. The Keyboard Passed Down To Me By The Previous Technician That I Have To Use
27. This Is What I Got For Working 1 Year At My Job. They Spelled My Last Name Wrong, Pathetic
28. My Partner’s Work Put This AI Slop Banner Up For Employee Appreciation Week
29. Told The District Manager That My Coworkers And I Were Overworked And Under Appreciated. Came In To This
30. This Burrito At My Job Is $5.54, And We’re Not Allowed To Leave To Get Food
31. HR Gets Labor Day Off While The Rest Of Us Work
32. My Friend Is Visiting Me From 4 States Away In About 2 Weeks And Put In For Time Off Over A Month Ago. This Just Went Up In The Break Room Today
33. A Cup I Received In A Meeting At Work
For context I work in a school. Just annoying because I make hardly any money for my job and the higher-ups reward us with these cups.
34. Our Goodwill Store Alone Made $3 Million This Past Year Which Was A Store Record We Were All Told To Push For. This Was Our Compensation
35. Coworkers Slipped On Ice In The Parking Lot – How Management Dealt With It
Property management and my work shoveled a bunch of snow to a space where the sun hits during the day. It then melts and freezes overnight, creating a slippery parking lot. Instead of chipping it away or putting salt down, they just put a wet floor sign down…