How true or at least how often true are the stories from antiwork, malicious_compliance and similar reddits?

37 comments

1. I’m sure there are bits of truth mixed in, but those places are almost entirely full of made-up stories by self-gratifying losers.

   There are valid complaints to be made, but those subs are mostly just complete fabrications.

2. People typically go to subs like that to lie and make themselves feel better. While something similar might have happened, rarely is someone on the internet telling the whole truth.

3. A lot of things on antiwork are teenagers who are either leaving out a TON of information, or totally deserve their boss being angry at them but lack the awareness to know what they did wrong.

   Sure, some places are terrible work environments. A majority aren’t.

4. They are jokingly called creative writing subreddits for a reason, antiwork especially.
   I’m sure some are true but remember most people read them for entertainment or echo chamber praise.

5. Those sorts of workplaces are very, very rare for middle-class salary earners and above. Sadly more common in lower-paying jobs and industries.

   American corporate culture is big on rewarding managers for their subordinates’ success so in real life, managers will work toward getting their people promotions. Even at their own level and above – the boss moves up, that means his or her job is now open.

6. I think the majority of those stories are fake. It’s a fantasy of those subs to screw over their employer for outrageous requests, so most of their stories follow that format.

7. I would say most of them are likely exaggerated, or at a minimum embellished a bit. Also keep in mind every story has two sides. We’re only hearing from one person. In general, the majority of workplaces are not as toxic as those subs describe. Most people are normal everyday folks just trying to do a good job and go home for the day, bosses included.

   None the less, even with a bit of fiction involved the stories are satisfying to hear.

8. When people are happy they rarely go online to shout about it.

   Most of the time the opinions and experiences you see online skew towards a negative bias because people are more likely to go post rants and such when they’re angry/upset/trolling.

9. Anti work is just high schoolers mad that their boss expects them to show up to work on time, and that’s a horrifying injustice

10. There was a recent meme from antiwork that made the front page. It was about a Scandinavian country and it was basically about how this country was wonderful and perfect and did everything right. The comment section was full of people who were actually from that Scandinavian country and they basically said that nothing in the meme was accurate and that people should stop fetishizing their country as some kind of utopian paradise.

    That sub is full of erroneous grandstanding and I have never muted a sub quicker than when reddit finally allowed us to do so.

11. It’s mostly exaggerations with a grain of truth mixed in.

12. I would bet almost anything that 80% of what’s written in Anti work is completely fabricated. A lot of subs on Reddit are just people looking for self gratification.

13. I’ve had some bad jobs with some bad bosses. I think those stories are probably faked, but they parallels a very real reality.

14. As someone who works in HR-there’s always two sides to every story. Definitely have had Employee’s who would share some stories about how terrible my company is; but would leave out that the reason why the outcome was the way it was was because they went against company policy. 9/10 times there’s some truth, but like others say it’s mostly embellishments to make them sound like they’re in the right.

15. Even if they are all entirely true, reddit is a small sample.

16. I find anitwork enjoyable but i’d guess that a solid 99% are fabrications

17. I stopped subbing malicious_compliance because too many of the stories were just malice with no compliance.

18. The “American job environment” is not “so toxic in general”.

    I’m sure a small number of the posts are true, but it’s painfully obvious and proven how many of them are not. Most of these tales are also coming from very young people working in restaurants and other service industry jobs.

    How many of these stories are coming from say, a project engineer, a back end developer, or any other job by someone over the age of 25? It’s all bullshit stories about an assistant manager at a bar scheduling a 19 year old…which is the primary demographic of Reddit.

    Most adults have careers.

19. It’s the internet, you have to believe at least part of what you are reading is a lie.

20. The rules on malicious compliance imply that making things up is encouraged

    >Don’t question the validity of a story. It’s much more fun if we give people the benefit of the doubt.

    Antiwork considers pro-capitalist content to be “pro-authoritarian” if that gives you any sort of idea about their mindset. I infer that I can dismiss anything they say as incoherent rambling.

    Some work environments are definitely toxic. Many times it isn’t because of management, but because of coworkers and, even worse, the general public. Retail is an especially cruel beast. Imagine how quickly the average redditor is to be belligerent and argue online; now imagine that same person thinking they’ll get something for free if they have a public breakdown.

    As far as non-retail jobs or jobs where you don’t work with the public, I feel like toxicity comes from people who do similar jobs to you. Instead of doing better than others to fight for a raise or promotion, they try to make others look bad. It’s a sight to see when you have middle age adults tattle telling on one another like they’re in first grade.

21. Reddit is not representative of the majority on anything. After that disastrous interview one of the mods had on live tv that sub ceased to have any credibility to me.

22. True-ish…I no longer request time off, I notify when I’m “not available” …if I’m sick and need a day off and boss demands a dr note my doc will write it for as many days as i want.

23. That reddit is cringe a lot of the time but a lot of the problems it brings up are true.

    -prices have skyrocketed while wages have stagnated

    -housing is a mess right now

    -finding jobs is harder

    -ceo’s and companies do hate you and want the work force to be like Korea or japan.

24. I’ve had shitty bosses before and I can believe that some of those stories are true, but a lot of them have got to be really taken out of context.

25. There are vast, normalized abuses of service workers, and to a lesser extent industrial and office workers, and really any working-class employee. But the stories are written with such histrionic, cartoon evil characters that they are not exactly believable as written and many just seem totally fake and written by teenagers.

26. Ultimately there’s some element of truth to what you see there.

    The reality is a lot more complicated than that. There are shitty bosses and environments but that’s the exception and not the norm. I’ve had great bosses when I was making $8/hr as a kid in the 90s, and terrible bosses when I’ve made 6x that per hour.

    I wouldn’t assume that everyone in the USA is miserable and has shitty employers. That’s just not the case.

27. A whole lot of bullshit. I can practically smell it through my phone screen. Antiwork is more of joke sub that doesn’t get why people are mocking them at this point. It’s just a sub for people looking to complain without actually trying to put in the effort to make anything better.

28. Nothing you see on Reddit is representative of America in general. The very vast majority of subs are echo chambers of full of people who don’t think at all critically about stuff they agree with, especially any of them that have political underpinnings.

29. Do I think most stories on anti work are outright lies? Probably not. But I think they’re heavily biased in favor of the poster’s side, and they probably leave out a lot of context. For instance, say someone posts that their mom is in the ER and they need to get the day off. Their boss fires them, and the OP talks about how evil they are etc. But maybe the real story was that this person was chronically calling off or their mom goes to the ER for routine issues (which some people do) and the employer was tired of the constant shift skipping. A lot of the times, I just don’t think it’s as simple as the posts make it out to be

    In regards to American workplaces and their toxicity, I don’t think bosses here are any better or worse than any other place. Some suck, some are great, most are okay. But most people aren’t going to be on Reddit making long posts about how their job is fairly good and how they have cordial relations with their employer, so all you’ll see is the bad stuff. And when Reddit is already 50% American and there are a lot of us, it’s going to seem like it’s more prevalent than it really is

30. 99% of the antiwork crowd would have a different opinion if they had any wealth. It’s a lot of envy mixed with resentment. They’re just complaining because most of them are young kids who realize that you actually have to work and follow rules to survive. And they’re at that early part of their career where they don’t have great jobs or authority because they lack experience and good judgment (as their posts highlight).

    I love the utopian vision posts where they talk about, “living in a country that allows them to pursue their passions.” I can only imagine the passage to said country involves walking through a portal in a wardrobe.

    Most of it is harmless and doesn’t effect the average person. Some of it is very bad information that could hurt an individual’s career (and even create legal issues).

31. I avoid /r/antiwork like the plague. I have been working since I was 14 and while I have experienced some shitty employers, what I read there just doesn’t sound real. I am a contact center consultant and /r/contactcentres is a similar shit show. I have yet to encounter a call center as shitty as the average depicted on that sub. It seems to just be a circle jerk for disgruntled employees. They regularly share stories of gross labor law violations but somehow the government can never help them. However, my experience with running call centers is people are always calling OSHA or whatever on the tiniest thing and it causes all kinds of investigations and audits and policy changes.

32. A few of them are true.

    Many of them started as true stories but have been greatly exaggerated.

    Some of them are completely fictional stories of wish fulfillment.

33. They are mostly creative writing subs filled with communist wish fulfillment

34. Most of those stories ring pretty true for the sort of things that I encountered between the ages of 14-25 when I worked low paying unskilled labor jobs.

35. Other than r/workreform, I don’t think the subs are worth more than a few chuckles, but I don’t need Reddit subs to know that American work culture is pretty crappy overall.

36. Most everyone here has worked at multiple toxic companies. While some of these stories are likely made up, the good guys don’t win a lot, etc. I would say the overall concept of workplaces being garbage in the US is spot on.

37. Like everything else on the internet, probably about 50% is fake or false.