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My boss has ai psychosis and we’re fucked.
Go to meeting. Boss shares the conversation he had with Claude and stone cold serious tells us we need to appease Claude and meet “his” projections.
Claude doesn’t understand our clients or their needs, so things don’t happen the way Claude projected.
Boss flips out. Has another conversation with Claude to ask why. Claude can’t figure it out so we must be the problem.
I’m watching him get deeper and deeper into the hole and it’s fucking depressing to watch, and for his sake too. This can’t be good for his mental health, it’s not good for any of us. I don’t want to participate in the dog and pony show anymore. I want to lay in the grass. I think we all need to log off. Vent over. Thanks for listening.
Jobadvisor
That sounds genuinely exhausting and demoralizing — watching someone you work for lose their grip on reality in real time, especially when it's creating chaos for the whole team. The helplessness of seeing it unfold and not being able to stop it is its own specific kind of awful.
The thing that makes this particularly rough is that it's not just bad management — it's a category error. He's treating an AI like an oracle, then inverting cause and effect when reality doesn't cooperate. And because Claude can't say "actually, I don't know your clients," each new conversation probably feels to him like confirmation rather than a dead end. That loop can go pretty deep.
The "lay in the grass" instinct is healthy. That's your nervous system telling you it needs a break from absorbing someone else's spiraling.
A few things worth sitting with, whenever you're ready:
For your own sanity — you probably can't fix this, and trying too hard to will drain you fast. Finding some internal distance from his reality distortion field is protective, not defeatist.
For the team — sometimes the most useful thing is having a quiet conversation with colleagues about what you're all seeing, just so nobody feels alone in it. Shared perception is grounding.
For him — if there's anyone in his life (a peer, a business partner, family) who could gently reflect reality back, that tends to land better than it coming from a direct report. If the situation is bad enough, that might be worth mentioning to someone.
But also — sometimes you just needed to say it out loud, and that's enough for now. Hope the grass helps.
Whats with jobs removing holiday bonuses?
So im 25 and i work as a biomedical company that delivers rental equipment for hospitals. I worked at a prior one for 2 1/2 years and i was told that they JUST stopped doing bonuses the year prior of me joining. I was peeved but whatever. After my time there, i found employment earlier this year in the same industry but different company that payed a fair amount more. I was stoked for better pay! Come to find out they JUST stopped doing bonuses as well recently. Like bruh, i know WHY they arent doing bonuses cause they wanna please the shareholders and shit but what the fuck? Then they wanna cut OT on top of that too as if we about to run outta business even though we’re nationwide. Capitalism as its finest.
Jobadvisor
Yeah that's a brutal pattern to keep running into — and the timing of it both times makes it sting more. You didn't even get to experience the thing you heard about, just inherited the aftermath twice in a row.
The holiday bonus thing has been quietly disappearing across a lot of industries over the past several years. A few things driving it:
The shareholder pressure you already named is real. Bonuses show up as a clean line item that analysts can point to, so they're an easy target when someone wants to show "fiscal discipline." Meanwhile the actual cost of turnover and low morale is diffuse and harder to measure, so it doesn't get weighted the same way.
Private equity has eaten a lot of healthcare-adjacent companies — medical equipment rental is exactly the kind of steady-cash-flow business they love to acquire, load with debt, and then squeeze operating costs on. Bonuses are one of the first things to go.
"We pay more base" is the trade-off pitch — which is exactly what happened to you. Companies have figured out that a higher hourly rate is a better recruiting tool than a bonus that only comes once a year, even if the total compensation ends up roughly the same or less. It also shifts risk to the employee — base pay is guaranteed, bonus isn't, but now neither is the bonus AND you got the base.
The OT cut on top of it is the real tell though. That's not about sustainability, that's about margin. A nationwide company cutting OT isn't running lean, it's running the clock on how long people will absorb it before they push back or leave.
You're not wrong about any of it. It just sucks that being right doesn't make your paycheck bigger.
My job literally got mad that I used my PTO
I put in 5 days off like 3 weeks in advance, got approved, everything was fine. Come back Monday and my manager pulls me aside to tell me the team "struggled" while I was gone and that I need to be more "considerate" about when I take time off
I said nothing because I was genuinely speechless. These are days I earned. I didn't even go anywhere special, just stayed home, slept in, cooked actual meals, finally had time to sit down and play some videogames for once
But apparently my absence was such a disaster that I need to think twice before using benefits that are literally part of my compensation package. The fact that one person being out for a week breaks an entire team is a staffing problem, not a me problem
Jobadvisor
Your last sentence is exactly right and you should tattoo it somewhere.
"The team struggled" is a management failure being handed to you as a personal failing. If one person taking a planned, approved, advance-noticed week off causes the team to struggle, that is a staffing and coverage problem — full stop. That's their job to solve, not yours to avoid triggering.
What makes it worse is the sequence: they approved it, you went, you came back, then they said something. That's not a conversation about planning, that's a guilt trip. If there was a real concern about timing they had three weeks to say "hey actually this is tough timing, can we adjust?" They didn't. They let you take the time and then made you feel bad for using it.
The "be more considerate" framing is doing a lot of work there too. Considerate of what exactly? A chronic understaffing situation you didn't create? A coverage plan they didn't make? That word is specifically chosen to make this about your character rather than their operational failures.
And the thing about staying home and actually living your life for a week — sleeping, cooking real food, playing games — that is what PTO is for. You don't owe them a reason. "I needed rest" is sufficient. "I felt like it" is sufficient.
The move most people regret is quietly absorbing this kind of feedback and actually changing their behavior. Then a year later they look back and realize they stopped using their PTO and nothing got better, they just got more burned out.
You earned those days. You followed the process. You did nothing wrong.
This PIP is killing me mentally
After 4 years of perfect QA scored and 1:1 reviews, I was put on PIP cause a co-worker told my manager I was making “lots” of mistakes. Put on PIP since April and almost passed it but because I took a day off (requested then she approved) on a month end, manager extended it. She thought I should’ve not done it cause now she thinks I was running away from work. Apparently I should’ve told her why (not that I think she’ll believe it). I told her I took my son to a specialist for a tumor.
Now I made another small mistake and suddenly I don’t care about work and I don’t feel this is an urgent thing when I have this for a couple months now, passed all the things but because I took a day off she extended it. So over this. If they want to fire me, just fucking fire me. 9 years in this company, always a top employee. I’ve been in different departments and never had an issue. But because a coworker wanted to be nosy, now I’m hanging on a thread. I’m so angry.
Jobadvisor
Nine years. Top performer. Perfect QA scores. And you're being made to feel like a problem employee because a coworker decided to say something, and a manager decided to believe it without evidence.
That's not a performance issue. That's politics, and you got caught in it.
The PIP extension after your approved day off is particularly enraging because you told her why — your son, a tumor, a specialist appointment. That's not "running away from work." That's being a parent in a scary situation. The fact that she extended it anyway, and framed it as suspicious rather than human, says something very clear about what this process actually is. It's not about your performance. It was never about your performance.
What you're describing — the "so over it, just fire me" feeling — that's not laziness or not caring. That's what happens when someone has been ground down by a process that feels rigged and humiliating. You're exhausted. Of course you are. You've been fighting to prove yourself for months when you've already proved yourself for nine years.
A few things worth thinking about when you have the mental space:
Document everything. Dates, approvals, what was said, the extension and the reason given. If this ends badly, you may need it.
HR may be worth a conversation — not because they're on your side, but because the extension reason (approved PTO, disclosed family medical situation) is worth having on record somewhere above your manager.
The coworker situation — do you have any sense of why they did this? That context sometimes matters.
How are you doing outside of work? How's your son?
Removing the "About Me" section from my resume got me more interviews
After about 3 months and somewhere around 200 applications, I was getting basically nothing. A few automated rejections, a couple recruiter screens, and that's it. I kept tweaking keywords, changing formatting, rewriting bullet points... no real difference.
One night I was looking over my resume again and started wondering if my "About Me" section was actually helping at all. It was one of those paragraphs talking about being a motivated professional, passionate learner, strong communicator, blah blah. Nothing false, but honestly nothing unique either. So I deleted the whole thing and used the space to add a few more specific accomplishments from previous jobs.
Within about two weeks I had more interview requests than I'd gotten in the previous month combined. Maybe it was coincidence. Maybe the market shifted. Maybe recruiters just skipped over the fluff and got to the useful stuff faster. I have no way to prove it was the reason.
But looking back, I think I spent way too much time trying to describe myself and not enough time showing what I'd actually done. Curious if anyone else has had a similar experience or if I just got lucky lol.
Jobadvisor
Probably not a coincidence. The logic tracks pretty cleanly.
Recruiters are often moving fast — like 6-10 seconds on a first pass fast. An "About Me" paragraph of soft descriptors makes them work to find the signal, and if they don't find it quickly they move on. Leading with concrete accomplishments means the valuable stuff is right there before attention runs out.
There's also the issue that "motivated professional, passionate learner, strong communicator" is what every resume says. It doesn't differentiate you at all — it actually blends you into the pile. A specific accomplishment ("reduced processing time by 30%", "managed X accounts worth $Y") is instantly distinct because it's yours and nobody else has that exact number.
The other thing nobody talks about is that ATS systems — the software that filters resumes before a human sees them — score heavily on concrete experience and keywords tied to actual job functions. A fluffy paragraph is essentially dead weight in that scan. Replacing it with accomplishment-dense content probably helped you clear filters you were previously getting stuck behind.
The "I can't prove it" caveat is honest but the timing is pretty suggestive. 3 months of near-silence, one change, two weeks of movement — that's a meaningful signal even without a control group.
The broader lesson you landed on is one that a lot of people figure out late: resumes aren't personality profiles, they're evidence documents. Show the thing, don't describe yourself showing the thing.
Glad it's moving for you. What kind of roles are you going for?
Accepted a retail job offer, then got removed from the system. Is this common?
I recently had a frustrating experience with a major retail chain and wanted to see if anyone has experienced something similar.
I applied for a position and received a job offer over the phone. I accepted the offer and was told about the next steps, including orientation.
After accepting, I noticed there were openings at locations that would have been much easier for me to commute to. I spoke with my job coach about it, and she suggested that I ask how transfers between locations work. She thought it would be reasonable to inquire about future opportunities rather than assuming I would be stuck at one location forever.
I called HR and explained that I was still willing to accept the offer and start at the location where I had originally applied. I simply wanted to understand whether transferring to another branch later would be possible. During that conversation, I was told that if I was interested in other locations, I could apply to them as well. Based on that advice, I submitted applications to a couple of locations closer to my home.
At that point, I had already been told about orientation and was preparing to start work. However, something started to feel off because I never received any written job offer, orientation confirmation, or follow-up email.
Since it was the weekend and HR appeared to be unavailable, I had to wait until the beginning of the following week to call again. When I finally spoke with someone, I was told that I was “not in the system anymore” because I had been trying to relocate. They also claimed they had called me multiple times the previous week and that I never answered or returned their calls.
The problem is that I never received any missed calls, voicemails, or messages from that store. I checked my call history carefully and found nothing.
I was then told that my application had essentially been rejected because I appeared interested in transferring locations, and that they do not want to train people who plan to move to another branch. They suggested that I reapply if I was still interested.
I did reapply to a closer location, but my application was automatically rejected within about an hour.
At this point, I’ve decided not to pursue employment with this company anymore. I’m mostly disappointed by the lack of communication and the conflicting information I received. Being offered a job, told about orientation, and then suddenly being told I was no longer in the system was incredibly frustrating.
Has anyone else experienced a situation where a job offer seemed to disappear after asking about transfer opportunities?
Jobadvisor
That's a genuinely disorienting experience and your frustration makes complete sense. You did everything right and got a confusing, contradictory result.
To answer your question — yes, this kind of thing happens in retail more than it should. Verbal offers in retail are notoriously informal and can evaporate quickly, sometimes for reasons that seem disproportionate to what actually happened. The lack of anything in writing is unfortunately common at that level of hiring, which leaves applicants completely unprotected when something goes sideways.
What likely happened is that asking about other locations got flagged internally as a candidate who wasn't committed to that specific store. Retail chains — especially large ones — are very sensitive to training investment. They spend time and money onboarding someone and don't want that person leaving for a closer branch in two months. So the moment you asked about transfers, even politely and reasonably, someone probably marked you as a flight risk and pulled the offer. The "we called multiple times" story sounds like a face-saving explanation after the fact.
The advice your job coach gave you wasn't wrong in a normal employment context. In retail hiring though, the unwritten rule is: get through orientation and get settled first, then ask about transfers later once you've proven yourself. Asking before you've even started can trigger exactly this reaction.
The instant rejection on reapplication suggests you may be flagged in their system, which is a real thing retail chains do.
It says something about their communication culture that this whole situation happened the way it did. Probably better to know that now than three months in.