What’s a toxic workplace behavior you couldn’t articulate until someone else gave you the exact words for it?
February 15, 2026
What’s a toxic workplace behavior you couldn’t articulate until someone else gave you the exact words for it?
28 comments
weaponized incompetence
Lack of communication was deliberate exclusion. Also, backhanded compliments.
“demean and then offer help” style of leadership
Flying monkeys
Arsonist Firefighter. Cause the problems, be the hero to fix them.
[removed]
“Relational aggression” is the HR term for mean-girl behaviour in the work place.
Forcing you to silent quit.
ThE CosTomEr Is ALWAYS RIGHT?!!.
Gaslighting you when “mistakes” are made due to poor communication and lack of training
Bosses who intentionally waste your time as a power move. Either by over explaining tasks that they could have summarised in two minutes, or giving you extra work that isn’t part of your job.
“Othering” — when coworkers subtly treat you like you’re not really part of the core group, making you feel like an outsider even when nothing overtly hostile is said.
Mansplaining
doing just enough to look good, but not enough to get more responsibility. Someone else put a name to it and I was like, ‘Aha! That’s exactly it!’ 😅
In higher education, it’s breaking the rules to get the students to like you. For example, an instructor of a team-taught class might share the test questions with the students ahead of time. Students have that expectation when the other instructor takes over, leading to difficulties between the students and the second instructor.
Another is popularity among students based on pretty privilege/being more conventionally attractive.This one isn’t the fault of the instructor like the first one is. It’s more of a bias on the students’ part. Where it gets weird for the instructors is when they brag about their popularity.
‘He repeats’.
It’s not just the perpetrator. It’s also everyone else who is willing to listen to them, but not you.
Edit to add: Not at work, but also ‘The mental load’.
Being understaffed and realizing your store manager is getting awards for you doing 3x-4x the normal work you’re supposed to be doing as a store without a pay increase or overtime. That manager is also getting bonuses that enables them to get a new luxury car every year. But you can’t even get paid a higher wage for working areas that are easily double of what you normally get paid.
The other store locations are not being lazy. They’re just not pushing their employees beyond their expected limits and job descriptions. They actually seem to be a lot nicer to their employees.
Also weaponized incompetence from the morning shift and they didn’t care that they were causing a tonnn of work for the night crew.
[removed]
Treating younger or newer workers like babies simply for being young and restricting them from taking on more responsibilities or learning new tasks even when competence is consistently demonstrated
toxic positivity, stop telling me to just be grateful
Toxic positivity.
I don’t have a phrase for it, but genX and older female bosses being generally shittier to the younger women they work with or manage than the men. It’s like they had deal with sexism in the earlier stages of their careers and they’re more than happy to dump it into the women that come up behind them. Internalized Corporate Misogyny?
Also, “imaginary Safety Net” – “were alwyss here for help, don’t hesitate to ask!” Proceeds to bite your head off, be impatient, or unavailable if you actually ask for help
When a more subordinate member of the team is essentially controlling the boss =
“Shadow boss”
“Planned burnout of disposable employees” to described a toxic environnement where middle management seemed to burn through every manager they got and replace them the second they felt performances were impacted by the chronic exhaustion they caused.
“Lowest Common Denominator” – crabs-in-a-bucket behaviour
[removed]
[removed]
Concern trolling. Colleagues pretending how “concerned” they were about how they felt I was “struggling”, when all the while they were using this tactic to highlight my “deficiencies “ as they saw them, undermining me and destroying my professional reputation.
Very hard to combat as you look like an unreasonable unstable shrew if you object to it.
28 comments
weaponized incompetence
Lack of communication was deliberate exclusion. Also, backhanded compliments.
“demean and then offer help” style of leadership
Flying monkeys
Arsonist Firefighter. Cause the problems, be the hero to fix them.
[removed]
“Relational aggression” is the HR term for mean-girl behaviour in the work place.
Forcing you to silent quit.
ThE CosTomEr Is ALWAYS RIGHT?!!.
Gaslighting you when “mistakes” are made due to poor communication and lack of training
Bosses who intentionally waste your time as a power move. Either by over explaining tasks that they could have summarised in two minutes, or giving you extra work that isn’t part of your job.
“Othering” — when coworkers subtly treat you like you’re not really part of the core group, making you feel like an outsider even when nothing overtly hostile is said.
Mansplaining
doing just enough to look good, but not enough to get more responsibility. Someone else put a name to it and I was like, ‘Aha! That’s exactly it!’ 😅
In higher education, it’s breaking the rules to get the students to like you. For example, an instructor of a team-taught class might share the test questions with the students ahead of time. Students have that expectation when the other instructor takes over, leading to difficulties between the students and the second instructor.
Another is popularity among students based on pretty privilege/being more conventionally attractive.This one isn’t the fault of the instructor like the first one is. It’s more of a bias on the students’ part. Where it gets weird for the instructors is when they brag about their popularity.
‘He repeats’.
It’s not just the perpetrator. It’s also everyone else who is willing to listen to them, but not you.
Edit to add: Not at work, but also ‘The mental load’.
Being understaffed and realizing your store manager is getting awards for you doing 3x-4x the normal work you’re supposed to be doing as a store without a pay increase or overtime. That manager is also getting bonuses that enables them to get a new luxury car every year. But you can’t even get paid a higher wage for working areas that are easily double of what you normally get paid.
The other store locations are not being lazy. They’re just not pushing their employees beyond their expected limits and job descriptions. They actually seem to be a lot nicer to their employees.
Also weaponized incompetence from the morning shift and they didn’t care that they were causing a tonnn of work for the night crew.
[removed]
Treating younger or newer workers like babies simply for being young and restricting them from taking on more responsibilities or learning new tasks even when competence is consistently demonstrated
toxic positivity, stop telling me to just be grateful
Toxic positivity.
I don’t have a phrase for it, but genX and older female bosses being generally shittier to the younger women they work with or manage than the men. It’s like they had deal with sexism in the earlier stages of their careers and they’re more than happy to dump it into the women that come up behind them. Internalized Corporate Misogyny?
Also, “imaginary Safety Net” – “were alwyss here for help, don’t hesitate to ask!” Proceeds to bite your head off, be impatient, or unavailable if you actually ask for help
When a more subordinate member of the team is essentially controlling the boss =
“Shadow boss”
“Planned burnout of disposable employees” to described a toxic environnement where middle management seemed to burn through every manager they got and replace them the second they felt performances were impacted by the chronic exhaustion they caused.
“Lowest Common Denominator” – crabs-in-a-bucket behaviour
[removed]
[removed]
Concern trolling. Colleagues pretending how “concerned” they were about how they felt I was “struggling”, when all the while they were using this tactic to highlight my “deficiencies “ as they saw them, undermining me and destroying my professional reputation.
Very hard to combat as you look like an unreasonable unstable shrew if you object to it.