Boss reprimands employee for not being 'excited enough,' suggest they smile and laugh more: 'I asked what am I doing specifically wrong and they didn't have anything to say'

One of the most annoying things that you can ever be told is, "smile more."

It's almost never what anybody wants to hear. If we felt like smiling, we would. It's not just something you can do on command unless you want to feel like a crazy person. It's also usually always said for the benefit of others, not for the benefit of smiler (or non-smiler) themselves. People like to be around happy people, and that's understandable. It rubs off on us and makes us feel good. But we can't expect people to be happy when they're not. We wouldn't want to force any emotions on anybody else because we wouldn't want somebody doing that to us. This is especially true in the workplace. There's often very little to smile about when you're working. Not because everything's bad, but because it's your day-to-day, and most people don't paste on smiles on their faces throughout their day-to-day. Especially if they're not being respected.

And nothing says disrespect like being asked to laugh at a joke just to make somebody else feel better. Sure, we should throw in some good humor here and there to make everybody comfortable, but we shouldn't be anything other than our authentic selves. Nobody wants to feel like they're wearing a mask. Especially if you're not working in a retail environment. That can get exhausting enough by itself, but when you're just at an office job, you want to feel like you don't have to smile all the time. That would take a lot out of you. And any good employer would recognize that.

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But that didn't stop this employer from reprimanding one of their employees for not looking like they were having a good enough time. The way they saw it. They needed to show a little more friendliness and enthusiasm at the workplace. The way the worker saw it. They were doing a good job, but weren't willing to fake anything just to make other people happy. So they reached an impasse where the employee was left feeling like they needed to look for a new job. Keep reading to see what exactly happened in the story and decide what you think about it.
I'm not "excited" enough for my employers...

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