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Olivia Arocena

Writer and Editor
Olivia has been an official writer since the day she published her first poetry book at just 19 years old, but she’s been an unofficial writer since forever. After that came the publication of her Diaries, which she had been writing for most of her late teens and continues to do so today. One lucky day, she finally managed to merge her offline writing with her online persona and craft a blog, where she publishes more polished pieces aimed at a curious audience that can’t keep track of her many talents. She graduated from Drama School and is currently studying Linguistics. She is also chronically online, an avid reader, and a singer. A fascination with the many ways humans communicate is what drives her work and interests.
Roommate etiquette can be tricky. Very often, it’s an unspoken contract, and people involved are unsure what it entails, and are unable to elaborate or confront the other party if something upsets them.

Sister’s boyfriend refuses to help with household chores, even though he sleeps in the house 7 days a week: ‘On his behalf i will also say that he does not have all of his stuff here so he is not “moved in”’
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When one mistake catapults extreme measures. Oftentimes, after we make a mistake, it’s very difficult to prove to somebody who’s in charge of us that we won't make that same mistake again. That’s where malicious compliance comes in handy. I struggle with the use of the word ‘malicious’ for it, even though, of course, I understand what that word is trying to evoke, but I think that maliciousness is not malicious at all; in fact, I think it’s civil, graceful, and assertive.

Manager demands to proofread every email that employee sends, and he maliciously complies, causing problematic delays for the company: ‘We suddenly got loads of follow up requests, responding to which of course needs approval from the manager’
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This is what happens when your boss has a questionable ‘talent’. Very rarely do we consider that some things can be a gift to someone while at the same time being a curse to somebody else. Am I revealing too much of today’s story here? Probably, but this boss exceeded my expectations in terms of gaslighting abilities. Let's read on.

Entitled boss quietly dumps his own admin onto an employee for months on end, dismissing any kind of confrontation about it: ‘He laughed and said "Let's not make a big thing of it"'
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I wonder if this loophole is, in fact, a loophole or if she will eventually be kicked out because of this. It should be allowed to be a little mischievous, but also, if it were allowed, it would probably lose its whole point. Let’s walk through this story first and later derive our own conclusions from it.

Call-center employee finds a loophole that starts making her job a lot easier: ‘I had just had a customer before this one who got a call and had to go... which gave me the bright idea'
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Are we always obliged to follow our loved ones' rules? Our most meaningful rules might appear ridiculous to somebody else, but part of the art of learning how to love is respecting what our significant others deem important, even though it sounds ludicrous to us. That’s my position anyway, but let’s see what this Redditor has to say.

32-year-old neat freak is mad about his same age fianceé not taking her shoes off inside his house: ‘Refusing to respect my rules regardless of how silly you think they may be will send me into orbit’
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Is one supposed to endure hunger so as not to become an ungrateful guest? Table manners are not an exact science. One might consider leaving a house party early a perfectly fine attitude, while another can find the same to be a crime against humanity. Let’s embark on seeing what we conclude after reading this Reddit post.

Diner leaves a dinner party early because the vegan lasagna didn’t fill him up: ‘There were no noodles, no cheese, and no sauce. It was basically layers of vegetables stacked together’
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Very few things are more pathetic than someone trying to command an authority they don’t have, or pretending to have everything under control when they clearly don’t, but when it comes to our ridiculous bosses, we love to see it unfold. That’s the case for this Redditor, who shared a story about a very “interesting” manager, who’s also his boss’s wife.

Employee plans to leave his job without notice and refuses to train his designated successor: 'If anything remotely related to "what she does" is brought up by the employees, I tell them that they'll have to reach out to her, and I can't help them'
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This story could be the plot for a Jordan Peele kind of thriller, about the stuff you gradually start letting slide coming from your neighbours, until you end up becoming absolutely trapped by the situation.

Entitled next-door neighbour constantly pushes neighbours' generosity by using his lawn and properties, when confronted about it: ‘He laughed it off, said "we're neighbours, what's mine is yours" smiled and kept sitting there’'
Author image for Olivia Arocena Olivia Arocena
In the midst of this AI revolution, a few things started to seem normal, like a lot of industries being almost entirely run by robots, or the fact that there is no way to talk to a human being when calling your local shipping company, but what I never expected was that AIs were going to make mistakes, and we were going to have to pay for them. Maybe that was the first thing to expect, instead of a happily-ever-after where robots would work and we got to have fun and lie in the sun.

Entitled boss fires employee to replace him with AI but then demands he come back to blame him for the AI’s mistakes: 'There is a TV monitor showing an interactive AI man who was the “analyst” that the clients can talk to'
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Sisters have a way of making us way angrier than anyone else when it comes to any random fight. A sibling is not only interacting with who you are today, a small comment that would feel harmless coming from a friend suddenly takes on a whole other dimension when it comes from family. For example, you can start to notice you always become smaller when you are talking to that specific family member, or embodying a role they used to give you in early family dynamics.

Woman refuses to babysit her sister's kids because she never returns the favour: ‘Now she's upset and says I'm punishing her children for something that has nothing to do with them’

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