Top Coworker Memes for Understaffed Teams of Employees With One Foot Out the Door (May 3, 2023)

Claiming overtime gives us brief jolts of joy when receiving our monthly paycheck, but the reason for said overtime is that we're seriously understaffed, so although we can hear the cha-ching of dollar bills entering our sad accounts, our sanity has slowly declined. Employees have been complaining about this lack of manpower for longer than they care to remember, and although bosses around the globe have continuously assured everyone that there will be new hires, it's simply not happening.

Moods decline and the atmosphere at work becomes like a 7th-grade classroom, where everyone acts like they're better than everyone else; so working with other people, AKA coworkers, which was tiresome, becomes a nightmare. You find yourself wondering, why didn't you learn code back in the day? Your legs would be propped up on a hardwood oak table, sitting on a silk chair, your ears covered by the latest Apple technology which drowns out your neighbors singing in the shower.

But alas, you don't work in tech, and your salary makes you want to scream at the poor barista who didn't get your coffee right because 4 dollars for a coffee is a lot, and you would like to get your money's worth, thank you very much. Below you'll find some hilarious coworker memes to better your day. Also, smile at your barista. They're going through a lot. For more like this, here are some more coworker memes to share with your office Karen.

'AITA for not giving my coworker my day off?': Coworker demands guy's leave that he booked to play the new Zelda game

Let's be real… We've all had that one coworker who is always coming in late and leaving early to pick up their kids. No big deal, right? Everyone deserves to have a flexible working arrangement. But, when that flexibility and those considerations aren't offered to other workers, and it places more work or undesirable shifts on those workers' shoulders, it becomes a problem.

Reddit especially champions the idea that those with kids shouldn't expect special treatment over their coworkers who are childless and this sentiment also extends to the topic of scheduled leave from work. A lot of workplaces schedule leave on a "first come, first serve" basis, leaving chronic procrastinators like myself permanently out of luck for hotly-contested weekends. Disputes will then often emerge around these dates as to who has the best claim or best reason for wanting to take leave, with claimants almost always trying to distract away from the fact that they weren't the first to claim. 

Enter: This guy—who booked leave just before Mother's Day weekend so that he could play the new Zelda game all day when it drops. This drew the ire of his coworker, who wanted the day off to spend a three-day Mother's Day weekend with her kids. The confrontation caused the guy to turn to Reddit's r/AmItheA**hole subreddit to see whether or not he was in the wrong for refusing to relinquish his claimed day.

Readers seemed to predominantly take his side, declaring him not to be the a-hole in this situation. Read on and let us know your take.

Afterward, check out this worker whose "prankster" coworker was causing them to lose their sanity.

'Kevin thinks he can speak every language in the world': Cringy dude believes he's 'impressing' foreign clients, embarrasses coworkers instead

We all have that one colleague who's a total show off. They like to claim that they were heading up a project, when actually they barely did any work on it. Or they try to schmooze with clients and C-suite employees, only to come off as arrogant and irritating. People like this exist everywhere, but not everyone is quite as confident in their abilities as this crazy Kevin! 

At least this guy didn't get away unscathed. The OP, u/UnlikelyAlternative, writes that after Kevin's big goof with some clients from abroad, his "delusions of linguistic grandeur" made him a laughing stock. He's never going to recover his credibility after something as stupid as that. 

Up next, check out these customers who thought they were extra smart… but they certainly couldn't outsmart the cashiers. 

'We sent 10,000 copies of a useless calendar to a client': 20+ People who are face-palming over their coworkers' mistakes

Every job requires you to have coworkers, whether you want to or not. These people encountered some coworkers who made extra dumb mistakes — and some are more dangerous than others. 

The r/AskReddit community answered the question, "What's the dumbest mistake you've seen an incompetent coworker make?" And I am shocked at some of the answers. People wrote in from all walks of life, from lawyers to pet shop workers to designers.

Everyone makes mistakes, but some people don't handle that well. It seems like a lot of the stories stem from people either not caring about their job, or making careless mistakes and then lying about it. That just makes things worse in the long run — for that person, and for the coworkers that need to clean up the messes. 

Next, check out another work story: this person was interviewing a friend of a friend for a job. It was all going smoothly, until that person told them something alarming in a DM. 

'She messed with the wrong student; she never complained again': Barista student schools Karen customer after one too many coffee ‘remakes’

Working in customer service, hospitality, retail, or any other field that requires you to have human interaction with Karens on a daily basis, gives you a strong backbone you never asked for, and bucketloads of apathy. At first, you feel like a failure when a customer screams at you, demanding a free refill because your coffee tastes like the back of a dump truck. You realize it's ridiculous that a total stranger has the power to make you feel like a blundering fool, all over a cup of coffee. Eventually, you become passive to high-pitched requests and can win a staring contest with a troll.

In this case, a student was studying at a hospitality school and had to make coffee as part of their classes. OP explained that they dealt with difficult customers on a daily basis, stating they were actually 'the worst of the worst'. One customer in particular, who we'll call 'Ellen', made OP's life particularly miserable, resending her coffee back every single time she got it because it wasn't 'hot enough'. OP observed that Ellen was letting her coffee sit in front of her grubby fingers for about 10 minutes before complaining each time, so OP realized that the culprit was in fact, time, rather than her own coffee-making skills.

Ellen continuously harassed the working students, obviously leading a very miserable existence and deciding to take it out on poor, unassuming souls. So OP hatched a plan that included some good old petty revenge. Scroll down to read the full, detailed account of events. For more stories like this, here is an employee who got his new boss fired via malicious compliance that included listening to a little too carefully to his boss's orders during a power outage in a rural area.

'They are not qualified': Worker blocks old coworker and boss's applications when they interview at worker's new company

It always pays to be kind—or at least decent. You never know when that karmic pendulum is going to swing right back at you and knock you on your rear… The world is a far smaller place than we take it to be and only gets smaller as you isolate down into the people you're likely to interact with based on demographics. Within a given industry, it's more than likely that you'll encounter the same people over the course of years spent in different jobs, even if you move cities.

This idea gives rise to the famous anecdote/cliche about a candidate rushing to get to a job interview. As they enter the lobby of the business where they're interviewing, they neglect to hold the door for the person behind them, instead allowing it to fly back into their face. The candidate approaches the receptionist to let them know they've arrived and is made to wait momentarily before being ushered into the room. In the room waits the CEO of the business who is interviewing them… the very person they neglected to hold the door open for. 

There are hundreds of variations of this that play out in different media, including at least one episode of every sitcom. But it all hails back to this idea that you should always be decent to others, and if you slip up, it will backfire on you spectacularly. 

This worker shared the story of their chance to be the deliverer of this karmic justice after being granted the ability to weigh in on their former boss and coworker's applications to their new employer.

Read on and next check out this manager who tried to humiliate their worker and quit when it backfired