Ideally, work should be more than just getting paid: you should feel a sense of purpose and—to a greater or lesser extent—enjoy the time you spend around your colleagues. Very often, people leave their jobs because of toxic work environments and specific people at the company. That’s what makes team-building exercises, company parties, and all manner of fun outings so important. They help people bond and, hopefully, work better as a team. There is a big ‘but’ coming up…

But! Making these teambuilding exercises mandatory isn’t the right way to go. You can’t force your employees to like each other or to be loyal to the company. If you’re not getting an adequate wage or you feel like you’ll be moving on elsewhere regardless, there’s not much motivation to participate in your company’s mandatory [checks notes] teambuilding TikTok challenge. Wait, what?

One redditor shared a nightmare story with the r/antiwork community about how he got suspended because he refused to participate in his company’s teambuilding exercises. Which included filming TikToks. In the redditor’s words, he doesn’t make enough money for this. His story, and especially the suspension write-up he got, went viral. Scroll down to have a read, Pandas. It’s shocking.

You can’t expect everyone to want to participate in teambuilding exercises. However, some companies don’t give you a choice

Image credits: Luis Villasmil

A former worker shared how his job suspended him after he refused to take part in a mandatory TikTok challenge

He shared some more info on just how bad the management was in a small update

Image credits: NyquilNate

The former employee also shared a photo of the ‘incident report’ after he’d refused to film a TikTok video

Image credits: NyquilNate

After getting suspended for such a ridiculous reason, the redditor quit his job. He thought that it was insane to get $15 per hour for professional work in California. He moved on to better prospects.

According to the redditor, his boss was incredibly rude and threatened to suspend his pay for the week if he wouldn’t participate in the TikTok challenge.

Meanwhile, the work environment was “super toxic,” unprofessional, and even discriminatory towards some employees. The redditor warned others to “never work for a family business.” He also left us with an edited version of the TikTok that resulted in his suspension which you can watch right over here.

Recently, workplace expert Lynn Taylor explained to Bored Panda that a vital skill for any professional to have is learning to ‘manage up,’ aka learning to deal with management in a way that’s beneficial for both parties. Approaching tense situations with a heavy dose of emotional intelligence, courage, and constructive criticism can, hopefully, lead to proper solutions.

“If you’re managing up properly, you’re a problem solver for your boss, not the other way around. You’re there to make life easier for your manager. That said, you should never suffer in silence. People should complain when their boundaries are crossed or when their job becomes untenable. For example, if that’s the case, you would want to complain to management or HR or a combination thereof,” the workplace expert noted that it’s essential to enforce your boundaries.

Lynn suggests thinking things through before speaking, anticipating your boss’ answers, using a bit of humor where appropriate to dilute tensions, and using positive as well as negative reinforcement to manage, well, management.

“People ages 2 to 62 are no different when it comes to core human emotions, such as praise, fear, and rejection. So when you have something negative to say, couch it in between ‘positive bookends.’

One way to approach a workplace situation that rattled you could be going up to your manager and saying something like this: “‘I really like my job. But something set me back yesterday and I wanted to talk to you about it.’ That’s followed by constructive criticism. At the end of the conversation is something like, ‘Thank you for taking the time to talk through this with me. I really do enjoy working here and with you.’”

Here’s how people reacted after reading the suspension write-up

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