Contos sobre Feel-Good Story e Romances com Bias e Workplace

My Black Friday live stream has pulled in over 500 million dollars. But on payday, my wife, Amber Shepherd, transfers every cent of my commission to her personal trainer, Darwin Whitley. Then, she tosses a voucher for an adult toy store at my feet. "There's your bonus. Throw in a little of your own cash, and it should cover a blow-up doll." Darwin slides an arm around Amber's waist and says provocatively, "That brand makes great condoms. Amber and I tried them out last night. You should check out their other stuff." I lose it and shout, "Amber Shepherd! My mom is in end-stage liver failure! That money was supposed to pay for her transplant! What the hell am I going to do with a voucher?" Amber just snuggles closer to Darwin and sneers at me. "A transplant? What are the odds of success? Why throw good money down the drain? Anyway, I've already cashed out the commission. Take the voucher and go play with yourself." Suddenly, a strange calm washes over me. She thinks she just won everything. She has no idea I still hold the exclusive contracts for every single supplier. I open the supplier backend management portal and blast a message to every group chat. "All partnerships are terminated effectively immediately. Contract termination fees will be billed to the signing parties."

It's my fifth year working at my relative's factory after giving up a high-paying job. I'm in the middle of helping the administrative staff clear out the printer when I accidentally catch a glimpse of the new clerk's payslip—Base Salary: 6,500 dollars. I freeze right on the spot. Five years ago, I've turned down two high-paying offers and joined Dad's younger brother, Liam Graham's, factory. Back then, he patted me on the shoulder and said, "We're family. I'll never shortchange you." I believe him. However, it's been five years, and my salary is still the same five grand I started with. Every single time I ask for a raise, Uncle Liam cries poverty, claiming that the factory isn't doing well. My girlfriend breaks up with me, saying my salary makes it impossible for her to see a future. I pull the weight of three people and pour my heart into training the newcomers, only to find out a new hire is making 1,500 dollars more than me. I jeer out of sheer exasperation and hand in my resignation to Uncle Liam. "Why?" he asks in shock. "The pay is terrible. There's no career progression. I can't do this anymore!"

The company booked a lodge at Osprey Lake for the Labor Day weekend retreat. All 35 other people in the company were invited, and I was not one of them. My team lead even posted a group photo from their kayaking trip in the chat, captioned with "One less person and the boat rides lighter." I did not reply. I turned off my phone, bought some tamales and a beer, went back to my apartment, and slept for 15 hours. When I woke up, I had 203 missed calls. The latest voicemail was my team lead, practically in tears. "Please, man, I'm sorry! Just pick up the phone!" I grabbed another slice and took a bite. I took one weekend off. How was the company already falling apart?

Last night, I got my layoff notice. The official excuse? Too old, under-educated, and holding the team back. This morning, HR pulled me aside with a sympathetic sigh. "Look, Gina, you really pissed off the wrong person this time." I followed her gaze across the floor of Brown Media. Two weeks ago. Catherine Chase, the CEO’s niece, dropped into the sales department with a squad of her college buddies, branding themselves the "Elite Youth Squad." Yesterday, I rejected her project proposal. Catching my eye, Catherine smirked. "Some aging, uneducated women should just stick to being housewives. Save yourself the embarrassment." I didn't argue. I just signed the severance paper in silence. What she didn't realize was that I never needed Brown Media. They begged me to stay. Before walking out, I posted a simple status update… “Officially resigned. Let the fun begin.” Within seconds, my phone blew up.

I opened a restaurant in an alley, and business was booming. When the lease expired, I took the initiative to talk to the landlord about renewing it. The landlord, Jasper Smith, crossed his legs and said, “My dear Flynn, my dear little nephew Harvey Jordan, wants to open a restaurant too. So, this place would be perfect for him. “He thinks your food is delicious, so he went out of his way to learn all the recipes for your dishes and soups. Come to think of it, he has you to thank for your careful guidance!” The blood rushed to my head. Harvey Jordan had kept his relationship with Jasper from me and worked at my restaurant for half a year. He had stolen my recipes, and he was trying to kick me out to steal my customers? I was furious. “Mr. Smith, isn’t this going a bit too far?” Jasper slammed his hand on the table. “The shop lot is mine. I’m free to rent it to whomever I want! Clear everything out before the lease expires!” I laughed through gritted teeth. “Are you sure you want to go down this road?” I had a secret blend of spices that I had never shared with anyone. Without it, my soups would become increasingly bitter the longer they boiled. Harvey had only learned some surface knowledge. He had yet to grasp the soul of it. I was interested to see how he would manage running a restaurant without its soul.

I've been running a grilled fish restaurant in Millennium Square for six years now. Each time the queue for my restaurant gets noticeably longer, the mall management comes knocking on my door to raise the rent. At 5:00 pm today, the waiting list for my restaurant reaches the 200th table. I instruct my staff to prepare three additional cases of fish. At 6:00 pm, Walt Sutton, the mall manager, shows up at my office and slams a new lease contract onto my desk. "Congratulations, Mr. Connor. The mall's foot traffic has multiplied by three times this month," he says while pointing at the third page of the contract. "As it is, the mall is having a hard time keeping up with all the extra maintenance needs, so your rent will have to be increased by 50%." I glance at the contract. "That's not what we agreed on last time," I remark. "That was then, and this is now. You've got three days to decide whether you're signing the contract." In just six years, the rent has already doubled from 10 thousand to 20 thousand. Now, he wants to increase it by another 50%. After he leaves, I grab my phone and make a call. "Hey, Mr. Whitman, it's me. About that spot you offered to me in Avant Plaza, I'll be ready to move in after three days."

When I hand in my resignation and pack up my things, I make sure to box up my 100,000 dollars' worth of camera equipment. However, my colleague Reed Lanrod, an intern who joined the company after me, immediately throws a tantrum. "What are we supposed to use if you take all that equipment with you? You're already leaving, and you're still leeching off the company? That's not right!" I keep my cool and patiently explain, "I bought every single piece of this gear with my own money. It's got nothing to do with the company." Reed, who's been eyeing my equipment for the longest time, storms off. Not long after, the boss, Karen Halfpenny, calls me into her office. "You've been keeping the equipment in our office, so it's been using our electricity and taking up our office space. That makes it company property. You're not taking a single item with you." I can't help but laugh at the sheer audacity. When I first joined the company, Karen told me to treat the company like home. So, to get the job done right, I gradually spent 100,000 dollars of my own money to buy camera equipment and store it at the office. Now she's calling it company property? Fine. I immediately call the IRS and report the company for tax evasion and fraud. They insist the 100,000-dollar setup is theirs, yet they've never paid a single cent of tax on it. In that case, let's see what the IRS agents think about that.

It was my first day taking over the branch office, and to get an honest read on the place before anyone put on a show for me, I'd left my assistant behind. In the elevator, I noticed a female coworker struggling with an armload of supply boxes, unable to free a hand. I reached over and pressed her floor for her. I hadn't even pulled my arm back when the man beside her smacked my hand away. "Where do you think you're putting your hands? Just because she's a woman, you figure you can lean in on her?" The woman flinched, and she lowered her voice, pleading, "Honey, are you out of your mind? He was just helping me." The man shot her a vicious glare and grabbed my collar. "Helping you? Sweet-talking my wife right in front of me. God knows what you get up to behind my back." I frowned and tried to reason with him. "Sir, I'd appreciate a little respect. I'm new here, and..." "New, huh?" He cut me off with a sneer. "First day on the job and you've already got the nerve to seduce my wife? You think I'm stupid?" The elevator reached our floor, and I had no interest in dragging this out any further. I turned to leave. He must have mistaken it for guilt, because he seized my collar again and roared, "Trying to run after you started something? Guys like you, sponging off women to get ahead, don't belong in this company. You're fired, effective immediately."

At lunch I'd barely finished handing around the beef jerky I'd made when our department manager, Derek Pritchard, followed the smell to my desk. He grabbed a piece, tasted it, and announced at full volume. "Dylan, this is good. Way better than anything you'd buy to go with a beer." Before I could get a modest word out, his tone shifted. "Perfect timing. The owner isn't coming to the department dinner tomorrow night, so there's no sense throwing money around." He pulled three hundred-dollar bills out of his wallet and slapped them on my desk. "We'll eat in the break room. Dylan Woodward's doing the cooking. There's your grocery budget. "Twenty people in this department. Spend it carefully, but I want drinks, I want meat, and I want a couple of real entrees." Three hundred dollars? For twenty people? A project I'd led had brought the company a serious profit, and I'd worn the owner down over weeks to get thirty thousand dollars approved for a team retreat. Derek meant to pocket nearly all of it and have me cover the difference so he could look generous. Looking at that oily, entitled face, I smiled. "Sure. Since you think that highly of me, Derek, I'll lay it all out nice and clear." Then I turned away and texted the owner. "Aunt Victoria, the budget came through. We're having a surprise department dinner tomorrow night. Care to come taste it?"

The company is short-staffed for one of our new projects. Despite everyone's objections, I, James Connor, fight to bring in three sidelined, former colleagues onto the project. And so, the four of us become the project's core members. The project's workload is fairly light and comes with a generous bonus. So, they praise and flatter me, calling me their lucky star. Three months later, the project is about to be submitted to the higher-ups. I happen to pass by the smoking lounge and overhear them plotting, wisps of smoke escaping from their lips. "The three of us contributed the most to this project. Why should James get an equal share of the bonus just because he recommended us for the job? He barely pulled his weight." "That's right. We should bring this up with the director. Tell him that we're the ones who laid all the groundwork and that James doesn't have the technical skills to be on this team. We'll ask to have him removed from the contributors list." "Just the thought of not having to split those hundreds of thousands of dollars with him is making me feel like I'm on cloud nine. Hey, let's go celebrate tonight!" I push the door open and am promptly greeted with their shocked faces. I merely smile at them as I think to myself, "You want to cut me out? Sadly for you, I'm the director who was sent here to evaluate all of you."

My male coworker secretly replaces his name with mine on the holiday duty roster so he can spend New Year's Eve with his rich, beautiful girlfriend. I confront him and tell him to change it back. Yet he replies self-righteously, "You're single. Does it really matter where you spend New Year's Eve? We're all friends. What's wrong with helping me out? I've already bought tickets for the famous theme park. You're not seriously expecting me to cancel them, are you?" When New Year's Day arrives, the company's system crashes, and a major client storms into the office. Our boss discovers the position is unattended and flies into a rage. He calls me, shouting in frustration and begging me to cover his shift. I don't give in to him. Instead, I post on Instagram and tag my location at the ski resort on Northstar Mountain. The caption says, "The happiness of being single is something you'll never understand."

I owned a taco shop for twenty years. The entire street was crowded because of my shop. After the SATs were over, I wanted to give a 20% discount to the seniors who were graduating on my new taco flavor, but my meat supplier sent me a notice. [Due to the high temperatures, the cost of transporting frozen goods has increased. Effective today, the price of raw ingredients will increase by 30%.] [Items are available on a first-come, first-served basis due to limited quantities.] It was the third time he had increased the price this year. Immediately after, my landlord and vegetable supplier also increased their prices as though they had discussed this in advance. I was furious as I questioned them, but all of them gave me the same answer. “Your profit on your new taco menu is high! We also need to benefit!” I was trembling in anger. I went back to my hometown and sent them a group text message. [From now on, I don’t need you to supply any materials to me. I also won’t be renting the place anymore!]

On my first day at work, I received a carpool notice. [I'm three weeks pregnant and the company is quite far from my home.] [After verification, your car exceeds 400,000 dollars and has been on the road for less than a year. It meets my vehicle requirements.] [From now on, you will be responsible for sending me to and from work every day. You mustn't be late.] Looking at the message, I laughed out of sheer anger. I usually had a dedicated driver for my outings. After starting work, I had my family buy this inconspicuous car to keep things low-key. I replied directly: [No thanks!] Unexpectedly, the next day, Xenia Salter exploited her authority over the attendance records and marked me as arriving late and leaving early and deducted my salary. Since she was so shameless, she should not blame me for what was to come.

On the National Working Women's Day, the company gave perfume to every female employee as a gift, except me. Just as I was about to ask HR, I overheard my colleagues whispering in the breakroom. "After all, Gianna is the CTO. Isn't it a bit too obvious to leave her out so publicly?" "That’s Mr. Caro's order. We’re just following it." "Who doesn't know Serena is Mr. Caro's real love? But Gianna shamelessly spends half her day running into his office!" I froze in place. Married for three years, I accompany Matthias Caro in building this company from the ground up. To avoid office gossip, I never asked him to make our relationship public over those these years. In return, when my colleagues maliciously speculated about me, I got his indifferent, evasive silence and his blatant favoritism toward an intern. Taking a deep breath, I picked up my phone and dialed the number of my father, who was the most feared Mafia Don of the East Coast. "Father, I plan to return to the family." "And... please change the company's bidding slot to someone else." For three years, to protect Matthias's pride, I hid my identity as the Mafia Princess, leveraged my network and technology to bring hundreds of millions of dollars into his company, and even secured a spot in this bid. But now, I’m taking it all back.

The Nebula Algorithm I spent countless sleepless nights building single-handedly saved the company’s flagship project. Yet, when the annual promotion list came out, my name was nowhere to be found. Instead, a man named Julian Monroe, who had joined the company less than a month earlier, skipped several ranks to become my direct supervisor. When I marched into my boss Sebastian Carter’s office to ask why, he lashed out at me without hesitation. “You really think a community college graduate like you can compete with a master’s graduate from an elite overseas university?” I clenched my fists, raising my voice to fight back. “The employee handbook clearly states that engineering promotions are strictly performance-based, regardless of your degree!” He pointed a finger right at my nose, his eyes filled with unyielding disdain. “Rules are rigid, but people aren’t. “A community college graduate like you should be down on your knees thanking God for the base salary this company throws your way! “Know your place. This company will keep spinning just fine without you!” I turned around and handed in my resignation letter on the spot, taking my core algorithm with me. I couldn’t wait to see just how long his company would last without me, the “community college graduate.”

Right after the authorities issue the red flood alert, my boss, Bianca Larson, sends a message to our office group chat and tags everyone. "Kindly remain in the office instead of heading home this evening, so you won't have any issues coming in to work tomorrow morning. There'll be an overnight stay charge of 100 dollars, which will be deducted from your salary." All of my colleagues grumble about it, but no one dares to defy the boss. But in the middle of the night, the river embankment gives way. The nasty floodwater fills up the first-floor office, and not a single one of the 100-plus employees survives. Suddenly, my eyes open again. I've returned to the exact moment Bianca sends that message. Anna Wheeler, whose desk is next to mine, sighs and asks me how I intend to spend the night. I firmly declare, "I'm resigning!"

The day my mother, Dahlia Moone, gives birth to my younger brother, she goes into obstructed labor and suffers a catastrophic hemorrhage. My CEO father, Graham Kovane, orders every doctor and nurse out of the delivery room because his mistress, Selena Langford, says, "Her crying is giving me a headache." That day, both Mom and my unborn brother die. Not long after, I'm framed for a mistake I never made, driven out of the family, and left to survive on the streets. Living on the kindness of strangers, I fight my way up from nothing. Step by step, I rise until I become the head of Rockstone Tech, controlling a fortune worth billions. On the day of the annual evaluation for promoting interns to full-time employees, five candidate files are placed on my desk. My assistant, Ingrid Nelson, taps the file at the top of the stack, her voice full of admiration. "Ms. Campbell, Monica Kovane is exceptionally capable. Her performance has earned full marks from every department manager." I open Monica's profile, and my eyes stop on the family information section. Even in the worst of times, I will never forget those two names on the paper. After a long silence, I tell Ingrid to bring all five interns into my office. The employment contracts are handed out one by one. When only the last person remains, I look up and meet her confident gaze. She's almost certain the position is already hers. Calmly, I slide a termination letter across the desk. "Unfortunately, Ms. Kovane, you didn't pass."

For our company's annual party, my manager handed me a hundred-dollar bill. His assignment? Go out and buy the latest, top-of-the-line iPhone as the grand raffle prize. I stared at the cash, my brow furrowed. “An iPhone 17 costs nearly a thousand dollars. A hundred is hardly enough.” A smug smile tugged at his lips. “That’s your problem to figure out. When your superior hands down an order, you find a way to make it happen, not sit there questioning me.” So he was trying to make me pay out of my own pocket! When I flatly refused, he didn't hesitate to use my full-time promotion to threaten me. Looking at his arrogant face, I pretended to back down. “Fine. Leave it to me.” The second I turned around, I stuffed a brick into an empty phone box, sealed it up, and handed it right over.

Joseph Zeigler, the heir of the richest man in the city, suddenly develops a rare acute illness, leaving the whole medical department completely stumped. In my past life, I pull three all-nighters buried in medical journals from around the world before finally landing on the safest conservative treatment plan. Derek Chapman, the newly hired doctor, dismisses my approach. He scans the lab sheet using an AI diagnostic app and insists that a simple minimally invasive procedure is all it takes to eradicate the problem. I publicly point out the AI app's misdiagnosis, driven by my duty as a doctor. Derek, unable to accept the humiliation, leaves the hospital in a huff, accidentally falls into a river, and drowns. Helen Walker, the head of the department, has resented me ever since then. She leads a cyberbullying crusade against me online. She breaks down crying in front of the cameras, saying, "If Dr. Lund hadn't bullied the newcomer out of sheer jealousy, he wouldn't have been distracted enough to fall into that river. Dr. Lund is supposed to be compassionate as a doctor, but all he has is just pure jealousy!" I eventually jump to my death from a building because of the relentless cyberbullying. I open my eyes again to find myself back on the day Derek holds up his phone, loudly bragging about the AI's diagnosis. I take a backseat of my own accord this time. "These youngsters nowadays are absolute medical prodigies. If the AI says it is safe to operate, I will let you take the lead surgeon position for this case."

My coworker, Linda Sullivan, loved taking advantage of people. She borrowed my electric scooter for an urgent errand. When she finally returned it, it wouldn’t run. I brought it in for repairs and the mechanic told me someone had swapped the battery. I stormed straight back into the office to confront Linda, but before I could finish laying out what happened, she turned the tables on me. "I switched your battery?” Linda shrieked, “Where's your proof? Show me some real proof right now, or I'm suing you for slander!" What she didn't know was that my original battery was already defective. If she refused to give it back to me, whatever happened next would be entirely on her.