Not Always Working / YMMV

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Alternative Character Interpretation: Now on its own page.
Broken Base:
- This story involves the submitter heading to the waste facility that is apparently small enough that only four cars can be on the grounds to throw garbage away. They stop their car in the entrance and get yelled at by an employee, first from afar then up close, about parking in the entrance and blocking other cars. The comment section is divided between those that reprimand the submitter for stopping in the entrance, no matter how short or long of a time they need to throw their garbage away, and those that believe the employee was the worse of the two. The only thing the comments can agree on is that the employee giving a name and claiming them to be their manager was likely a scam to get the complaint told to a buddy of theirs and not their actual manager.
- Whenever there's a story that involves the submitter dealing with an office food thief by pulling a prank that exposes the thief, usually via making their food extra spicy/disgusting to out the thief through their reaction, the comments tend to be split based on the actions of the submitter. One side will call out the submitter for risking the thief's health by spiking the food with a potential allergen or other ingredient that could endanger their health rather than using a harmless dye or even locking their food away to keep the thief out. The other side will defend the submitter's actions and state that they are either not responsible for knowing the allergy details of someone who shouldn't even be eating their food or wouldn't have had to go that far if the company was doing something to punish or deter the food theft in the first place.
Crosses the Line Twice: It's one thing for a movie projector to experience an error and cut off the movie too early, but the sheer bad luck of when such happened in this story, in the middle of the climax of Toy Story 3 when Woody, Buzz, and the gang are close to being burned alive in an incinerator, leaving the audience horrified at what appeared to be a brutal Downer Ending, left many commenters admitting that they couldn't help but laugh at the absolute absurdity of it.
Cry for the Devil: Many of the comments on this story feel pity for the illiterate kid who knocked up his girlfriend, can't hold a job, and ends up in jail because his parents only ever educated him through oral Bible verses.
Designated Villain: In this story, a server in a restaurant complains about a regular customer eating a lot of expensive food at the All-You-Can-Eat buffet, blaming said customer for the owner's constant accusations of theft by the serving staff, saying that they lost their job once they told off the gluttonous customer and he left permanently, leading to the restaurant closing down two months later. The commentariat, however, was quick to point out that the biggest jerk was the server's boss, not the customer, because he was blaming his employees for the monetary loss caused by the gluttonous customer, while the customer was just taking up the restaurant's offer of AYCE buffet at 10€. On top of that, it has been noted that the owner has never taken up any suggestions to either raise the offer's price, establish rules about what/how many foods customers are allowed to take in a single course, or serve food that's not as fancy, meaning that the restaurant's failure wasn't caused by the customer, but the owner's poor economic sense. Some comments even point out a business which risks bankruptcy because a single customer consumed the fanciest food while following the actual rules was already in a very precarious situation anyway. The story being uploaded in Not Always Working instead of Not Always Right, and the title ("A Scourge^note Requires Better Management") seems to indicate the editors themselves thought this situation was caused by the restaurant's management instead of the customer.
Comment from user Keniko Dukas: Don't do all you can eat if you can't afford all they can eat. I go to a buffet to eat what I find tasty - I don't give a flying frick if it's expensive for the restaurant, I paid the cover charge, I eat what I want.
Esoteric Happy Ending: This story starts out typically. A manager starts disciplining an employee in front of the company director for not delivering their reports on time. When the employee reveals three months' worth of reports stacked up on the manager's desk, the director turns the meeting around and disciplines the manager for ignoring them. In the last paragraph, the manager quits, whereupon the employee is offered their job... and discovers the manager was actually having a breakdown from overwork-induced stress for which the director was abusing them.
Harsher in Hindsight: While several of the Worst Aid-related stories end up with a competent nurse/doctor being able to help the person in the story, such stories have become incredibly scary when a 2016 report revealed that hospital mistakes have become one of the leading causes of death in the United States.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Between when this story was written and when it went up on the site, the The Walking Dead character cited as being still alive (Tyreese) had died.
- This story involves a console repair shop refusing to repair the submitter's brother's semi-broken PlayStation 2 on the grounds that the aforementioned owner had placed cockroaches in the console, only for the manager to replace the PS2 free of charge as an apology because the repairman who worked on that PS2 turned out to have gone to work tripping balls, resulting in him hallucinating the insects. Years later, it turned out that the original PlayStation 4 console is prone to actual, non-hallucinated cockroach infestation (the Slim and Pro don't have this problem due to the redesign). In fact, there's at least one story on the website which features a PS4 with a real cockroach infestation.
- This story about two Italian brothers owning a restaurant and running it into the ground because they were more focused on arguing with each other than working had a comment point out that their mother would be called, and she would put the two of them in their place. When the sequel to the story was posted, it turns out that's exactly what happened.
More Popular Spin-Off: An interesting variant in that, while it's not more popular than Right, it's far more popular than the other sister sites (as evidenced by the number of pages for Working than the other sister sites).
Strawman Has a Point: The manager in this story is treated as being a stick in the mud for trying to stop a well-meaning teen from walking around singing to people in a store in an effort to make their day a little better - and granted, he's the only one shown to actually be annoyed by her. However, he's not entirely wrong that she could have indeed ended up being a disturbance to someone through her actions, especially (as many in the comments point out) people with severe social anxiety who don't like being suddenly addressed by strangers, much less have the stranger sing to them. Other comments also point out that the situation could very well have been detrimental to the store's business, with people potentially deciding not to shop there once they saw this happening (either because it made them uncomfortable or because they were in a hurry).
Unintentionally Sympathetic: This new hire at a grocery store has excellent people skills and is well-liked by the customers to a fault, as he often stops whatever he was already doing to help another customer, much to the chagrin of his co-workers. His co-workers then conspire to get him moved to the front end of the store, which instead causes him to get promoted to assistant manager, a position which he gets too overwhelmed by very quickly. He ends up missing the chance to go back to the bakery section he was in before once he throws in the towel and must become a cashier, which he is stated to not be especially happy with. The comments unanimously sided with the new hire (who sounds like a perfectly nice guy who just got carried away with trying to help everybody) and criticized the new hire's co-workers and the submitter for scheming to get the new hire out of their hair behind his back instead of just asking the new hire to slow down, dial his enthusiasm back a bit, and explain what his job actually was. Making matters worse is that the submitter was supposed to be training the new hire in the first place, and yet they take part in the scheming with everybody else, even saying at the end that they regretted nothing.

YMMV / Not Always Working

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