I’m a bit of an abitué on Reddit. My account is around 8 years old, and I’m a moderator of a fairly big Italian personal finance subreddit. I don’t write much, probably less than 3 comments per week nowadays. Still, I read quite a lot, more than I’d like to measure. I like lurking in career subreddits. I had my (albeit small) share of corporate and freelance adventures, and sometimes I realize I can give a heads-up to people asking for advice. Or, I guess, I like reading about others’ misfortunes and sympathizing, in a way.

There’s a worrying trend I realized is going on at the moment, though. Especially on Italian subreddits, where career and personal finance are, due to our country’s meager finances, quite a source of frustration, especially for young people.

A typical thread goes on like this one (sorry, it’s in Italian, and was removed since, but I’ll translate it for you below).

OP starts with:

Hello kind Reddit community. I have a problem. I had a temporary job, with a contract that ended last Friday. [OP is writing on Sunday]. I was told that the contract would be renewed, and to come to work tomorrow anyway. What would you do? I’m lost.

So, for those of you who may not know, Italy’s bureaucracy with job contracts is a mess. Employer may just communicate to the State that you’re starting to work for them on any given date, and they’d only need your fiscal code (which is a publicly available code, once you know the person’s name, surname, date and place of birth), without you signing anything beforehand.

The first and most voted comment, is what I call a Reddit knight. If OP followed this advice, they probably found themselves in trouble, or at least made a very bad impression with their employer:

Tomorrow morning, wake up and check whether the contract was properly renewed. If not, YOU CANNOT ENTER THE BUILDING.

Which yes, it is technically correct. But:

  • Employees in Italy are overworked, almost everywhere (State workers apart).

    The agency which should have communicated the renewal, probably has a single employee, who received tens of documents to prepare by Friday evening, while already having a pile from the days before. So OP’s contract just couldn’t go through.

  • It’s probably not a real issue.

    I don’t the specific about this case, but since the Italian government knows our bureaucracy is messy, it’s usually not an issue to send the proper document some days after the start, paying a small fee.

  • Not showing up for work, when being said to do so, due to a missing document, doesn’t look great.

    I mean, yes, I totally get it. I’m probably as frustrated with our Italian laissez-faire as the commenter is. I’m angry that this nation doesn’t work at all as it should, because procedures are not followed and there’s often no punishment when they aren’t. But now imagine you’re OP’s manager. You know the agency should have prepared the renewal, but they haven’t. Maybe your accounting department didn’t pay their last invoice, and your employees’ documents are being put down the pile, who knows. You still need OP’s work. You need a flexible, smart individual. And what you get, is someone refusing to come to work unless their contract is properly renewed. Which could take days, or even the whole week. What do you think of this employee? Maybe, you shrug it off, give it an (angry) laugh and spend your time contacting the agency and speeding up the contract renewal, if you really need that employee and they have invaluable skills. Or maybe, you realize that renewing the contract wouldn’t be the smartest move, and that you may find someone else less annoying to come to work for you.

I’m not saying it is right, or how things should work. It is far from that.

But unfortunately, in our far-from-perfect job landscape here in Italy, the advice from the commenter was really bad.

Others commented with more conciliating proposals, and I really hope OP followed them.

But I find this pattern repeated everywhere. Frustrated people giving advice to Reddit posters, inciting them to stand rigidly in their convintions, no matter the circumstances. To refuse friendly-but-suboptimal arrangements and pursue the purest and most rightful thing that should happen. And lots, lots of other frustrated users giving upvotes and visibility to those Reddit knights, whose only merit is to write in a decent way, while giving awful advice.

The wisest thing to do, usually, would be instead to pause, breathe, and reflect on consequences. But there’s no room for that on Reddit, it seems.