The Four Secret Words That Allow Your Employer to Make You Do Almost Anything They Want
The phrase 'other duties as assigned' in job descriptions can lead to unexpected and sometimes unreasonable tasks for employees. While it often covers mundane responsibilities, it can also result in bizarre situations that employees may not have anticipated. This article highlights various accounts of workers who faced unusual demands from their employers under this catchall phrase.
- ▪The phrase 'other duties as assigned' is commonly found in job descriptions.
- ▪It can lead to employees being tasked with unexpected and sometimes unreasonable duties.
- ▪Workers have shared experiences of being asked to perform bizarre tasks outside their job descriptions.
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| Original publisher | Slate |
| Canonical URL | https://slate.com/life/2026/05/work-job-contract-secret-employment-description-tasks-duties.html?via=rss |
| Publication time | Mon, 18 May 2026 09:45:00 GMT |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-18T09:49:56.126Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-18T09:49:56.126Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
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| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
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| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
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| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
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| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Work The Four Secret Words That Allow Your Employer to Make You Do Anything They Want Check your contract for “other duties as assigned.” By Alison Green May 18, 20265:45 AM Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Austin Distel/Unsplash, photosvit/Getty Images Plus, and Ant Rozetsky/Unsplash. Copy Link Share Share Comment Copy Link Share Share Comment Few people are as knee-deep in our work-related anxieties and sticky office politics as Alison Green, who has been fielding workplace questions for a decade now on her website Ask a Manager. In Direct Report, she spotlights themes from her inbox that help explain the modern workplace and how we could be navigating it better.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Slate.
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