Help with Spanish Subjunctive tense?

You're thinking like a linguist, not an analyst. Good! That sort of thinking will help simplify this area of Spanish, provided you read about the subjunctive in something like William Bull's "Spanish for Teachers" in addition to your textbook.

Analysts examine samples of Spanish, tally up various uses, and try to categorize them. They find the subjunctive form used with Wish, Emotion, Impersonal (the case for your example), Recommendation, Doubt, and Hope ("Ojalá"), and then invent mnemonics like "WEIRDO" to help students remember the categories.

Linguists look at the categories and try to collapse them down further into a generalization. This approach can be simpler for the student because it can provide a "unified theory" that explains the subjunctive, ser/estar differences, pret&imp diffs, etc.

The linguist approach is often too complex to use in a beginning Spanish class, so textbooks include the lists of rules that the analysts come up with. But really, if a bit of linguistics were introduced into the classroom, my opinion is that this mess could be made a lot easier to understand.

The underlying message of your sentence "Es malo que no le guste" is really no different than "Yo siento que no le guste", which is little different from "Su circunstancia causa que me sienta así" but analysts categorize the first as Impersonal, the second as Emotion, and, uoh, the "category" seems to be missing from WEIRDO for the last one.

The linguist Bull would say that all 3 collapse down to 1 explanation: The two events (the not liking & and the having an opinion about the "not liking") are so tightly related that you don't have one without the other; One event influences the other so strongly that the subjunctive is triggered.

The same happens here. Tocas el vidrio y el vidrio se rompe.You touch the glass and it breaks --> No tocas el vidrio sin que el vidrio se rompa. You can't touch the glass without it breaking. The two events are so tightly entangled with each other that the subjunctive is triggered.

There are a number of areas in Spanish that are complex like this. If you happy memorizing the analyst's categories presented in a textbook, that's fine, just be aware that the "rules" break down easily. The linguist approach can often simplify things but that too breaks down as you generalize things more and more. For example, there is no single linguistical reason for the subjunctive...at best you can collapse it down to two: There are situations where subjunctive is mandatory (tightly bound events where often one is causing the other) and where subjunctive is optional (experience vs. non-experience), like the difference between "Busco al doctor que me puede curar." & "Busco un doctor que me pueda curar".

Good luck!!!!

In Spanish Subjunctive forms of verbs are typically used to express various states of unreality such as wish, emotion, possibility, judgment, OPINION, necessity, or action that has not yet occurred . The subjunctive is not a realistic mood (one that does not refer directly to what is necessarily real) – it is often contrasted with the indicative, which is a realistic mood.

Every time you start a phrase using "Think" you must use the Subjunctive mood: "(Pienso) que es malo que no le guste su trabajo"

You are learning the Subjunctive MOOD.

tense means - present, future, imperfect, etc.

mood is indicative, subjunctive, interrogative or imperative.

Your grammar book will obviously tell you when to use the subjunctive - and it's clear that you need a grammar book. Why don't you have one?

You would find that the subjunctive is used here because of the expression of emotion which recedes it [ es malo que, it could also be es una pena que]