Boss Calls An Emergency All-Hands Meeting To Berate & Fire An Employee In Front Of The Entire Staff
This isn't just toxic, it's abuse, and it might even be grounds for a lawsuit.
ElenaNichizhenova | Getty Images | Canva Pro Unless you're really lucky, you'll likely work for at least one terrible, toxic, abusive boss over the span of your career. It's shockingly common, and researchers in one study found that senior leaders in business are up to 12 times more likely to have psychopathic tendencies.
And when it comes to one story on Reddit, it's hard for that statistic not to immediately jump to mind. In a post, a worker described the harrowing incident they witnessed when their toxic boss decided to fire an employee in the most humiliating and possibly illegal way possible.
The boss called an all-hands meeting to fire the employee in front of the entire staff.
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In their post, the worker described the confusing way this incident went down, which the boss seemed to have tailored to make sure it was as destabilizing and disturbing as possible for everyone involved, not just the person who got fired.
In the middle of the day, the staff were notified of an "emergency all-hands meeting" out of nowhere. "[He] wouldn't say what it was about," the worker wrote. "We all show up thinking it's something important."
Instead, they spent 20 minutes listening to their boss air all of their grievances about one single co-worker, a public call-out for "performance issues." When they were done with that, the boss fired the person in front of the entire staff. "
The boss did not just fire the employee; they humiliated and traumatized everyone who witnessed it.
The firing was bad enough, but the worker was left astonished by how their boss "just stood there and tore into them while we all watched." They added that the fired worker was "crying by the end" of the incident.
Understandably, this made everyone deeply disturbed. "We were all uncomfortable as hell but nobody knew what to do," the worker wrote. Making it even worse was that "afterward the boss acted like it was totally normal and went back to their office," like nothing had even happened.
It is not at all an exaggeration to say that this is traumatizing for everyone involved, not just the person fired. Witnessing abuse is one of the core ways children are traumatized by domestic abuse, for example, and "secondary trauma" — witnessing or even being merely told about someone else's traumatic event — is a well-known psychological phenomenon that can even result in PTSD.
Behavior like this may be grounds for a lawsuit.
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The worker was so astonished by what they saw that it left them wondering if what the boss did was even legal. The answer is complicated, and the boss's actions are likely not a clear violation of employment laws. But they do qualify as workplace abuse and harassment.
According to attorneys, public humiliation qualifies as verbal abuse, and verbal abuse rises to the level of workplace harassment when it creates a hostile, intimidating, or offensive environment for workers.
For it to be illegal, however, it must involve aggression based on a protected identity, a worker's gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, disability status, etc. That said, attorneys say it is vitally important to document and report incidents like the one this worker witnessed.
If your workplace's leadership or HR department does not take care of the situation or retaliation occurs, report it to state and federal agencies like the EEOC, and call a lawyer. In this case, one of the more shocking details of the story comes into play: An HR rep was sitting in the audience of this public humiliation, and did absolutely nothing.
Thankfully, the worker reported that another colleague had filmed most of the incident, and they're all planning to take action, as they should. They're also taking perhaps the most important action of all: looking for new jobs. Because this kind of behavior is sick, and no worker should have to even witness it, let alone experience it.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
