Abuse at work. | My Employment Lawyer

Abuse at work.

Recently, due to the actions of a slick office politician, my employer laid me off two months ago. This individual made inspiring speeches to the staff about how everyone was going have a role in the new organization and how we were all going to "take ownership" of our business. To make a long story short this person had promoted an office pet as my direct superior (probably related to someone important in the company – although I don’t know for sure), who was still in business school pursuing an MBA and had another year to go. She worked on Wall Street in the industry for five years and although she was a very good business analyst, she had limited knowledge of the industry and the needs of our customers. In contrast, I have ten years experience on Wall Street, including two years in Broker Dealer Compliance and five in trade support, and finished my MBA in 1998.

During the time I spent under the office politician and the executive pet, the following tactics were exercised on my pride and person:

1) My work was nitpicked to a degree of the ridiculousness. If a period was missing in a sentence contained within a twenty-page document, it was considered “an issue” – even if the document was a first draft.

2) I was treated like secretary and relegated to clerical tasks such as make cosmetic adjustments to spreadsheet documents. I wasn’t allowed to show initiative in any way, If I did – I was wrong. I should have forwarded all emails, questions, spreadsheets, and comments to the office politician’s pet so that it would be thoroughly reviewed. If the office politician’s pet was too busy to review my work or hear my question, which was always, I was wrong for bothering her. I just tried to do my job, I was told by the office pet that “I was pissing people off”. Interestingly enough I was never told whom it was I was “pissing off”. However if the work was never finished it was because of my incompetence to do my job. When I asked why I wasn’t given any room to just do my job, she told me that she “was protecting me”. Interestingly, she never told me what she was specifically protecting me from.

3) If I wasn't being humiliated with menial secretarial tasks I was completely ignored or spoken down to. They treated me and spoke to me like I was a child in front of my peers. I never felt so humiliated. The politician’s pet interrupted in the middle of statement or just pretended that I was invisible whenever we had meetings. She would role her eyes at me and snap at me suddenly without provocation. What I found amusing to me was how the office politician would coach her on how to abuse me and get away with it. That bastard would just sit there and just smirk at me as if to mock me of the situation he was putting me in. The only time I was given any attention is when they were ready to accuse me of some petty nonsense. At times I would walk out of room without even knowing what I did wrong or what I was suppose to do. They never stated anything with any specificity – everything was in provided to me in the form of a puzzle.

4) At one point, the politician’s pet had the nerve to walk up to me, and while I answered her question, she just stared at me with bulging eyes as if I was some kind of insect. Thank god I didn’t have a gun at that moment, because I don’t know what I would have done if I did.

5) There were also periods where I was told that there was nothing for me to do and that I should stay in my "cubicle and go find something to read". They used to get angry with me because I would ask for something to do! I used to sit in cubicle, looking at the ceiling with nothing to do.

6) At one point, two months before the layoff, the office politician leader of mine decided to call me in the office to tell me that pretty soon that the office "would soon be filled with a number of smart people" and hinted that "there were going to be a lot of changes around here". He even suggested that I go look for another job or just take whatever work he gave me. It turns out the work I was given was a phony project that know one else wanted to work on. Interestingly enough, two months after he fingered me and six other people in the office to be released in the Layoff that occurred in June, he hired all his friends to fill our spots - at higher salaries!

7) I was repeatedly restricted from important meetings and denied important documentation concerning ongoing projects. Then, since I wasn’t adequately informed, it was naturally my fault that I didn’t know what was going on.

8) When I requested software training that was offered to everyone in my unit, I was only person denied the training. When I asked what was going on, I was called into the politician’s pet’s office an informed that “she had a problem with MY attitude” and that she “couldn’t help but get defensive about my insinuations”. Interesting enough this occurred a month and half before I was laid off.

What I mentioned above is just the tip of the iceberg. The Ombudsman Office received a complaint from another person in another department that people were being harassed and singled out for abuse, and they did nothing!

I would like to ask you this question: How many crimes did this office politician get away with? Could I have done anything to protect myself from an abusive boss when all this and more was going on?

I consider myself a very self-motivated, curious, active, intelligent person. I don’t ever want anyone to get away with this again. I don’t ever want to doubt my abilities again.

1 answer  |  asked Aug 21, 2001 11:22 PM [EST]  |  applies to New York

Answers (1)

David M. Lira
Harassment isn't Necessarily Illegal

What you describe sounds like harassment, and I've had cases where the type of behavior suffered by my client sounded a lot like the type of behavior you've been subjected to. However, believe it or not, harassment is not illegal. Only harassment motivated by certain reasons is illegal.

Harassment is, generally, not illegal because of the employment at will doctrine, which not only says an employer can fire you at any time for any reason or no reason at all, but also says an employer can treat you any way at all, no matter how unfair or abusive. Under the employment at will doctrine, your only remedy is to quit. The doctrine does not require you to give notice. You can just leave at any time, for any reason, or no reason at all.

Harassment becomes illegal only if undertaken for certain reasons made improper under specific laws. Thus, it is illegal to harass someone because that person is of a different race, national origin or sex, as examples. It might be illegal to harass someone because of that person's age, or because that person has a handicap, as further examples.

It would also be illegal to harass (or fire or otherwise deny someone a benefit of employment) because that person has exercised certain legally protected rights. For example, if someone believes they have been subjected to sexual harassment, and that person has a factual for believing that is so, even if that person is ultimately wrong, that person has a legal right to complain of the sexual harassment. If the employer responds to the complaint by abusing the employee that would be illegal. Although the conduct constituting the abuse might be described generally as harassment, as a legal technicality, it would be called retaliation.

Another example of an employee being "harassed" for exercising a legally protected right might involve some type of job benefits. Sometimes, an employer may want to keep costs down, and the employer might get carried away by, for example, abusing an employee because the employee has exercised workers' compensation benefits, or even health insurance benefits. Although the behavior might be described as harassment, the technical term for this type of conduct, perversely enough, is discrimination.

Although the description of the conduct you have experienced is important, the more important question is why you believe you are being subjected to the conduct. If the only explanation is that someone just doesn't like you, you really don't have anything illegal, and that might explain why HR has not acted on any complaints. (HR might not have a legal obligation to respond, but to me their inaction is not very smart. You don't have to be right to start a lawsuit, and, when HR fails to respond to an employee complaint, HR is just inviting a lawsuit. The employer might well win that lawsuit in the end, but it will cost in legal fees. The smarter and cheaper thing to do might be to act on the complaint.)

posted by David M. Lira  |  Aug 22, 2001 1:16 PM [EST]

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