Posted by denised in Over the course of my career I’ve been asked to do an array of questionable things. Most were just plain stupid, some were sexist, but none were outright illegal. So what do you do when your job description requires you to report violations but your boss wants you to cover them up? Here’s part one of a true-to-life, really bad boss story submitted by a reader who’s facing this dilemma.
My boss required me to go to compliance training. The compliance training stated that I was required to report
violations or else I would be committing a violation myself. The violations I reported were committed by my boss (and she escaped punishment by lying), and now I am on her hit list.
She is currently in the process of isolating me. She is telling everyone that I report every mistake that they make and some refuse to speak to me because of it. (Of course, mistakes and violations of the law are two entirely different things, but this is lost on my boss.) She has had another employee ask me “as a favor” to do something that is violation of privacy policies and I have refused. She assigned me to a task (through the employee who normally performs this function) that would have required I stretch the truth to satisfy the customer (who was a different employee in my department). I did not stretch the truth, then my boss redid the assignment with the truth stretched. This employee was very upset with me and had special favor with my boss for a few days, but, now that she is over her anger, she is no longer my boss’s favorite.
My boss has promoted the office gossip because she knows of sneaky ways to irritate people, including tampering with my phone and computer. I have two people I can confide in at work, one my boss knows about and one she is trying to flush out. The one my boss knows about has told me that the last person who confided in her about my boss got fired, and she does not want that to happen to me, so she is backing away.
Not only is this guy faced with an a** of a boss but one who’s bullying him into breaking the law. Any thoughts on the best way to handle this situation? Share your thoughts in the comment section.
Wednesday: Part Two – Finding a bright spot
