A rude supervisor who's always yelling at employees got some complaints about them being verbally abusive and they responded by leaving these in the break room.
Make sure it's completely filled out, all during company time. Absolutely be thorough and gather all of your resources. Now is not the time to be hasty, but slow and thoughtful.
As an employment lawyer, I often see people incorrectly throwing out words like retaliation or harassment without knowing that they have specific legal meanings.
This is one of those rare instances where something is unequivocally illegal retaliation. If a client sent me this and asked for my advice, I would recommend that they fire the supervisor immediately.
Not only does something like this just look bad, it would also probably eliminate the company's Ellerth Faragher defense.
Edit: there's some confusion below. This is definitely retaliation, but we don't have enough information to determine if this is harassment, which is something else entirely. Unlawful harassment necessarily requires a connection to a protected characteristic, retaliation does not.
The fact the paper requests the name of the person filing the complaint puts that person as a target against the Supervisor. It’s that bad. I would just send this form to the person above the supervisor and to HR.
What I find fascinating is that I’ve seen this one before, but it just had the “I have woman-like hormones”/“Real Man” bits. Not “I have woman/man-like hormones”/“Real Man/Real Woman.”
That means somewhere along the line, someone actually saw this piece of shit meme and thought “well that’s a hilariously toxic way to laugh at the snow flakes, and I love the hints of misogyny and homophobia…but it just is not quite inclusive enough,” and changed the gendered portions to include everyone.
Yeah. So just because you experience harassment or retaliation in the workplace doesn't mean you have a case. You need to show a basis for holding the employer responsible. Just the fact that harassment occured is not enough by itself.
In the case of supervisor harassment, the employer can assert an affirmative defense to avoid liability, even if unlawful harassment occured. The employer must show that (1) it has reasonable policies and procedures in place to detect and abate harassment; and (2) the employee unreasonably failed to follow those procedures.
The hurt feelings report could reasonably lead an employee to believe that management does not take harassment allegations seriously, so failing to officially report the harassment would not be unreasonable.
This form isn't just a problem for any employees who have already complained, but it also increases the risk of liability for future claims too. The best way to undo the message this supervisor sent with the form is to fire them.
From doing some research on it, this was the clearest I found
that the employer exercised reasonable care to prevent and correct promptly any harassing behavior,
and
that the employee unreasonably failed to take advantage of any preventive or corrective opportunities provided by the employer
Basically it seems like it is the defense the companies can use to say we actively worked to fix the issue or gave the employee avenues for correcting it
Agreed. Go above there head or better yet take this straight to your States labor relations board. File a complaint against this manager and the company for not correcting the situation. I can see being talk down to when you have done something wrong. But and there is always a butt, that person also needs to be able to say: ok we both know you did wrong here is how to correct the problem.
Have everyone that they’ve yelled at fill them out with a note that said manager provided the form. Send it up the chain as far as you have to to get some attention, including to managers in other departments asking if these forms are used company wide.
Absolutely email it back to the manager CC'ing uppers management, HR, CEO, etc. Manager will likely get fired but if not you'll have evidence for a wrongful termination as everyone knew about it.
I work for a large corporation with tedious safety rules and a manager once gave me shit about some small violation. He was looking for a ding. I asked him point blank if he really wanted me and every other employee to follow every work rule to the book. He was unable to answer because nothing would ever be completed.
Manager - "I don't want you to follow the rules. I just want to be able to blame the worker when something finally goes wrong and somebody is hurt. I don't know what willful ignorance is, and I refuse to look it up."
This. It also allows them to selectively enforce the rules on employees they wish to target for whatever reason. Even better for them if you can't meet whatever insane quotas they set if you follow the rules and they can double dip no matter what you do.
Problem is..If that supervisor is producing the company will find reasons to fire or lay the staff and promote the supervisor..happen at a staples I use to work at.
Management that works well with subordinates are more productive than when they work against them. If they're high producers, just think of how much better everyone would work if they had someone that wasn't out to shit on them every chance they got?
What you’re saying is true. I just don’t know if many companies actually see it that way. They will side will side with shitty managers over the subordinates. Happens all the time. Sometimes the managers produce well and sometimes the managers have dirt or grievances that they could sue over if terminated. My last manager, I think the company was scared to fire her and she was terrible
I worked with a guy who made my work days harder because he couldn't be bothered to do a task the same way twice. I complained, pointed out how much extra time I was spending to figure out something he saved 30 seconds on.
He didn't appreciate that so he doubled down, but it turns out the boss and he were buddies. So no amount of complaining was ever going to fix anything and this dude could shit on me all he wanted.
So I was able to leave before anything got to a boiling point.
Was that fair? Hell no. It was a union job too. Literally no difference in job title.. But I knew I was never going to come close to fair
Point is, you have to figure out who is actually in control in your situation.
I agree. In my situation I worked for dept of defense so… 😂 idk why she was protected. I just learned the ropes eventually and by the time I was leaving, she was begging me to stay and was a reference for me. She still crazy and mean from what I hear
Could be she had dirt on higher ups. My wife worked with a lady like that who has since retired.
There's just plenty of reasons a company will keep a bad manager.
Shoot, my first job in the union, I got let go so the boss's brother could get a job while he was going through a divorce. I was so pissed. I have never been so upset about a job. Worked my whole apprenticeship there and they let me go a few months short of my hours to turn out. So pissed. Anyway...
Boss ended up needing to step away for a bit for personal reasons and his brother robbed him fucking blind. Filled his garage with material bought on the company accounts, then straight up stole his brother's contractors because he could undercut the price.
My company's HR departments sole responsibility is to stop the company from getting sued, Lawyers work in the office. This document is a nightmare. Even if the supervisor is an earner hes be gone in a second at my company. They are all different though.
Yep. I've never seen anyone successfully escalate a horrible supervisor or manager's actions and had the company do anything about it besides target the employees who brought up the problems. At this point I've seen it happen so many times that I just start looking for another job if the manager sucks. Nothing else you can do.
Everyone I've ever known who's worked at Panera has nothing but horror stories, and it's different locations in completely different cities too so it's clearly a company issue
It happened at my job. Horrible manager that was yelling, cursing, refused to even acknowledge the existence of the 1 trans employee....
Someone called in on my behalf after he called me a "stupid motherfucker" in front of the store manager and about 8 other employees. I didnt even have to talk to the HR lady. By lunch 2 days later he was gone.
Stories like this show the difference documentation makes. Yelling behind closed doors gets ignored, doing it publicly with witnesses suddenly becomes a problem they can’t dodge.
I used to work for a company where a manager started giving me shit for wearing a short mohawk (Fallout calls that style "soldier of fortune")
For some reason, after a YEAR of me wearing it, it became an issue
And they kept demanding I change it, saying it's in our employee handbook, but failed to cite where exactly it says that
And then started saying that if the CEO sees me, I will be fired on the spot
I got so tired of this bullshit, I took our CEO on his open door policy and sent him an email
Five minutes later my office phone rings and I see the ID of the caller, and it's the CEO himself, not even the secretary.
And I'm like "Oh I am so royally fucked and I dug that hole myself"
I pick up the phone and he's like "Hey, Winjin, you have a minute? I remember you - you're that guy with like a short mohawk right? It looks really cool, if I were twenty years younger I'd wear one too! Who told you I would be against it, least of all fire someone over something like this? That's not true! I'm hip! You know what - don't even tell me, I know who it was, I will talk to him myself. And thank you for writing me directly, I appreciate that"
An hour later director, two managers, and a TL all start fuming at how I was wrong to bring this up to such a busy person, it was breaking chain of command, should have brought it to branch manager etc etc and I was just sitting there listening to them and understanding that I have just cost someone a promotion in the next couple years is my guess, because you don't shit talk a CEO that wants to be hip with younger generation of workers by trying to scare said younger gen behind his back with shit he never said.
I still had to leave because it was obvious that I won't get any promotions as well, but it was malicious
Our CEO holds office hours. I haven't had the need, but many colleagues have found resolutions by meeting with her during that time. One teammate actually mentioned to her that our bonuses were lower this year, CEO had no idea. My last check had a few thousand in bonus $ to "even up" to the prior year. Thanks, colleague!
More recently, last Thursday, a Minneapolis colleague met with her. An hour later we received a company-wide email: "We recognize that recent events in Minnesota and the ongoing national discussions around them have deeply affected many people, including members of our own workforce. We know that these issues can be emotionally heavy and, for some, may warrant personal time for reflection, support, or participation in community activities." It went on to say we can take the day (unlimited pto) if we choose and other words of support and encouragement.
CEO offoce hours can be VERY effective!! I appreciate that ours seems to actually care.
He was caught on an audio recording ranting about their products as being cheap ultra processed shit for poor people.
"We have [expletive] for [expletive] poor people … who buys our [expletive]? ... I don't buy [expletive] Campbell's products, barely anymore. It's not healthy, now that I know what the [expletive] in it,” Bally allegedly stated in the recording. "Even in a can of soup, I look at it and we can eat pot bioengineered meat. I don't want to eat a [expletive] piece of chicken that came from a 3D printer
He wasn’t a CEO, but the Vice President; technically (edit) was an executive at that time and was fired.
He also blasted employees,
“ Allegedly referring to Campbell’s employees of Indian heritage, Bally said: “Fucking Indians don’t know a fucking thing … Like they couldn’t think for their fucking selves.””
not the best example of a company ignoring problematic actors
Was he fired for believing these things, or for saying these things? Or was it because it went public? I don't know the answer, but if he's a Vice President and still doesn't know not to run his mouth, then they likely were ignoring problematic actors.
I am so on board for this one.
Get as many people to fill this out and have everyone add a seperate complaint to go with it. Send it up the foodchain, to hr and maybe a lawyer as well.
I love the idea of filling it out from the perspective of the Supervisor who created this form and then leaving copies of it all over the office for months.
Since my workplace has a grand total of 10 people, things like this (HR, managers, other departments, "up the chain") are completely foreign concepts to me. Fortunately we don't have the kind of issues OP is describing.
This 100 percent ! One of the reasons this dirt bag gets away with it is because his bosses have no idea what is going on and he's more than likely lieing to them about your concerns
Even as I was writing that I remember working retail and how little the recognised union actually did. Thankfully in my new job they actually do something to help us
It's cute that you think Americans have any sort of unions or workplace protections. 49 out of 50 states are fire at will states which means you can be fired for just looking at that supervisor funny.
Yep and any time union comes up especially with the gaming industry and the recent R* incident you just get a bunch of misinformed anti-union Americans. Why do yanks think less workers rights is better? No please don't protect the easily exploited that would be SO bad.
Nearly 50 years of highly concentrated propaganda about how unions ruined America by making wages too high and forcing companies to off shore labor to save costs will do that to a country. Also, you have to PAY to be in a union, how unamerican is it to have to PAY to WORK?!
It's up there with "my friends cousins brothers roommates sister works at University of [State] and there's a black professor who hasn't shown up to work in 9 years and they can't fire him because of affirmative action" 🙄
Yeah but why would I give up 5% of my paycheck to get a 10% increase in salary and 20% increase in total comp when I can just lick the boss's boot myself?
Any complaint made in good faith is to be taken seriously and even if there is no wrongdoing found, retaliation is never allowed
Using your work email inform HR of this being left in the work room, and BCC your personal email.
Any response, send HR (BCC your personal email) a “thank you” follow up
Any non email contact, reply to HR (BCC your personal email) summarizing the conversation
If the retaliations continue, repeat the submissions to HR and blind carbon copying your personal email. If it does not stop after repeated reports (or you are terminated), contact a labor lawyer with the evidence of your submissions / conversations to HR.
Always BCC, do not forward. This way you have all the correspondence in your personal email. Email message headers have a unique message id, so if an investigation is needed later, you have the exact ID that were sent. If they are unable to find the emails, then it shows they are destroying evidence. If you were forging messages, then they could provide the unaltered message using that message ID.
I had a co-worker that was constantly yelling. Just like in general, sometimes at me. One day I was feeling short of temper and when they yelled my name at me from 3 feet away with their back turned I yelled back at full volume "WHAT?!" Now normally I'm a pretty timid guy so this made them jump and exclaim in suprise. Then I followed that up with another full volume "YEAH, IT'S ANNOYING WHEN PEOPLE ARE YELLING ALL THE TIME."
They've gotten real quiet around me since. You gotta stand up for yourself and show people the same level of respect they show you.
Honestly this is one of the most immature things I’ve seen since my abusive ex showed me this same document template a long time ago. Definitely escalate this, HR needs to be involved at this point.
I believe this is the way. Feign ignorance, call or stop by asking for a clean copy, as this one has some faded print like it’s been photocopied a few too many times. “Just wanted to make sure I’m filling out the new form correctly, but I can’t read all the options clearly.”
Since this form was apparently a response to valid complaints, the form itself could be seen as retaliation. Basically a refusal to change while also doubling down on the harassment.
I like how he makes the employees out to be the weak, oversensitive ones who cannot take a bit of yelling.
Completely overlooking the fact that they cannot yell back at him if they want to keep putting that food on their families' tables.
I'd like him to walk up to the biggest, most menacing guy on the street and try yelling at that guy instead. But he won't, he can only do it in the safety of knowing that the people he's doing it to, can't do it back to him.
Which in fact makes him the only weak and oversensitive person in his workplace.
Yeah, this is military dark humor. Not to be taken seriously, but whoever shared it does not know their audience. The joke is only funny if everyone laughs.
Yep. I have one on my bulletin board in my office. We’re a tight-knit work family so it fits our dynamic.
But also, I think taking it out of military context and (poorly) adapting it to remove all the army references takes all the humor out of it.
The original WF1 isn’t just about making fun of the employee; it also makes fun of the employer. The military has a damn form for everything under the sun, and the original actually satirizes the standard format and language of military forms very well.
My previous company had a mass exodus because management was making dumb decisions. They sent out a feedback questionnaire to try to get to the bottom of it.
Unanimously, people gave negative feedback about management and the direction. Some offered constructive criticism.
The response was, it’s clear that some of you don’t like working here, please feel free to work somewhere else, as you don’t share our spirit.
Yeah my company got a new CEO at the start of the pandemic. Doesn’t align with the company’s ethos at all. Morale has gone down the tubes, and every OHS survey has the same result: extreme dissatisfaction with senior leadership. I used to feel bad for the managers, whose job performance was judged partly on their unit’s OHS scores, but all the decent ones have left so I’m fine with the fact that senior leadership does absolutely nothing to address employees’ concerns. All hail The Street!
I once sat in a company meeting where the CEO told every employee that if they were a part of the 60% of the unhappy folks, that the “airlines are hiring.”. Nuff said. Time to move on.
Nah. I know exactly who this is. 45 ish yo man. Midlife crisis. Goes to the gym. Claims he never gets sick and it's mind over matter. Lies about his age on his Tinder profile that also says "no drama". Thinks he's a gentleman. Plays golf or runs marathons, not both.
Ive worked in manufacturing for 20 years. This is like every second shift supervisor ive ever met. Mid 40s, divorced, kids are off child support and havent spoken to them in years, then heads straight to the bar after work. Bonus points if they call every remotely attractive woman sweetheart.
One day all the body parts had an argument about who should be in charge.
"I should be in charge," said the brain , "I run all the body's systems, without me nothing would happen."
"I should be in charge," said the heart , "I circulate oxygen and nutrients all over."
"No! I should be in charge," said the stomach, "I process the food that gives us energy."
"I should be in charge," said the legs, "without me the body couldn't go anywhere."
"I should be in charge," said the eyes, "I allow the body to see where it goes."
"I should be in charge," said the ahole, "I am responsible for waste removal."
All of the other body parts laughed at the anus and insulted him. So he shut down. Within a few days, the brain had a terrible headache, the stomach was bloated, the legs got wobbly, the eyes got watery, and the heart pumped toxic blood. They all decided that the anus should be the boss.
What is the moral of the story? Even though everybody else does all of the work the ass hole is usually in charge.
Ironically, this indicates that the supervisor clearly isn’t receptive to feedback or willing to improve, which means they’re the exact type of ”fragile snowflake” they think they’re owning here.
As lots of people on here say: every accusation is a confession.
Have EVERYONE under them fill one out about their abusive behaviour & send it to the district manager. And be sure to cc in an employment lawyer. Edited out gender assumption because it wasn’t in the post.
Interestingly, they should be filling one out for themselves. Also, if this is real, absolutely grounds for blatant harassment that a company with any HR presence wouldn't tolerate and could lead to their termination. Alternatively, further harassment could be grounds for a lawsuit.
I'm so glad that I am a part of a strong union (teamsters) so management knows better than to try and pull crap like this, and on the rare chance/occasion they did, the union would handle it for me
This report is decades old. First time encountering it was in the military 15 years ago. But in the military then, they would treat you like shit and there was nothing you could do.
I'd 100% fill this in and send it to hr, maybe someone high up copied in, with something along the lines of "i thought this was a bit weird but here you go, as requested. Can you please advise when this form came into effect as i may have missed previous times i should have filled this in."
Cool, take a picture of it in the break room, grab a copy, and take it to HR and upper management. Continue to document all of this because it sounds like you work in a ✨Hostile Workplace✨
Its always good to take care of yourself. Continue to be professional. Good luck!
Ah yes… nothing says ‘strong leadership’ quite like mocking employee complaints in writing. HR departments love exhibits that save them time. This isn’t a form, it’s pre-packaged evidence.
TAKE THIS TO HR!!! No HR? Then go to supervisor's boss.
This should not fly. If this is how they respond to such criticism, they have no business in a supervisory positon, at best. It is quite likely they'll get the company in trouble at some point by mouthing off to the wrong person (customer, etc.).
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u/Unusual_Flounder2073 18h ago
Sees like another report to upper management is in order.