Office Campaigns and Crusades


My recent article about dealing with unreasonable bosses and unreasonable requests generated a lot of debate. Some readers agreed with me that you often need to simply grin and bear it until you can get a better job, for various practical and financial reasons. Others argued that the best course of action is to always fight back, to demand fair treatment, and to put your ethics above your wallet. One person even suggested contacting a union representative, but that really only works in the 1950s or in France (which amounts to the same thing).

Because this is such an important issue for the people it affects, I think it deserves a little more discussion.

In a perfect world, we’d never need to have this conversation. All bosses should be honest and decent and kind, and no worker should ever find herself in an uncomfortable, unprofessional, or potentially illegal situation. But this is the real world, and it is populated mostly by people, who can be anything from very nice to very cruel. And you need to recognize that birds of a feather flock together.

Angelic Offices

Some companies are founded by ethical, hard-working, moral, liberal, open-minded humanitarians. And they tend to surround themselves with similar people with similarly high standards and work styles. So if you are lucky enough to work in such a place, you’ll probably never find yourself in a compromising position. You won’t have enemies. No one will be trying to take advantage of you.

But in the off chance that a bad egg shows up at your heavenly office, everyone will quickly recognize that person as a problem, and everyone will band together to fix that person or remove them. So even if you are the one to start the ball rolling, you will probably have a good sense that you will have support and that you will succeed in correcting the problem.

However, if you’re in one of these wonderful places, I’m guessing you don’t deal with a lot of office conflicts and so you don’t need to be here reading my advice. So go back to work! (Unless you want to learn how the other half lives…)

Demonic Offices

At the other end of the spectrum are the terrible offices. These companies are run by old-fashioned, racist, sexist monsters. (Yes, they really do exist in the modern age.) And they also surround themselves with like-minded people. So your entire senior leadership could consist of people who are comfortable taking advantage of subordinates, and who will support each other if anyone tries to discipline them for it.

In these environments, how do you defend your rights, or even just your sanity? Common sense says to document infractions, save emails, and get everything in writing to present to a senior manager or to Human Resources in the hope that this person will take action on your behalf. The problem is that at these companies, there may not be a manager willing to take your complaints seriously. Which leaves HR.

Remember on Star Trek when the captain would get possessed by an alien and the doctor would step in and relieve him of command? It would be fantastic if HR could be as powerful as that doctor, but they aren’t. HR works for the boss, just like you. And the odds are fair that either HR is run by more of these like-minded ruffians, or HR is nice but unwilling to risk their job to take up your cause.

Want proof?

What really happens when you fight back?

I won’t bother telling you about situations that go well. (Spoiler Alert: They go well.) So here are a few examples of how they can go wrong.

I knew a man who was a member of a team of consultants who worked at a major corporation. The consultants worked with the senior managers to identify ways to improve performance throughout the company, and they met with the managers every month to report their recommendations. After 18 months of making various improvements to the company, the consultants reported to the managers that the largest remaining area for improvement was with the managers themselves. The following day, all of the consultants were fired.

I knew a young woman who was routinely insulted by her boss, forced to work nights and weekends to recover the boss’s fumbles, and publicly blamed for her boss’s failures. She documented these events and presented them to HR. HR said that starting an investigation into the problem would only make the senior partners mad at her and would never impact her boss’s job.

I knew a woman in a mid-level management position who launched a full-scale investigation into her boss, the senior director. This boss routinely and publicly insulted the staff, lied about contracts, lied about salaries, lied about promotions and raises, and made countless decisions that visibly damaged the organization financially. The campaign against him involved lengthy testimonials from two dozen current and former employees. It even involved aggressive support from someone who outranked the boss. After two years of proceedings (long after my friend left), the evil boss finally retired.

I knew a Human Resources manager who blatantly sexually harassed one of her administrative assistants. When he came forward with mountains of explicit emails and succeeded in suing the company, was she fired? No. She was a member of the inner circle, making her bulletproof despite getting the company sued. So her responsibilities were shifted onto other people and she maintained her six-figure salary, unpunished. (Note: After this event, most of the “good” managers left the company, leaving things even worse for the junior staff.)

Are you really risking your job?

I have personally witnessed employees fired after only 6 months, after only 3 months, and on their first day at work. People are fired for all sorts of reasons, some of them quite reasonable and some of them quite ridiculous. If you’re in a bad situation, then it probably involves bad people, which means you could be at risk for a ridiculously bad outcome.

So when I advise you to not fight back, I’m simply encouraging you to find the path of least resistance at that moment. But by no means am I suggesting that you stay and suffer forever. Get out! Find one of those angelic offices I mentioned earlier! Jazz up that resume, cruise the interwebs, and get your dream job.

Will that take time? Of course, maybe months. Will you have to suffer in the interim? Yes. But if you need that paycheck, then there’s probably nothing to be gained by risking your current job before you find a better one.

The Bottom Line

This advice may sound fairly cynical, because it is. But you are more than just a professional or a worker, you are a human being. You have other priorities and responsibilities outside of work. And the best advice I can give you is to carefully consider all of the repercussions of your actions before you do anything.


Joseph Lewis is a writer and editor who has worked in the public and private sectors, including military, health care, and technology firms. Visit Joe's site

Discussion

  1. Stephanie Lewis on the 17th December

    Gosh. This sounds strangely familiar. 🙂

  2. Ben Overmyer on the 17th December

    In the case of the sexual harassment problem, that’s something that can be sent to a court of law. Such a person should not be allowed to succeed in life with that attitude.

    The chivalric thing to do is not to jump ship and leave the junior staff to fend for themselves. It’s to confront the problem and crush it by any means necessary (within the bounds of ethical conduct, of course). Generally speaking, unless it’s a really small company, the company itself shouldn’t be faulted for the evils of certain employees. Even founders should not be above retribution if they dishonor the company name.

  3. SmashingWebs.com on the 17th December

    Clean and Nice description. Really enjoyed. 🙂

  4. Avery on the 17th December

    I would certainly agree that you generally shouldn’t go to HR to handle a problem with a manager. Even if it does anything to fix the problem, your work relationship would be pretty strained afterwards (upper management doesn’t seem to get fired very easily, that’d involve someone above them admitting that they made the mistake of hiring them to begin with).

    With the VPs I’ve dealt with, a simple “no” without any whiney excuses has generally worked best for me when setting boundaries. There is the occasional “why not?” but as long as I don’t accuse them of being out of line it’s really not an issue (making a manager defensive isn’t smart). I’m sure this sounds a bit too ideal following after this or the previous article but so long as you don’t make upper management feel blown off or disrespected then your job shouldn’t suffer. That’s not to say that they’ll be happy with hearing “no”.

    BTW, you cheated by dramatically changing some of the types of disrespect coming from the employer. This stuff isn’t as simple as picking up the boss’s kids from the airport. If I encountered the things mentioned here I’d probably shut my mouth and go no further than searching for a new job once I got home. You can’t reason with the kind of personalities you mentioned.

    The quick story about the consultants was hilarious though (should I feel guilty for laughing?).

    • Joseph Lewis on the 17th December

      Avery, I may have cheated a little, but the connection is still strong. I think it is important for young professionals to be aware of the breadth of strangeness and badness they may encounter out in the world.

      And besides, these stories are so much more dramatic. How could I not tell them?

  5. Jason Schwartz on the 17th December

    No matter what the scenario, companies don’t like hearing that an employee disagrees, or feels that a manager isn’t cutting it.

    HR isn’t the the solution. At best, they keep the situation to themselves to “look into it.” At worst, they share info with your boss and that pretty much is the end of road for you, all trust is lost.

    In some cases, you may work with multiple bosses. I suggest to spend extra time, or find projects to spend time with the other. Eventually, as you grow your role, or the company grows, you might be able to “update” your role to work with the new boss.

  6. Michelle Burleson on the 17th December

    I worked at a pretty big dot com in the late 90’s where the VP of Marketing was fresh from Bush Sr’s campaign. He then brought in all of his campaign cronies to from outside to fill the leadership positions. I am not kidding when I say practically every day was like a scene from Mad Men: booze, adultery, harassment. Then the bubble burst and the karma train came choo-chooing along.

  7. Belinda on the 17th December

    There was an article here a while back about about making yourself indispensable. I think that if you can do that, then saying ‘no’ to ridiculous requests is a lot safer. Since our graphics team has been made redundant (from 3 people to 0), our IT manager has left, and a portion of our commercial/sales team, AND all of our marketing team (the company has gone from about 50 to about 12 people), I’ve taken on elements of all of the above. I am wholly responsible for all graphic design, the website, the partner intranet, and most sales and marketing. My actual job is account management. (In a perfect world this would mean more $$).

    It makes me feel like I am in a much better position if I was to say no to something, than say, the accounts clerk, who’s job could be handled by someone else in the finance team without much trouble.

    I’ve taken on the above listed tasks because I think its a great learning experience, and because I am getting paid to be here whether its sitting on the net reading things like this or learning how to upgrade our server, so I may as well add to my skill set than update my Facebook. That said, picking up dry cleaning or driving to the airport in NO way adds to my skills, so I would feel very comfortable saying no to things like that 🙂

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