Sometimes a whole co-working staff needs to effectively go to war to remove a cancerous growth that is one bad apple.

Sometimes those efforts are paid in full.

And sometimes they send a shockwave throughout an entire department.

This story is one exactly like that.

I’m A Team Builder!

A few years ago I was sitting in a job interview and the hiring manager asked, “What do you consider the greatest accomplishment of your career?”

This gave me pause, as I’ve been doing the same thing for over 25 years. I let the mists of memory transport me back in time…..

Dorian: The nurse manager.

Kip: The program manager.

Dr. Steve: The clinical director. (Yes, I had three bosses.)

I started on the unit as an already seasoned (jaded?) RN, and soon discovered that most staff who worked there were very, very young and inexperienced.

For many, this was their first real job.

I can’t imagine this being someone’s first job. It definitely prepares you for the worst I guess?

They assumed all the weird stuff that happened every day was just normal for the workplace.

Dorian had decreed that no one was allowed to write incident reports for med errors or safety issues because it “makes me look bad in safety huddle.”

Non-clinical staff allowed to pass meds. Schedule changes without notice.

OP gives a little context to the rest of the department’s work temperature. And it’s at a boiling point already.

Additionally, the department was easily the most toxic I’ve ever worked in, with various cliques at constant war with one another.

I could go on and on…

The troubles began one day when I opened my email to a message from Dorian which stated very curtly that I was being investigated for an incident which had happened on the unit, that I was to meet with HR to discuss it, and for possibly disciplinary action.

I was not to discuss the incident with anyone. No date was given, no medical record number, no indication what the issue could be.

OP thankfully had a calm head about her, and knew some basic rights in a situation like this.

I replied that I would need the above information, would speak with my union rep, and meet at a time convenient for me.

Dorian declined to give information, I declined to meet with him.

Then Dorian stepped up the intensity.

I began receiving emails almost daily, each more threatening than the last.

I printed them all. Contacted my sister the employment attorney. Tried not to start shaking whenever I had to check my email.

I was keenly aware that this is Intimidation 101, but it is remarkably effective even when you know that.

Because I’m not a direction follower, I was soon discussing this in the break room and before I knew it had been approached by 3 other women who had all received the same email on the same day. Comparison showed the emails being sent about a minute apart. We did not work the same shifts nor the same days.

How amazingly phony! 

The newly-formed group then escalated on their end, in what might have been the muscle behind their soon-to-be flex.

We agreed to call in the union rep and refuse to meet with HR. Dorian continued to escalate, including cornering us in the hall,, stepping in chest to chest and trying to stare us down. He was a very big guy.

Before long we were speaking to more and more women, and it came to light that Dorian had a habit of targeting them with this exact email, followed by others that were more and more threatening until the person would finally meet with HR, get written up for something vague, and then be forced to sign a non-disclosure/no retaliation agreement.

The once-small cadre was now growing into a department-wide movement, aimed at stopping this guy once and for all.

It seemed that he had simply picked the wrong 4 women this time because we were not having it. I can’t tell you how much time at work began to be spent with people crying while recounting their stories.

None had thought to call in the union rep. They did not even know their Weingarten rights.

We began to plot.

We had limited time, and our company has a long and unglamorous history of protecting people like this. Before long the entire team was united against the common enemy.

The whole department, across various shifts, began to gather evidence of wrongdoing.

LGBTQ staff wrote up statements (backed with witnesses) of grossly homophobic comments, often in the presence of patients.

Staff who were immigrants made statements about racial slurs.

A staff who was incredibly petty and vindictive had been compiling a dossier on every perceived policy violation and wrongdoing on Dorian’s part since his hiring date, and he prepped it for presentation to HR.

It started to feel like a montage in a movie, with the night shift wanting in on the action.

The graveyard shift–all huge men–said, “Obviously, Dorian isn’t trying to flex on us, but we want to help.”

So they spent a couple nights cruising Dorian’s social media posts and capturing screen shots of homo-, trans-, xenophobic, and misogynistic content.

But they didn’t stop there.

Worried that they hadn’t done enough, the night staff paid for a cheap background check and what a score: DUI, failure to appear, hit and run, domestic violence, assault with a deadly weapon. (Did the company not do a background check? HUH?)

Finally, 2 women came forward with complaints of lewd harassment. One incident had even occurred in the presence of the assistant manager and one was documented in an email.

We. Were. Ready.

Now to enact the takedown operation.

We flooded HR with meeting requests and our union rep coordinated the assault so that on Monday we met for “simple” harassment and intimation. I met first and HR seemed unimpressed by my complaint.

Tuesday, all LGBTQ and staff subjected to racial slurs made their formal complaints. They said that the HR lady looked tired. Wednesday started with the background check, moved into the minutiae of policy violation, and culminated with well-documented quid pro quo harassment.

It was tough to get a read on HR. Was it working? Enter on-screen: the muscle.

The union rep informed HR that the union’s attorney was eager to know how to proceed. HR assured her that would not be necessary.

That evening Dorian posted a sign on his office door saying he would be away for a few days and to contact Kip or Dr Steve if we needed anything. Graveyard shift reported that over the weekend housekeeping came and removed everything from his office except his name tag, which the night staff took as a trophy.

Now that seemed like there was some action! Then came the official word.

On Monday at shift change the CNO, COO, and HR met with the team and informed us that effective immediately Dorian was no longer employed by the hospital. We all sat silently and politely until they exited the unit, when a loud and spontaneous cheer went up.

People were hugging each other and cry-laughing. High fives all around.

A perfect culmination to an incredibly stressful and completely unnecessary struggle.

But the story doesn’t end there.

To the best of my knowledge Dorian never worked as an RN again. Frankly I don’t care.

Kip was fired 3 days later for having been aware of all that was going on and turning a blind eye, and because apparently he’d been touching women on the unit for a couple years.

I hadn’t been aware of that but it came out in the HR meetings. Dr. Steve was also fired for lewd harassment. The unit hired an old manager of mine who had a long and well-documented history of–you guessed it–lewd harassment.

This was her final straw. Even after a resounding success like that, sometimes you know when it’s just not going to get better.

I quit within days of him being offered the job. The department’s foray into getting along crumbled. Most of the staff have moved on to other jobs where they seem much happier.

“What do you consider the greatest accomplishment of your career?”

I sat up straight, smiled, and said, “I took a very fractured team and brought them together to achieve a common goal. I like to think I’m really good at team building.”

That really did play out like a Hollywood script.

Safe to say everyone involved grew a little wiser for their tribulations.

Let’s see what folks had to say.

This commenter recalls one of the best parts of the whole story.

While this user really speaks to the heart of the matter.

I couldn’t agree more with this comment. It really did feel like a movie.

This person points out how it ended with that hint of sadness, but also of growth in moving on.

What a wild ride.

Either way you slice it, that’s some pretty valuable job experience.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.