It can be really hard to work for a small, family owned business.

The bosses sometime don’t follow normal business rules, and if they hire family, it gets even worse.

In today’s story, one employee who worked at a family business was wrongfully terminated, but he knew he had a case and took his boss to court.

The boss was not expecting things to work out the way they did!

Let’s see how the story plays out.

Months of paid vacation? I’ll take it!

This happened in Germany so the laws are different to other countries, especially to the USA.

I was working for a family owned business (about 40 employees) a couple years ago.

My time there wasn’t the best because i had huge problems with my bosses younger brother.

He was on early pension and officially just working on a small part time contract while in reality working full time with getting most of his salary out of pocket.

Really, this guy was his only problem.

That i was hired meant for him that he just worked about half the hours he worked before and having a huge pay cut because of me ticking him off as you can imagine.

He talked bad about me behind my back all the time and tried to get me fired.

Dealing with him was a pain in the butt, but i didn’t had to deal with him to often, my co-workers were nice and the pay was good.

Dealing with the boss wasn’t great.

So i didn’t care about finding another job despite my relationship with my boss and his wife got worse over time too.

My boss even came with me to two deliveries to costumers because his brother probably told him i would waste time during the deliveries.

At one day i had to do a delivery with my bosses wife’s car because the company car i normally use was at the inspection at that day and the timing couldn’t had been worse.

This isn’t good!

I scratched the fender of her car on a wall when i tried to get out of the parking spot.

The scratch were barely noticeable but i immediately reported it to one of my co-workers so no one can say that i tried to put it under the rug.

I did the delivery and when i came back my bosses wife already waited for me.

She went completely crazy, screamed at me for ruining her car (without inspecting the damage before) and said that she will take the money for the repair from my paycheck.

This sounds like assault.

I told her that i won’t pay for anything because the insurance will pay for it anyway.

And thats what let her snap and she slapped me in the face.

I immediately turned around, grabbed my stuff, clocked out and went to the doctor to get a sick note because of mental stress, which i threw into the company’s mail box in the evening.

And then the company did something illegal.

2 days later i got a termination letter in the mail and had to laugh while reading just the first sentence.

“We are terminating your work contract immediately, or if this isn’t applicable, within the legal 30 days.”

To people who aren’t familiar with german workers law’s, it’s illegal to terminate a contract immediately AND within the legal period of time in the same termination letter.

You can do one or another but not both at the same time.

Time to go to court.

So i went to the government office to apply for unemployment and hired a lawyer to sue my boss for illegal termination.

Over 2.5 months went by until i got a court date and my boss was really mad when the judge explained to him that the termination was illegal and that he had to pay me for the last 2.5 months.

But the illegal termination wasn’t the only mistake he made.

His boss was too confident.

The judge gave me 2 options.

I can accept an immediate termination on that day and leave without compensation or i can have a 2 month salary compensation but i have to work another month for the company.

My boss laughed and said that i’m to scared to go back to work and that it makes him happy that i leave the court unemployed.

He didn’t looked that happy anymore when i asked him “why should i be scared? Do you want to beat me like your wife did?”

He actually had a clever plan.

So i took option B and went to work the next morning.

My bosses brother already waited for me to hand me the termination letter and made comments about how difficult the next 30 days would be for me.

I checked the termination letter and after i’ve seen that everything was right i just said that i’m not feeling well, turned around and went to my doctor to get another 30 day sick note because of burnout.

He felt satisfied with how it worked out.

So at the end i had a 3.5 months vacation with full pay, 2 month salary compensation and he had to pay for my lawyer too because he lost at court.

I could have sued my bosses wife for the slap too but that would have been to much stress for maybe a couple hundreth euros.

I think he should’ve sued the boss’s wife anyway just to make sure she was put in her place instead of thinking she can do whatever she wants.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person has a lot of questions.

I definitely think he shouldn’t let the boss’s wife get away with assault.

And don’t forget about how the brother is getting paid!

The boss’s wife deserves to get in trouble.

I think a lot of Americans would love time off for burnout.

The law was not on the boss’s side.

Good thing he took full advantage.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.