He Switched Shifts And Discovered A Manager Was A Bully — So He Documented Everything And Got Him Fired
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Bullies are awful, and they can show up in almost any place throughout your life, including your job.
What would you do if you started working a different shift and, when you did, you found that one of the other managers was a horrible bully to all the employees?
That is what happened in this story, so he immediately started documenting everything that he saw and rallying the employees to report what happened. Finally, after a lot of time and effort, he got the bully manager fired.
Standing up to a bully can take many forms. Read through this story and see what you think of how it went down.
Partner with limited authority over management. Playing from workers dugout though.
I had recently partnered with a small production facility in my area.
This seems like a fairly standard setup.
Our contract was based on capital investment along with designing/implementing new automation processes (2yr outlook finished in 8mo).
It was a typical small production facility comprised of 50 production workers through 2 shifts of 12 hours that ran 2 days on then 3 days off. Also had 2 production supervisors for each shift and 1 maintenance supervisor for each shift.
Let’s get to know the main character here.
The people and their attitude is ultimately what led to my decision to be more than an outside contractor for this company until I worked the night shift for a week due to shutdowns that needed to occur to implement certain line upgrades.
This is where I met him. We will call him Richard Head. Richard seemed like a nice guy in our first few encounters, and then I heard him in his element directing his maintenance crew at night over the radio.
Wow, this guy is way out of line.
He would belittle this group of guys who were there to do a set task list every night for whatever machinery they were doing preventative maintenance on. Unless something broke on the line, which would require attention first obviously.
I have never heard grown men spoken to like this and never heard any nasty remarks back or defending themselves. He would call them stupid on the radio if they were having trouble troubleshooting a problem, call some fat and lazy, called one black guy “The ******”.
People don’t say anything because they are scared of him.
The guy had been there since they opened the doors, and to be honest made me want to rescind any commitment I have ever made to this company. When I escalated this up to the plant manager, he assured me that it was friendly banter and they rarely had complaints against him.
This was true because anyone who ever did so in confidence of anonymity was always outed and then singled out until they were terminated by him.
Documentation is essential.
Since no one was going to listen to me, I decided to do my due diligence and started to document everything I heard on the radio with a date/time, witnesses to the treatment, and what rights the individual was having violated due to our state and federal outlines.
I made this spreadsheet my entire time in the shift documenting every personal account I witnessed as well. Harassment is a major problem with industry work, but the one that I have learned is the company killer is retaliation.
What kind of person acts like this during a family emergency?
If you can prove that, then they stand no chance. I saw him one night tearing down this 50 year old man who requested 2 days off to the point I wanted to lose my cool, but knew it would ruin all the information I was gathering.
Days off were because his nephew was just in a car accident 2 days prior and had to have multiple reconstructive surgeries scheduled. I knew that now was the time to move on everything.
They were surprised.
I rounded up all the maintenance guys and shared all my documentation with them. They didn’t realize the importance of this information like I had. They just said nothing will change.
Nothing changed because no one treats an issue as an issue if you come with incorrect non-detailed information. The fact that he used the radio so much was a godsend that they didn’t see as well.
He is kind of forcing their hand here.
When he spoke this way to people, he must not have ever realized that there are other supervisors on shift, and that they in fact they unintentionally became the strongest witness in the cases, especially when you have some audio recordings verifying the accounts.
They have no choice but to acknowledge what they have heard. Each worker took their logs and even though I have a capital/time investment in this facility I urged them at a minimum to petition to have this man removed or to threaten legal action.
And everyone clapped for this guy.
Once they coordinated a day to expose all this, it was like watching a sports movie when the underdogs take the championship and get the girl at the same time. Not only did the man finally get fired, but the entire atmosphere around the place changed more than I could imagine.
Older machines ran the best they have ever ran in my time there, and people loved coming to work again. They also put a placard on my door for when I came in about a week later.
They clearly loved this guy for what he did.
It said “#1 Boss” but the boss was crossed out and hand engraved under it was the word BAD***.
I obviously removed it from my door, but I put it in my home office and is probably the best thing I have EVER received from a facility.
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It takes some time and effort, but it is possible to stand up to a bully, even in the workplace.
Read on to see what the people in the comments have to say about this story.
This commenter is exactly right.
Documenting bad behavior is critical.
Teaching everyone to stand up for themselves is important.
Sticking up for the employees should be celebrated.
This commenter says that he works in a similar environment.
When you work together and stand up to a bully, things really can change. The important thing here is that you have to be willing to put in the work.
Documenting enough to prove that his behavior was a pattern and not a one-time thing was essential, but it wasn’t easy.
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