No, Donald Trump Is Not The Worst Boss Ever

This weekend, I broke my “no TV news” rule, and by happenstance witnessed Reince Priebus taking fire for Donald Trump regarding his new immigrant ban. I thought Priebus looked really bad, but I am also not a fan. And maybe that was the point. But I can’t help but think that yelling at a talking head about how he is a “poor listener” is not effective. After watching a clip online last week of Kellyanne Conway talking about “alternative facts,” watching Steve Bannon go crazy about how the media “won’t shut up” (umm, isn’t that their job to talk?), and reading the tweets from the rogue White House staffers who are so demoralized and disenchanted, I know just what you are thinking. You are likely thinking Trump just might be the worst boss ever.

I think you are wrong, though he may be a very bad one with his comments regarding walking up to and kissing women without their consent, and the cleanup he makes his staff do. After all, he did stage workout sessions for a pageant winner.

But I think he isn’t a truly bad boss because I hear regular stories of really really bad bosses. Like the boss who hit a woman on the head with his genitals. He asked her to bend down and get something on a low shelf in a storage room, and when she went to get back up, her head and face brushed his body part.

Or the boss who told a black male employee he was paid “a lot” for a black guy, when he inquired why he was not given a raise when he got a promotion. Unhappy with this response, this employee has a meeting with the head of his division, where he was told, “Get out of my office, n*gger.”

Or the boss who waterboarded several employees as part of a team-building exercise.

Or the boss who, after receiving an employee’s FMLA leave paperwork, went to a meeting and told all of the employee’s co-workers about the employee’s medical condition, which involved the employee’s genitals, because the boss thought it was funny. The boss and co-workers come up with jokes about the medical condition, which they later told to the employee when he returned from FMLA leave.

The truth is, there are many awful bosses out there. They are the villains in the stories employment lawyers share with one another, and over dinner with their friends.

So what do you do if you have a boss who is awful, but not that awful? My personal recommendation is to find a new job. While for the Kellyanne Conways of the world it may be a fun challenge to make up phrases like “alternative facts” in response to idiotic situations that Donald Trump creates, most of us would rather not experience such high drama at work. Most of us want to do our jobs well and feel good about it at the end of the day. We don’t want to be the star of some college kid’s viral meme. If you find yourself in a job where at any moment you worry something you say or do will end up as front-page news, and that isn’t a good thing for you, it is time to dust off the resume. If you are a tweeting anonymous White House staffer, for your mental health and well being, find a new job!

But what do you do if your boss is a really really really bad boss, to the point that you think it is legally actionable? If your boss is Paula Deen? If that isn’t a cucumber? If you feel you are being asked to rubber-stamp bad behavior, and may be a real-life whistleblower?

1. Go talk to an employment attorney. The earlier you have this conversation, the better.
2. Report the behavior immediately and often to another supervisor and/or human resources. Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean anything will happen. Sometimes, as in the case of the woman who was hit in the face with her boss’s genitalia, this may even hurt you. But failure to follow the proper protocol can definitely hurt you down the road.
3. Document, document, document. No one is going to admit the salacious claims that support actionable discrimination. No one is ever going to admit anything that makes them seem purposefully racist/sexist/bigoted during a deposition or to the EEOC. If it is in document form and is contemporaneous to the time of the event, it the best record possible for you. So immediately document every situation as well as possible. Send a follow-up email, tell a friend and document that you did so. Contemporaneous records of an event hold more weight than recollections years later.
4. Keep doing your job, but look for an immediate exit. I know it is hard to do your job with someone asking you out every day, but make the best of it while you keep your eye on alerts from indeed.com. It is particularly difficult if someone is using hateful slurs against you or people you love. It is even more difficult if you have talked to your human resources representative, and they aren’t able to do anything for you. But do the best you can each day, and plan to get out as soon as possible.

Sometimes, you get a bad boss. Most of the time, a bad boss is someone who is incompetent, lazy, or worried that you are out to take his or her job. That sucks, but I think it is part of being an employee. It happens to everyone — a rite of passage, if you will. But occasionally, people get the really really bad boss. The boss who yells racial slurs, waterboards you, or rubs their genitalia against you. If you are so unfortunate, I am truly sorry. Talk to a lawyer immediately, follow your company’s requirements for reporting harassment and/or discrimination, and document it. But, if you have a bad boss of any kind, get out as soon as possible, for your mental well-being. Life is too short to go to work and be in a battlefield. Unless you want to be in a battlefield. Then by all means, good luck!

So, as you can see, Donald Trump isn’t the worst boss ever. I guess, until we learn about that employee he grabbed in the…

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Beth Robinson lives in Denver and is a business law attorney and employment law guru. She practices at Fortis Law Partners. You can reach her at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter at @HLSinDenver.