We Love This Note to an Abusive Boss That’s Going Viral. But There’s One Thing Wrong with It originally appeared on Working America's Main Street blog.
We don’t use the term “viral” lightly, but these guys earned it. This note written by Journeys’ workers to their boss “Jamie” was posted to Reddit on Saturday and has zipped across the Internet today. “Niki, Jess and TJ” can now see their note in The Huffington Post, Gawker, msn.com and Yahoo! News, as well as thousands of posts, tweets, pins and tumbls. The note reads:
Dear Jamie,
Since you decided to say “cancer is not an excuse” and think it’s ok to swear at your employees like you do ALL the time…WE QUIT.
THIS is why you can’t keep a store manager longer than a year. YOU ABUSE your roll [sic] and staff. Enjoy the fact that you lost a store manager, co-manager, and key holder in the middle of Back to School. Think next time you treat people the way you do.
We aren’t allowing it ANYMORE.
Niki, Jess, TJ
Can’t lie. We love it. How can you not feel a sense of satisfaction seeing an abusive employer publicly taken to task for how he treated his employees and fellow human beings?
But here’s the thing. You shouldn’t have to quit your job in order to address abusive treatment at work.
We started FixMyJob.com to give workers the tools to make positive changes in their workplaces, changes that don’t involve pink slips or public humiliation. We want workers to know that they have certain basic legal rights to safe, healthy and fair conditions at work. We want them to recognize that many employers—perhaps even “Jamie”—violate these fundamental rights on a daily basis.
From scheduling disputes to verbal harassment and everything in between, there are solutions. They can range from you and two of your co-workers approaching a manager to talk all the way to a collective bargaining agreement. But the solutions are there, and we have the tools to reach them.
We wish the best of luck to Niki, Jess and TJ. But we also believe that you shouldn’t have to quit your job to get respect.
Want to make positive change in your workplace? Get started at FixMyJob.com.