Imagine walking into a room and seeing your boss. Then, imagine your boss standing up and slapping you as hard as he can in the right ear. The strike is so hard that you fall to the floor, see stars and hear a “riiiiinnnng.” 

You get up off the floor and immediately call in an authority who comes to meet with you and your boss to investigate what happened. 

The authority sits you both in a room and asks what happened. You explain that your boss assaulted you.

Your boss looks down, then up again and says “I was just following orders.”

On hearing that explanation, the authority looks at you, as you are now bleeding from your ear, and says, “It’s in the past and he was just following orders. There’s nothing we are going to do.”

If that scenario sounds ridiculous, it’s not.

Something akin to that happens in companies all over the world daily, including at OCCC, when bosses hurt their employees verbally, emotionally, physically, mentally, economically and in other ways that are simply abusive. And, when called out for it, they often say they were just following orders.

To make matters worse those who have the power to make a change, such as their supervisors or those who work in the HR departments across the globe regularly don’t make changes.

Rather, they try and sweep these “following orders” abusers’ actions under the carpet by saying “it’s in the past and to have a better future we just need to move on.”

Who’s really at fault in these situations?

Is it the supervisor who gives the order ?

Is the HR department or supervisor who looks the other way?

Is it the boss who knowingly and with intent did the hurtful action that caused the employee to feel emotional, psychological or physical pain?

The short answer is it’s the one who did the action and caused the pain. 

It’s the boss.

Ethics. It’s a simple six-letter word.

There is a right way to treat others and a wrong way to treat others, and bosses who hurt others lack ethics, are cowards, and they have no business being in a supervisory role.

People with ethics say no with a sense of honor when asked to do things that would hurt others just to appease their bosses. They stand up and say “I’m not doing this because it’s wrong and I wouldn’t want that to happen to myself.”

People with ethics don’t hurt their staff  verbally, emotionally, physically, psychologically or financially and then hide behind excuses such as “I was told I had to.”

But some bosses, be they a manager, director, vice president, dean, a supervisor or even a CEO  or president lack ethics. Sadly, you might be working for one now. 

These spineless, conniving twits shouldn’t be your bosses.

They shouldn’t be allowed an escape from their actions.

Every last one of them who has hurt you emotionally, verbally, or psychologically should be fired without haste so they can take time out to learn about ethics and about trying to become a caring human being who no longer sees people who work under them as people they can abuse because they have the power to do so.

And, the supervisors and authorities  who ask the victims to “just move on because it’s in the past” should be fired too.

There are a lot of good, caring, compassionate humans looking for work these days. Give those good people a chance.

But first give bosses who have no ethics and their supervisors the boot.