Employment Law Information

The time to start building a case against your boss is before trouble happens. One of the best ways to do this is with documentation. It can give you a gold mine of hard, cold, physical proof of wrong doing.

I’m sure you’ve heard it before, never say anything in an email that you wouldn’t say in public. Bosses are no exception and they get sloppy with what they put in writing. Often times your boss is pissed off and makes threats without first thinking it through. Emails can be full of knee-jerk reactions and bad blood when tempers are flaring — illegal, discriminating things. The types of things that make the company attorneys cringe.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly…

…but not necessarily in that order.

The Ugly

I say let those bosses have their rants like the sissy little girls they are, but never stoop down to their level by replying back with something you shouldn’t be saying in an email. Keep your cool because it can come back to bite you or hopefully your boss, in this case. Why? Because you’re going to save that vile email for future use as an email can show criminal intent in court. Forward the email off-site to your own private email account, not your work email.

Before hastily replying to one of these emails with a knee-jerk reaction of your own, take some time to think your response through, overnight if necessary. Play nice. Always write as if it will be publicly viewed. When you do reply, bcc your private email account so you have a record of it.

The Good

However, there is also a very important flip side to this. You must also document the good emails, the ones that praise you and pat you on the back for a job well done. You want to establish that you are a good employee. It’s also going to be critical in helping to pinpoint where the wheels fell off the cart.

The Bad

Even the bad emails need to be saved. The ones that show where your boss chastised you for screwing up. Your boss may bring it up in court in an attempt to show that you can’t do your job. Not to worry because you’re also going to document where you fixed the problem and show that it was a one-time occurrence, rather than a pattern of neglect and incompetence.