Threats and Harassment Issue

[anleo]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Missouri

I work for a hospital who contracts it's employees out to a ambulance district. The district provides stations/units/big equipment. The hospital provides employees.

I was called into the Board Administrators office to discuss accusations of inappropriate FB comments (which I did not make). I was told repeatedly I was a liar, passive aggressive, that she and the board wanted me fired and if it was up to them, I would be fired. That she could hire a IT person to investigate my internet activity to prove I was a liar and basically, I felt threatened and have worried about my job from that day forward. Since that meeting, I usually get nasty looks or her office door slammed when I walk down the hall. My employer, the hospital, has backed me from day one.

Does she have a right to do this? Do I have any recourse for the way she treated me or the things she repeatedly said in her office meeting with me that went on for over 2 hours?

 

[commentator]

If you are contracted through the hospital to the ambulance service, basically what you have is a supervisor who does NOT like you (and it's mutual.) But legally you have absolutely NO defense, it is not required that your supervisor be nice to you, not threaten you or keep their door open when you walk by. If they fuss and push hard enough, they can ask your employer (the hospital)to, or if they're considered your employer by the terms of the contract, they can fire you.

If you are very unhappy there, and want to leave, take it up with your hospital people. It sounds as if you may already have done this. If they are aware of your situation and your feelings about them, and they don't offer you anything else, they're giving you a message. This is all you get. You may wake up and find yourself fired.

Since you've already been threatened/warned by this supervisor, she probably won't fire you unless there's more precipitating cause. Don't sit around dwelling on the awful awful experience she put you through, the things she said and did to you during that meeting. You're the one who is carrying on the situation by dwelling on it. Nothing that happened there, from the sound of it was illegal. She was just being mean to you and threatening you and calling you names. It's over. She didn't fire you. Stop stressing about that.

And if I were you, I'd try my best to change any behaviors that are giving them grief and get along with her.

Don't stand and argue with them that they can't tell you what you put up on your own facebook page. Take that page down. Contact your friends another way for a few months. It wouldn't kill you. You will not win an argument with your supervisor that you have the right to your privacy or "they can't do this to you!" I doubt she'd "hire an expert computer person" to come in and prove what you were saying on facebook so she could fire you for saying it, but any of her own H.R. she contacts will be happy to tell her she doesn't need that much proof or documentation.

She can fire you if you come in one day and she doesn't like the color of your socks. You work in an at will state, in (we assume) a non union environment. The employee has no power and no argument and no legal rights in this situation. If you're fired and they can't show actual misconduct, you might get approved for unemployment benefits, but that's as good as it gets.

First thing I'd do is try to smooth things out. Always do your job to the best of your abilities. Ignore the "she doesn't like me" feedback. Be the more mature, more professional person in this situation. Be looking, while still working, for another job, since you are having anxiety about losing this one. That way, perhaps you'll get to be the one who leaves gracefully, without all the bickering, and moves on.