Dangerous Harrasement?

[bucherandcooker]

What is the name of your state? CA

I recently learned that someone in my office has been severely harrassed and abused by his boss and now I'm afraid he is being seriously harmed. This guy was wronfully accused of doing drugs (a 20 year recovering addict), then he was forced to go to counseling, EAP and finally made to take daily drug tests. This manager has a long history of complaints to HR, but so far, nothing has ever been done.

Appearently if I understand correctly, this employee who is being harrassed was forced to go onto methodone treatment to "remove temptation" to return to drugs, despite the fact that the tests was always 100% clean.

After he went on the Methadone treatmet, he was told he had to go to detox and take a thirty day leave and go to rehab and ALL OF THIS WAS A CONDITION OF EMPLOYMENT.

I was horrified when I heard this, first they steal 20 years of sobriety from him, then make him go to rehab. This poor guy has a family and was so afraid of getting fired that he went along and didn't know his right. He was just plain scared.

Someone please tell me if this manager is guilty of a crime or not and/or whether or not this company would be liable to the tune of millions of dollars. The employee goes on leave next week and I'm sure they are going to try and fire him, say it was because he was on drugs and try to make a "wrongful termination" accusation, look just like sour grapes.

Please give me advice for this poor guy.

 

[cbg]

There is nowhere near enough information in your post to form an accurate judgement and this is the sort of question I wouldn't dream of answering in the abstract. You're not involved in this situation; you're getting your information second hand, which means by the time it gets to us it can be completely inaccurate. Not that I'm accusing you or anyone else of lying; just that the more times a story gets passed down the line, the more likely it is that it's been colored by either misunderstanding and/or misinterpretation. People tend to present their stories to put them in the best, or worst, possible light (depending on which they want others to think) and every one who passes the story on adds their own interpretations. Remember when you used to play "Telephone" as a kid and "Harriet has a new kitty" came out "Gary's face is dirty"?

I can think of situations under which the employer would be absolutely in the clear and would not have to pay one thin dime. I can think of other situations in which the employer would not come out so well. There is no POSSIBLE way to tell which is the case here. (I don't think it's a million dollar case even in the worst of circumstances.)

If your co-worker thinks his rights have been violated, he needs to speak to an attorney.

 

[bucherandcooker]

Dangerous Harrassment

No, I understand exactly what you're saying. Honestly, I don't know whether he's telling the whole truth, the half truth or lying out right and, I've already told him to contact a lawyer about his situation.

I'm worried that if a recovering addict WAS forced to become dependent on an opiate again after being clean for 20 years, that it could lead him back into a deadly addiction. One of the things I'm conflicted about is that the company REQUIRES agents of the company to report illegal harrassement if an employee tell you about it. I just don't know whether this employee confided in me as an agent of the company or as a friend.

On one hand I feel like it's simply NOT my decision to determine whether the story is true or incomplete, that's for HR to investigate and determine what the facts of the case are. On the other hand I DO NOT want to get involved and then become a target as well by this boss.

What I do know is if I were to learn that this employee had say accidently overdosed after 20 years of sobriety because this boss's harrassment and torment of him had got him hooked back on opiates through bully tactics, I wouldn't be able to look myself in the mirror knowing I had sat by and did nothing with this information. On the other hand, I've never personally had any problem with this boss (if anything I've been treated quite favorably) and I don't want to put myself at risk either. It's a real moral delima for me and while I'm quite sure what Dr. Laura would say, I just don't know what the right thing is to do.

 

[cbg]

I'm afraid I can't help you make that decision, bucherandcooker, though I fully understand the dilemma you find yourself in. Ultimately you're the one who has to make the decision.

I will pass on to you some experience I have learned the hard way, though. Many people, including many (I am NOT making a blanket statement) who have previous addiction problems, have a tendency to see their situations through somewhat skewed visions. They are not lying; they are telling the exact truth as they see it. It's just that their perception of the truth doesn't match everyone else's perception of the truth.

A good example, and one that I have used before, is a former employee of mine whom I will call Jane. Jane did not have a previous addiction, but she had a current emotional illness, which had been self-identified and for which we were providing an ADA accomodation. In fact, since in those days I didn't have as much experience as I do now, we were accomodating her far more than we actually needed to be. We were bending over backwards to help her, and we were creating a hardship for ourselves in doing so, most of which fell on Jane's immediate supervisor and another employee called Marcia.

No matter how much we did to accomodate Jane, she never thought it was enough. She was certain that the entire office was against her. Memos that were directed to the entire staff, she believed had been written specifically about her. Conversations that she didn't know I had overheard, were reported to me as proof that she was being discriminated against, and Jane's descriptions of the conversations rarely corresponded to what I had heard. It wasn't that she distorted the facts; she was usually fairly accurate about factual information. It was simply that her perception of WHY these things happened, were not only wildly off the mark but indicated that she honestly believed that everything that happened, happened because of, in reaction to, or was in some other way about her. Hopefully you will understand the connection.

Jane was eventually fired. I'm not going to tell you what she did, for two reasons. One, if Jane were to ever find this site, it would be fairly obvious to her that I was talking about her. Two, I don't want to give anyone else any ideas. Suffice it to say that any reasonable person would have fired her, and she had to have been far more ill than we realized for her to even remotely imagine that she would still be employed afterwards. Marcia reported to me afterwards that she had been literally afraid to come to work on days she and Jane were both on the schedule (both were part time). Jane's view on the world was even more skewed than we had realized, and in attempting to accomodate Jane, we'd been inadvertantly tormenting Marcia, who was too intimidated by Jane to tell us until after she was gone.

I'm not saying this IS happening with your friend. Obviously I have no way of knowing whether he is 100% right; whether the employer is 100% right; or whether, as is probably the case, the truth is somewhere in between. All I'm suggesting is that you not take everything your friend says as gospel. There are two sides to every story.

 

[Beth3]

Wait a second, butcher. You say the guy was forced to go into couseling, contact the EAP, then go into detox and now undergo metadone treatment. If your version of events is accurate, then multiple trained professionals (the rehab counselors, doctors, and the staff at the EAP) purposefully misdagnosed him, required him to go in-patient for 30 days for detox and treatment, and medical professionals are also requiring him to take methadone. And oh yeah, your employer's group health plan undoubtedly has a pre-admission and utilization review requirement so they also conspired with the company to unnecessarily hospitalize the guy for a month?

Is any of this making any sense to you??? There would have had to been a conspiracy of many health care professionals in at least four different and unrelated medical organizations for the version of the story you've heard to be true. Neither the boss nor the employer in total have that kind of power and they certainly don't have the ability to make dozens of medical and ADOA professionals violate their oaths, required standards of care, and violate federal and State laws by filing false diagnoses on medical claims.

I'm sorry to say that this guy in your office relapsed and was again using and the truth is the employer is doing him and his family a huge favor by not firing him and instead allowing him to undergo treatment in order to keep his job. I don't know who is spinning the story so that the boss/the company are the bad guys but I think you need to take a step back and see if what you've heard passes the sniff test.

 

[bucherandcooker]

Dangerous Harrasement

Not a conspiracy. Just one person, this boss would tell him he HAD to do this or do that or he would be written up. The EAP nor a Dr. never told him he had to do methadone treatment, the boss did. Also in or state, this person is eligible for no cost methadone, so that isn't through our insurance. Without going into too much detail (also don't want to be discovered), the boss in question controls the EAP and while I'm not yet ready to say there is a conspiracy (I don't think there is one), I DO think this employee was intimidated enough to do what he was told without getting a medical opinion (which he should have, I grant you) as to whether or not it was appropriate because he was so afraid of loosing his job. By the time REAL medical professionals were involved the employee was already hooked on the methadone, so yes, now the insurance will cover the detox and rehab, my question really was 1) was this boss sort of "practicing medicine" on this employee and 2) Would the employee have ever needed to go to rehab if this boss hadn't made him go for methadone. If in fact his drug test WERE clean, then it's beyond inappropriate for a NON-DOCTOR to make him go for methadone just to avoid temptation. Sure there is a drug problem that needs to be treated NOW, but what I'm wondering is was there a problem before?

I've worked with drug addicts before and and I know that many times (in fact almost all the time) addicts lie, lie, lie. But I also know that when they've been clean for many, many years, they don't usually go back. In this case, I've worked with this guy for seven years and he was with the company before I was.

You should know, I decided to report it without revealing my identity only because I KNOW this boss has a really shady history of mistreating employees (I mean REALLY BAD). I'm going to let the folks who have access to all the information investigate it and hopefully they'll find out what really happened. I HAD to have this crap off my conscious. I just hope they don't discover who reported it. I hope they don't even try to find out. Whether they properly investigate or not, at least I'll know I did the right thing.

Thank you everyone for your advice.

 

[Beth3]

Butcher, while I acknowledge that anything is at least possible, I think you are waaaaay off-base on this. Maybe the boss is a world class jerk but it simply is not feasible that all these medical professionals conspired to diagnose this co-worker as having relapsed, had him admitted to a hospital for 30 days, and so on. Nor do I remotely believe the boss "controls" the EAP. I've worked with a number of them over the years and they maintain extremely high levels of professionalism and confidentiality.

What you are saying simply makes no sense.

 

[bucherandcooker]

Dangerous Harrasement

I think you may have misunderstood me. The methadone started BEFORE the EAP and the Rehab. By the time the employee was off to EAP and rehab it was because he was dependent on the methadone. I don't think the EAP is compromised (i've worked with many of them before as well) but we do have a VERY unusual situation with our EAP and I think that unsual situation makes people in some departments NOT TRUST them (it's generally very hard to get employees to believe that their EAP is truly confidential). So in this situation if the employee had trusted the EAP, I think he would have told them what was going on but he didn't trust them, so he really wouldn't confide in the counselor (the way I understand it). Maybe it's confusing because in many companies, drug test through EAP, but in our case, because of the industry, it's through HR because they do it in applicant screening as well. The chronology as I understood it was as follows:

1) EE is stressed with routine personal issues
1) Boss thinks employee is using (knows history)
2) Boss requires bi-weekly drug test (coordinated through HR)
3) Test are clean but boss thinks EE is tricking the test somehow
4) Boss say's go onto methadone to remove temptation or lose job
5) EE goes on Methadone
6) Boss makes EE go to EAP for Methadone Dependence
7) EAP say's you need rehab
8) Employee now upset doesn't want to go on LOA
9) EAP is authorized to let boss know if EE is or isn't following recommendation
10) EAP say's EE is not because he doesn't want Rehab
11) EE is appearently afraid to tell EAP that boss made him go on methadone
12) Boss say's do as EAP say's or get fired
13) EE now upset because if it wasn't for methadone he wouldn't need Rehab

As I said, I reported what I was told and I'll just see what happens. I just couldn't have it on my conscious, I just couldn't.

 

[cbg]

Since you have clearly bought this guy's story hook line and sinker, and won't even remotely consider the possibility that there's any incongruity to the story, there's not much point in anyone here continuing to advise you.

 

[bucherandcooker]

Dangerous Harrasement

It really isn't that I believe hir or not, I just did want this on my conscious and I didn't want to get in trouble if the employee ever say's he told me and I didn't report it (company policy say's an agent of the company is REQUIRED to report allegations of harrasement).

One of the reasons I was so concered is I don't want to sit home and play the what if game when the company has people who can investigate and verify the validity of the claims.

From the the feedback I heard, it appears that IF (and I know it's a big if) he was telling the truth, then it was definately harrasement and if it wasn't true, then ithat can be eaisly verified by the "powers that be".

There have only been a couple of times in my life where I was so sure I was right, acted (or failed to act) based on what I thought I knew and I turned out to be wrong. I just didn't see the downside of reporting it. If there is a 95% chance he's lying and a 5% chance he's telling the truth, I don't want to be the one to decide if the allegations are valid. I just couldn't make myself comfortable with it. I really don't have any other vested interest beside not being getting myself in trouble and having a clear conscious.

The reason I decided to go ahead and report is that everyone here seems to agree that it's illegal if it's true and I'm just not going to fool around with this and find out later I was wrong. That's basically how I arrived to my decision, it's wasn't really based on whether he was telling the truth. It's just not for me to decide.

If I ever hear what happened, I'll let you know.

Thanks for all the input, it's was very helpful.

 

[Beth3]

You don't say how long this individual has worked there but assuming it's at least a couple of years, for what earthly reason would the boss out of the blue start "harassing" the guy because of his prior addiction and go to all this trouble??? If he wanted him gone, it would have been FAR simpler and cheaper to find some pretext on which to fire him.

I don't know why you're in the middle of all this, why you are in a position to know whether or not he's been testing clean for drugs, how you know what the boss is thinking and so forth, but none of this makes any sense. Like I said, a whole lot of totally unrelated medical practitioners would have had to conspire with the boss for this scenario to be accurate.

 

[eerelations]

Maybe it's butcherandcooker who's been taking all the methadone...or something, he's definitely halucinating...how could his coworker's boss "put him on" methadone? Is he (the boss) a doctor? Or a dealer? Or are some bosses allowed to prescribe methadone? Which bosses? My boss? Can someone get ME some methadone? (I'm having a bad day, and reading this thread has just made things 'way worse, now my head's hurting too, I'm so confused, please direct me to the nearest EAP so they can force some a that methadone down my throat or up my nose or however it's supposed to be ingested at gunpoint apparently.)

 

[Beth3]

At least I'm not the only one who finds this entire scenario ludicrous. I'm still wondering how the boss could force the employee into 30-days of inpatient care. I guess the employer must have paid off several doctors and a slew of ADOA counselors.

 

[bucherandcooker]

Dangerous Harrasement

You're not reading carefully. The employee was approved for inpatient treatment BECAUSE he is dependent on methadone and wants to get off of it. No one needs to pay off a Dr. for that. The question really is HOW did the employee come to be dependent on the methadone. I admit it's not very bright for the employee to allow himself to be bullied into this (I wouldn't), but he's not a very sophisticated guy and I do think he was really scared. He doesn't do a high level job, just blue colar.

This guy has been here about seven our eight years I think, and I do know some of the reasons why this boss may want to get rid of him, but I don't want to go into too much detail. There is nothing particularly new about this boss harrassing employees (long, LONG history of it with "burried bodies" to match), but in this case I believe it has to do with discrediting this employee because he is aware of some indescretions on behalf of the boss (of which I am actually pretty sure ARE true) but I don't want to go into to detail. I don't have any vested interest in this or the fate of this boss, but I don't want to have regrets either. As for how I came to know about it, I happened to have ran into this guy outside of work and we started talking and he told his story. Normally I stay out of everyone's business and mind my own, but as I stated in the headline, if what this employee said is true, then this was an evil, vicious thing for someone to do to him and if it's not true then it will be easily proven as false and I don't have to be awake at night wondering.

I've seen and heard of some manager's doing some pretty terrible things to employees when they thought they could get away with it and nowadays, I don't assume that anything is beyond someone, I just DON'T want that on my hand. I hear enough sickening stories in the news of things people have done and there a bunch of folks shaking their heads and talking about "how nice everyone thought the guy was" and how "it's so tragic and un-expected". If the boss isn't guilty of anything, then I assume he will welcome an investigation into his conduct and will have documentation to easily prove he did nothing wrong and followed proper procedure in dealing with this guy, then everybody can get back to work. I for one HOPE the story is not true.

I don't pay much mind, personally, to bosses who are just "world class jerks", that's part of dealing with different personalities in the workplace and I do a good job of that most of the time, but when someone is possibly engaging in dangerous harrasement and threatening of an employee, that's beyond just being jerk to me. In all my years of being in management (almost 25, some actually in HR), I've had employees complain about all kinds of petty personality conflicts (usually skewed to make the storyteller look good) that frankly I can't understand why adults can't work out on their own, but this was one of those situations where I asked myself why would I just assume the guy was lying, do nothing and then find out later I was wrong and have that on my conscious. I didn't see any reason to do that. I don't mind being wrong, but I hate feeling guilty and having regrets.

 

[cbg]

I hope that when the boss and/or the company sue you for defamation that your conscience will be equally secure.