my boss is great, but her business partner is a nightmare
A reader writes: I work for a woman who is very highly respected. She is very smart and has accomplished a lot in her life. She also has had a few missteps in her past like anyone has and, although I do not know the extent of some of her previous failures, I feel I […] The post my boss is great, but her business partner is a nightmare appeared first on Ask a Manager.
A reader writes:
I work for a woman who is very highly respected. She is very smart and has accomplished a lot in her life. She also has had a few missteps in her past like anyone has and, although I do not know the extent of some of her previous failures, I feel I can partly link them to her business partner.
She runs the day-to-day operations of the company I work at, and her business partner is mainly the financial backing to her current and her previous companies.
My boss does speaking engagements and is very women-empowering, especially to women of a certain age and women of color. Her business partner, however, is very crude; he speaks down to me and all of my peers. He gets into “moods” and threatens our jobs. He uses ableist and homophobic language constantly, and my boss, for the most part, laughs it off. He inappropriately “brushes up” against me and other women at work and my boss won’t approach him about his behavior unless one of us lets her know it’s an issue. She has in the past berated him about certain issues and lets us know she is on our side, but it’s hard to feel that way when she cozies up to him right after the incident is “over.” Most of us just ignore him because that’s “just how he is.”
Also, because my boss is so open and honest about her life, a lot of people feel they can confide in her, and yet she is also a big gossip and will 100% of the time tell her business partner anything confidential a coworker talks to her about, and he will repeat things to you that you thought were private.
I respect my boss and her accomplishments, but I respect her less because of this person she has decided to run her business with, and it makes me not want to work for her anymore. Do I quit and let them continue their circle of misery without me in it?
You quit.
That could be the entirety of the answer, but I’ll say more anyway.
The people we choose to be in business with says something about who we are too. That doesn’t mean that your boss is an ableist, homophobic, crude sexual harasser … but it does mean she’s not that bothered by the fact that he is.
Sure, she addresses it with him when people ask her to. She clearly knows on some level that it’s not okay. But it’s okay enough with her that she doesn’t really do anything about it — not enough to actually put a stop to the issues or to stop working with him.
I’m sure it’s complicated for her if he provides the financial backing! Maybe in her heart she’s deeply conflicted by accepting his help and feels trapped. But it sounds like he’s been her financial backing through multiple companies; she has had repeated opportunities to separate from him and, yet, here they still are together.
And look, a lot of women end up in leadership positions working for or around abusers, and it can be hard to know the right way to navigate it — but this point she’s responsible for who she chooses to do business with, and who she chooses to subject her staff to. Maybe she didn’t know he was like this when they started their first company together. She definitely knew by the second or third. She definitely knows now.
At the end of the day, she just doesn’t object to his behavior that much, and she doesn’t take it as seriously as she should.
And all that’s before we get into her sharing confidential info with him, knowing he’s a gossip.
Your boss may be accomplished, but that doesn’t mean she’s a good person to work for.
The post my boss is great, but her business partner is a nightmare appeared first on Ask a Manager.
