First, much appreciation in advance for any help and all suggestions.
My wife works at a company as a therapist. Things have been going well with all of her clients, but there's something off with the owner, let's call her X, and one of the women that help run the front-end of the company, let's call her Y.
Y has continuously reached out to my wife, cc'ing the boss, X, on all the emails, accusing her of being late to appointments, being unprofessional in sessions, and having difficulty with billing paperwork. Now, my wife WAS a minute or two late to a few sessions over the course of the six months she's worked there, and she admitted she needed to work on that but also was frustrated that there was a problem with a HUMAN BEING being late to a few appointments by one or two minutes (ONE or TWO minutes!? wtf?).
X, the boss, decided to email back with a list of things that needed discussed and scheduled a meeting for the next week while also stating that she is placing my wife on a probationary period where she could not take on new clients.
Here's the deal, everything in the email that needed discussed was actually false?
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Complaint One: The two of them accused my wife of having 50% of her clients terminate her services.
ONE of her 20 clients had to terminate services, and it was because she was moving out of state, and my wife is not legally permitted to see out-of-state clients. Other than that, every client that she's had continues to work with her. I don't know where they pulled 50% from (their ass), but that was easily proven false.
Complaint Two: Accusations that my wife had been 10+ minutes late to multiple appointments.
When my wife asked for the times and dates of these sessions, as well as screenshots of the said infractions from Google Meet (which provides you with the time a meeting occurred and the times people signed in to those meetings), she was told that she could not be provided that information. When she asked when they happened and which clients they were with, she was told that she could not be provided that information…. ???
Complaint Three: Accusations that other clinicians do not feel comfortable referring clients to her because they have had “multiple clients” tell them that they find my wife unreliable.
She has only worked with one client that has seen any other clinician in the same practice, and that clinician has been referring her clients since she began. In fact, all the clinicians at the space have been expressing their desire to work with my wife and send her clients because they know she is a great therapist and trust her work.
Complaint Four: My wife was accused of not turning in paperwork on time and constantly creating more problems for the billing department by failing to complete paperwork timely and correctly.
My wife said she had no idea what they were talking about, and after they looked further into it, they agreed that her paperwork was all done on time and correctly.
Complaint Five: She was told by Y during the meeting (after everything above was brought to light and “cleared up”) that she (Y) has personally spoken with clients that have told her that my wife makes them feel uncomfortable and unsafe in the clinical space.
When my wife asked for specific examples or any tangible proof other than just her being told this by clients, Y said that the clients did not feel comfortable providing it in writing and only were able to tell HER (Y) over the phone, not on record, and not with anyone else.
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At the end of the meeting, she was told to “apologize more profusely” to clients when she's a minute or two late. Meanwhile, X and Y did not even apologize to my wife after fabricating numbers and complaints completely out of their asses, placing my wife on a probation period (which was lifted at the end of this meeting because of them realizing how absurdly stupid they looked), and behaving like incompetent idiots.
A few things to note:
- She has over a decade of experience in the field of mental health and has NEVER had any complaints like this — her professionalism and expertise have never been questioned, in fact it's been praised.
- Both of these woman (X and Y) have known for weeks that our 6mo son has a surgery in a few days, yet they still placed the probationary period on her during a time of extreme emotional and financial stress for us, using these false accusations as reasoning behind it.
- My wife is a black woman and happens to be the only black person that works at this company.
I have my own suspicions as to why this happened, but I won't go there.
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Questions for Reddit: Does the community have any suggestions? Is this harassment? Is there something that we can do legally regarding false accusations and employer-imposed financial punishments without merit? Is this a lawsuit waiting to happen? Do I contact Dept of Labor? A lawyer? What can we do?
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Again, much appreciation in advance, and wishing all of you health and happiness.
TL;DR: My wife was accused of multiple work violations and complaints / unprofessionalism, was placed on a probationary period that halted new clients (effectively halting her opportunity for financial growth), and put under emotional and psychological stress as our son is undergoing a surgery in a few days and we're relying on her job to pay the bills during this time.
All these complaints turned out to be false, and in fact, many numbers were entirely fabricated. All of this can be proven from our end.