A few weeks ago I went on a work “appreciation” retreat with my law firm. The second day of the four day retreat we had firm breakfast which was supposed to be a thank you to all the staff. Immediately upon sitting down with our lackluster breakfast buffet food (at a super swanky hotel), the partners proceed to tell us that this breakfast isn’t what we were told. They wanted each attorney to get up and ask the staff what the attorney needed to do better, to give honest feedback and that no one should be afraid to speak up. I work with a bunch of young people (including most of attorneys) that are at least 10-15 years my junior. I’ve been in this business for nearly 20 years and I cease to care what these higher ups think of me. None of the staff would speak up beyond some minor quietly spoken statement, several couldn’t speak because they were tearing up and only one actually had the balls to say they couldn’t speak up because they needed their job.
Lil’ ole me was up to the challenge. I respectfully told them they needed to respect employees time (stop calling and texting until 11pm), respond to staff questions in a timely manner or stop being upset when things are late and pay the staff the wage that matches how much they do for them… I may have said a few more things but those were the big three. Two of the assistants left the retreat early and flew home. Here we are two weeks later and guess who got fired. Safe space my a*.
There’s a high probability that the person who orchestrated my firing is on Reddit so, thanks for that.