Some context: I was a graphic designer for this small office in my hometown that managed the online marketing for a medical business that had offices around the US. My job was to help make graphics and brand related business materials which I absolutely loved doing.
The problem was that my boss was, well, sketchy.
At one point my business email address had been full on our online storage app. Every email got a specific amount of space on their drive but being a graphic designer I saved the illustrator/In design files plus different sizes and forms of files of the project. It added up quickly.
When I brought it up to my boss, he asked me why I wasn’t saving all my work under this one generic email address. The other two graphic designers were doing it so I should have been. He then proceeded to tell me to delete everything on the shared drive and reload everything I have made in the past two years and reupload under this one generic email.
I said no because that would take forever and I have too many projects to do. He said I will do it or else.
During this time, this company’s IT in another state understood my request and gave me access to more storage space on my business email.
So I ignored by bosses request to redownload and reupload all the work under the generic email.
When one of the IT guys made this message on an app we all used for tracking projects, my boss was furious and said on this app I need to still redownload under the generic email.
By this time I was pissed.
So I replied on the project app that I am not going to waste time doing something like that and thanked the IT guy for his help. But before ending my comment, I brought up a book corporate bought for everyone called “Extreme Leadership” which the president of the corporation wanted to base his company leadership on. I proceeded to tell my boss on this task app how his actions don’t reflect what the book and the business stood for (it is a good book too imo). I also mentioned how this was a security concern since they don’t change passwords with the generic account when people are fired so using that generic email is a high risk security concern for the company. At least if I am fired, they can close my email account so I don’t have anymore access to the business end of things.
I left it at that and continued my work.
My protect manager told me later that he had to convince our boss not to fire me on the spot but apparently he felt embarrassed because not only did my bosses boss read what I posted but so did the president of the company.
Fast forward a couple months and the business found out that my boss was selling confidential information to a competitor and fired immediately. They changed the password to the generic email and told the other graphic designers to start saving their projects using their assigned email.
More fun facts about my ex boss was that he would brag how he never had to change of of his children’s diapers (I think he had 4 or 5 kids?). At one point his oldest son (around 7 I think), asked me what I did for work there and I said I was a graphic designer. His son then said “you’re not pretty enough to be a graphic designer”. I would have no doubt in my mind his son heard his dad say this before about other women. The wife found out and wrote me an apology letter. You could tell my boss was not happy about handing me the letter from his wife because he didn’t even apologize or look me in the eye when he handed it to me.
More juicy detail: apparently my ex boss and his brother got into an argument so bad it ended in the news because the one pulled out and gun and started shooting. We were unsure of which one it was because it didn’t state who had the gun.