This is a throw away. This particular work incident and what followed since has been unlike anything I've experienced at a job so I'm making a post and will update what goes on next if anything. It is long. Tl;dr at the bottom.
My boss, who is also president of the company, is…insane. She's penny-pinched co-workers all while she does research for clients for free and allows her sons do whatever they want (come in once a week, play their switch at work, etc. She's also paying for a house for her adult, 30-something son, the one who comes in once a week. I don't blame him. That's the dream. But maybe don't bitch at your workers for taking an extra minute to do something then. Also, she recently bought another vehicle and cell phones for all 4 of them.) She chews out co-workers in front of others. She's considered making people punch out if they make a mistake and either fix it themself or make someone fix it for them, all off the clock. She's told at least one co-worker, on multiple occasions, she will take money out of his pay check for stuff he's broken. We work with a lot of glassware and at no point has he broken anything on purpose. I don't know if she's ever actually done it, but how upset he gets at himself if he breaks something seems to suggest she has. She recently threatened to deduct about half a paycheck-worth for damages that happened with a project that most likely weren't even his fault.
TW for sexual harassment for this next part, the incident I'm writing this post for. Her brother, who was retired but would come in on occasion, had SHed at least 2 employees, I'll call them R and C, and made additional disturbing comments about other women in the building, and, at least once, high school girls(!!!) Basically: 'If I were younger I'd be all over you.' (He's ~60. This was directed at C, a 20-y/o) 'You'd make a good stripper.' 'I want to watch the girls' basketball game too, and I don't mean for the sports.' C would call him out on it and he'd mock her for it. It got to the point where if she saw his truck when she came to work, she'd dread coming in and just avoid him as much as possible.
At one point our boss realised somehow that he was making these comments. As far as I know none of us made an actual report about it because our job didn't have any official SH report as far as we knew and we were worried about the bias aspect so I'm not sure how she realised this. But she came up to me and only C (not R, the other co-worker who was SHed) and asked us if he'd said anything that offended us. I told her my side which was him making comments about my religion (also not ok but at the time it didn't seem as bad as the SH toward C and R). I also was having a hard time relaying exactly what I wanted to say because I was working on something time sensitive and she had randomly come out to talk to me, not taking me into the office or anything to actually sit down and really talk about it. Basically our interaction ended with me saying I wasn't sure how I felt about it. She also said a few things that, at the time I wasn't thinking about but now that I look back on it, they're so inappropriate. She mentioned she knew if she talked to him about this it would hurt his feelings and he'd make a comment about how everyone in the workplace nowadays is so sensitive. Afterward she went to talk to C who gave her side about the comments he'd said to her. Our boss assured us she would talk to him about this.
After this, it seemed like he'd stopped coming around as much so both C and I assumed our boss had talked to him. But when he did come around, his comments toward C and R seemed to increase in frequency. This is about when C started to really avoid him and he'd mock her if she called him out. At this point I was seeing how stressed C was about this and I was getting annoyed too so I tried to avoid him as well and wouldn't talk to him. It came to a head ~2 or 3 weeks ago. I was multitasking on quite a bit of projects but my boss came in and she had brought her brother with her. He said hi to me and I just greeted him very dismissively. They then moved over to a project and started discussing it. I had been involved in that project so my boss, while mostly still talking to her brother, turned to me maybe twice to ask a simple question about it. After answering I'd quickly go back to my very time-sensitive work. She then asked me a third question. I hadn't quite heard her and this is when shit went very south. Here's the gist of it.
I said 'what?' and she paused before angrily saying 'Can you guys maybe actually listen to what I'm saying?' She never uses this type of tone on me so I was surprised and responded 'I have a lot on my mind right now and just didn't hear you, what did you say?'
'You didn't hear me because you're more focused on your music than me talking.'
And this just made it worse for me because I absolutely hate when people assume something that's not true about my actions so I said back, 'I didn't hear you because I thought you were talking to your brother and I'm working on a lot of stuff.'
This goes on for a bit, getting more and more heated. I shut down and asked her again to just please repeat what she'd said and at that point she yells, 'you know what? Forget it. I don't even know why I try when you guys don't even give a shit.' And walked off into her office (only a few feet away from me) and slammed her door. I had no idea what to do so I just kept working. All of a sudden she throws her door open and yells at me 'why don't you want to talk to my brother??!' I'm so incredibly stressed at this point but somehow I said back 'because he's sexually harassed people??' And then she says 'I thought you knew he was joking?'
I just shut down. I had no clue what the fuck to say to that and at this point I'm starting to tear up because she's not listening and is now telling me the sexual harassment my coworkers have endured was a joke. It's hard to remember what exactly I said back but she essentially told me 'I thought you said you knew it was a joke.' I realised after all this that she was referring back to when she'd talked to me and C about the comments her brother had made to us. Keep in mind I never said it was a joke and I'd ended it by saying I wasn't sure how I'd felt about it. She then yelled 'if this was such an issue, why didn't you report it?' I'm crying at this point and said I did. I had literally told her about it. Then her brother started chewing me out too. I couldn't really hear it or don't remember but I think he said something like 'why didn't anyone tell me I was doing something wrong.' At this point my gf had come into the room and, seeing what happened, came over to hold me. She's pretty soft-spoken and even she said back to them 'it's clearly not a joke and is hurting someone.' I'll forever be grateful to her for standing up to them.
Both of them leave and have an emergency meeting with our hr guy, who I'll call N. I'm just crying and leave to go to the bathroom to take a moment so a lot of this is hearsay. According to N, a dude who is super chill, even he got angry during the meeting. The boss's brother kept wanting to talk about how he's from a different generation and didn't know any better so N shut that down real quick. Afterward, the brother comes out and 'apologises'. 'I had no idea I was doing something wrong and you'll never see me again because I'm not walking back in through those doors.' Don't threaten me with a good time dude. According to one of the boss's sons, the brother had tried to make him feel bad too by saying he wouldn't see him anymore because he barely comes over to their house and now he wouldn't be coming back to work either. Then the boss comes out and, while crying, apologises to me and says she had no idea the sexual harassment had gotten this bad, which I know is a lie. She also said she's just sometime so dense and doesn't realise these things are happening. Holy shit.
We had a sexual harassment survey and an interview the following week. I wrote out exactly what happened, calling out my boss for how shitty she was to me and that it should have never ever got this far. The interview was a lot of my boss saying her brother wasn't a bad person and he's not normally like this, blah blah. She at one point told me she had had no idea all this was going on and that she had never talked to him about it even though she had said she would. She claims she remembers that discussion differently. Of course she does. Very convenient. According to C when she'd done her interview, our boss actually had the gall to ask her if her brother could really apologise and be better if C would be ok with him coming back (???!!!)
Essentially my gf and I have just been trying to get through work as best we can. I wanted to stick it out until the boss retires because the job itself is nice and my co-workers are great. I'm getting paid a decent amount, the hours aren't gruelling (at least in terms of living in a country that requires me to do work in order to yknow eat and shit), we get actual sick days and I get to do something I like. On top of that, everything else around me is the opposite. Either 12 hour shifts for 3 days straight with 2 days off in between and 1 holiday a year or $15 or less an hour which would absolutely not pay my bills.
NOW my boss has all of a sudden started chewing out my gf randomly, like every day. I have no idea if this is related to her being upset because she had to fire her brother but she will literally accuse my gf of stuff she hasn't even done wrong. Basically: having my gf be trained by someone and then getting mad at her for doing it the way she was trained. Getting angry with her for making a checklist for work that needed doing and telling her she's 'not going to pay her to write out that shit'. She told her this in April so my gf stopped. Then today our boss went thru my gf's notebook and told her again she's not paying her to make checklists. She was looking back at one she'd made in April, before our boss had even told her to stop. Telling her she needs to finish something in a minute rather than 6 minutes. Telling her to stand a certain way so she didn't have to take one (1) step for a certain task she does. Watching the cameras to find something my gf had done wrong. Getting mad at my gf for cleaning glassware how she was taught and accusing her of 'costing them hundreds of dollars' even though this certain glassware isn't even ruined by how she cleaned it. My gf is on the verge of quitting after being so stressed that she's being bullied daily like this for no apparent reason.
Tl;dr: My boss's brother sexually harassed co-workers and my boss essentially defended him.