My brother works for a family business (window blinds), run by my Grandfather. Around 10 years ago there were several family members working for Grandfather, until they all went off and did their own thing.
About 5/6 years ago my brother started to work for him (as the only staff member) and went on to essentially run the entire manufacturing and fitting part of the business, with minimal oversight. Grandfather regularly told brother that one day it would be his business etc. and said they wouldn’t be able to run the business without Brother’s constant hard work.
This was until around 2 years ago when Uncle (Grandfather’s son-in-law) was suddenly taken on, on an equal footing with Brother. This left a bit of a sour taste in Brothers mouth as he thought that he was working towards one day taking over the business, which now, may not be the case. Over the last two years Grandfather has, more and more, been giving preferential treatment to Uncle over Brother.
This was until last week when Brother found out that whereas previously all the staff had been working as “sole traders” they would now be forming a “limited company” – with Grandfather, Grandmother, Uncle & Aunt (Grandfather’s daughter and Uncle’s spouse) as the Directors.
Brother found this out through accidentally seeing some paperwork in company office and there had been no discussion with him about the possibility of also being a director.
A few days later, whilst Brother was contemplating confronting Grandfather about this Grandfather gave Brother a £1000 “bonus”, presumably to assuage his own guilt for not making Brother a director too.
In essence – you can’t trust bosses, even if they are family.
TL;DR – Grandfather screwed over brother after telling him that he would one day take over business.