Top 10 Times BAD BOSSES Got What They Deserved
#10: Vegan Biter
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As the Chief Operating Officer at the vegan brand Beyond Meat, you’d expect Doug Ramsey to lead by example. However, he did the exact opposite in 2022. Ramsey got into a heated argument with another driver, who apparently clipped his car at a parking garage. The COO reportedly punched through the back windscreen of the offending vehicle. When the driver got out, Ramsey attacked him. To make it worse, Ramsey bit his nose! Unsurprisingly, he was arrested for battery and making threats. As such, Ramsey was suspended by Beyond Meat until he left the company shortly after. Ramsey pled guilty and was given three years of probation and fined $1000, among other conditions.
#9: Fly Away
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Reddit is a smorgasbord of people getting their own back against horrible bosses that we can all live vicariously through. For example, user shubhzeee’s tale of revenge. They spoke about working for an abusive employer in a construction firm who would throw objects, scream, and not pay overtime. Shubhzeee’s partner gets free tickets for events due to their volunteer work, and the boss wanted to use that perk. Shubhzeee, who was leaving the job, stated the employer would need to fly to another city, which he was fine with. However, the Reddit user sabotaged the tickets to make them invalid. When the event was on, shubhzeee’s phone kept ringing from their former boss, who seemingly couldn’t get into the show. Whoops.
#8: Forced Kiss
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Richard Beckman has had his hand in many media outlets over the years, such as the New Yorker and GQ, due to his work with parent company Condé Nast. And in 1999, he was working for Vogue as its publisher. But that year, Beckman tried to force advertising director Carol Matthews to kiss international fashion director Emily Jahncke Davis. Instead, he ended up slamming Matthews’s face into Davis’s forehead, breaking the former’s nose badly enough that she needed surgery. But it’s okay. It was all a “joke,” apparently(!) Matthews issued a lawsuit against Beckman and the company for $10 million. The case was settled out of court, reportedly for a sizable amount, and Beckman had to publicly apologize to Vogue staff.
#7: Library of Bigotry
In 2008, Peter TerVeer joined the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C, as a management analyst. All seemed to be going well. That is, until his boss, John Mech, discovered TerVeer liked a page on Facebook that offered support to gay fathers. After TerVeer confirmed he was gay, he fell out with Mech and his family, leading to a reign of harassment at the Library. In 2011, after taking sick leave for anxiety due to the hostile environment, TerVeer was fired by the Library after the leave expired. In 2012, TerVeer issued a lawsuit against Mech and the Library for violating the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 2015, the case was settled to the tune of $235,000.
#6: Not Sterling Work
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Donald Sterling’s ownership of the LA Clippers was already controversial before this. Under his leadership, the NBA side was described as "the worst franchise in sports history." But it got worse. Sterling was recorded telling his mistress that it bothers him that she associates with black people and asked her not to bring them to any games. Yikes. After the news broke in 2014, Clippers players protested Sterling by wearing their shirts inside out. The NBA handed the property magnate a lifetime ban and fined him $2.5 million. This essentially forced Sterling to sell the team for $2 billion. Adding to his embarrassment, Sterling tried to sue the NBA for the sale. After being originally thrown out, it was eventually settled in 2016.
#5: Lack of Heart
After experiencing chest pains, Murray Gardiner from New Zealand had double bypass surgery on his heart. But even with this stress, at least he had his job at the Patch Rubber Company, which he had held for 11 years. Post-surgery, his boss, Julian Proctor, visited him in the hospital. But instead of a social visit, he fired the recovering Gardiner. Proctor claimed that the surgery wasn’t fully successful and he’d be away too long. However, the hospital notes stated the operation had no issues. Regardless, Proctor didn’t want to wait and wanted someone working immediately, apparently ignoring the possibility of a temp. After contacting a lawyer, Gardiner agreed to a “significantly larger” compensation package with Proctor than the initial $8580 offered.
#4: GPS Boss
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It’s always nice when a boss trusts an employee when they’re unable to work due to health reasons. But it's a shame this one employer from Seville, Spain, couldn’t do that. In 2023, an unidentified worker was on sick leave after suffering from anxiety, an issue that caused them to clash with their boss. As they cleaned their car, they discovered some damage underneath and a GPS tracker placed within. Seemingly, the boss was following the worker’s whereabouts. The investigation found the device was registered to another company hundreds of miles away, which had been paying the bill for the device unknowingly. With that, the boss was arrested for document fraud and damaging the employee’s vehicle.
#3: Baseball Slur Boss
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If there was a prize for the worst owner of a sports team, Marge Schott of Major League Baseball’s Cincinnati Reds would be in the running. Numerous times she was accused of uttering racist slurs, discriminating against black players, and supporting fascism, as evidenced by a German World War Two armband she owned. Schott even went on record several times praising the early work of Adolf Hitler before he “went too far.” After several bans and massive fines for her horrible opinions, in 1999, Schott was forced to sell her majority stake in the Reds. In 2020, after donating to the University of Cincinnati and having their baseball stadium named after her, Schott's name was removed due to her grim history.
#2: Hero to Unemployed
In 2010, Debbie Stevens returned to work for Jackie Brucia, her boss at Atlantic Automotive Group in New York. The following year, Stevens did something amazing. Her boss needed a kidney donor. While Stevens wasn’t a match for Brucia, she donated her kidney to someone else, which allowed her boss to move up the list and get a better-matched organ. However, the surgery wasn’t a complete success for Stevens, who experienced health issues afterward. After returning to work, she found Brucia to be hostile and abusive. Stevens was demoted and eventually fired months after her donation. In 2012, the New York State Division on Human Rights ruled the firing as "unjust." In 2014, a lawsuit between the two parties was settled.
#1: Producing Pain
Producer Scott Rudin is in an elite club. After all, he won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony. Then, in 2021, all that good work was flushed away when allegations came out about his abuse against staff, especially his assistants. The accusations include Rudin smashing a computer monitor on an assistant’s hand, breaking objects and windows in a rage, lying about a theft to wreck a former employee’s job prospects, and withholding production credits as revenge. After he apologized and announced his intention to step back from work, many projects removed Rudin’s name from their productions. Famed film company A24 also cut ties with the producer, whose reputation now lay in tatters. Who’s the best boss in fiction? Michael Scott? Captain Raymond Holt? Leslie Knope? Or someone else? Let us know below!
