Psychopath Bosses Being Dealt with in France

MrAbyss

According to the New York Times, the executives attempted to solve this dilemma by creating an “atmosphere of fear” and purposefully stoked “severe anxiety” in order to drive workers to quit.

35 suicides of employees as part as corporate policy to reduce operating costs. All my working life I have seen these types of Psychopath bosses and middle management soft-kill serial killers cause untold misery (and at least 2 suicides) in the work place. It is good to see these cretins being dealt with somewhere at least. If not to highlight the issue.

The Rape of Lucretia

Pour encourager les autres.

JlMMY

J'Agree.

TheValeyard

I'd say this is only the tip of a very large iceberg.

SEPT 23 1989

You don’t get to the top without being a total headbanger

Would you trade places with them

Don’t think so

ILoveYourVibes

AWESOME!

tdf7187

I salute the French.

In Ireland we don't even have a corporate manslaughter law. I have looked into the matter, and I believe that attempts were made to put it on the statute books but resisted lobbyists by on behalf of powerful corporate interests. Incidentally, I'm aware of at least one example, a former boss, who though his death was caused by a heart attack, in my view the real underlying cause was workplace bullying by his boss.

https://www.pressreader.com/ireland/irish-independent/20091024/282991100969706

Thargor

One guy did it by stabbing himself in the stomach in the middle of a meeting, another woman jumped out a window after being told she had to relocate to another part of the country for the third time in a year. Im surprised there weren't riots over this in France, I thought they didnt tolerate this kind of thing.

tdf7187

SEPT 23 1989 wrote: »

You don’t get to the top without being a total headbanger

Would you trade places with them

Don’t think so

Would certainly rather trade places with them rather than the employees that they bully to death.

tdf7187

Thargor wrote: »

One guy did it by stabbing himself in the stomach in the middle of a meeting, another woman jumped out a window after being told she had to relocate to another part of the country for the third time in a year. Im surprised there weren't riots over this in France, I thought they didnt tolerate this kind of thing.

They don't, as shown by the jailing of the snakes in suits.

Junkyard Tom

The corporate system seems very primitive for a species that can instantly message each other from anywhere on the planet. People working themselves to suicide, and early graves, in the 21st Century?

We were supposed to be living in a leisure economy by now but instead families need two full time workers to achieve a modest standard of living.

We messed up badly somewhere along the way.

KWAG2019

There are always “managers” who are simply tools used by the 1%ers to screw every ounce of “productivity” out of employees. Cynical imbecilic bullies for the most part.

anewme

I'm in the corporate sector.

Behaviours like this no longer tolerated.

Speak up policies in place to curb this.

All you need is the person who decides to be the Whistleblower.

Sunny Disposition

https://amp.independent.ie/regionals/corkman/news/bullied-john-took-own-life-24-hours-after-ae-38047585.html

Bigus

While driving people to suicide is totally unacceptable ( the main culprits in ireland being one of the smaller retail banks) what were the French executives to do ? given the impossible Labour laws they had to deal around , should they have let the whole company go belly up and have 120,000 out of a job , instead of 20,000 ?

It’s a double edged sword, when you make people impossible to sack, it could lead to total unfairness in the work place and leave the responsible and efficient workers at a disadvantage which in turn could lead to collapse of the whole company or system dragging everyone down to the lowest level. So these executives were in a bit of a catch 22, but sure let the faulty system have a scape goat, for some headlines .

seamus

Bigus wrote: »

While driving people to suicide is totally unacceptable ( the main culprits in ireland being one of the smaller retail banks) what were the French executives to do ? given the impossible Labour laws they had to deal around , should they have let the whole company go belly up and have 120,000 out of a job , instead of 20,000 ?

It’s a double edged sword, when you make people impossible to sack, it could lead to total unfairness in the work place and leave the responsible and efficient workers at a disadvantage which in turn could lead to collapse of the whole company or system dragging everyone down to the lowest level. So these executives were in a bit of a catch 22, but sure let the faulty system have a scape goat, for some headlines .

France Telecom would never have gone belly-up with the loss of all jobs. It was (and still is) an enormous telecommunications company. The bulk of their debt was down to share price losses.

If they'd collapsed financially, it would have been bought out cheaply or rescued by the French government. And most of the people would have kept their jobs.

The issue wasn't that they couldn't fire people, it's that they would have had to to pay redundancy and they didn't want to. Because that would make shareholders unhappy and impact executive bonusses.

Wanderer78

anewme wrote:

All you need is the person who decides to be the Whistleblower.

....and whistle-blowers are always respected and looked after, after the fact!

Mrs OBumble

anewme wrote: »

All you need is the person who decides to be the Whistleblower.

Or just leave.

I've worked for some a**holes. But I'm a grown-up, so did the obvious.

Sleepy

I do find it somewhat worrying that, in this point in our evolution, some of us will kill ourselves rather than the person antagonising us.

It really is to France's shame that the headline doesn't read the other way: "3 executives murdered by staff they were bullying. Presidential pardons have been awarded to the perpetrators"...

The Tetrarch

The scum rises to the top.

Wanderer78

Mrs OBumble wrote:

I've worked for some a**holes. But I'm a grown-up, so did the obvious.

Unfortunately, some grown ups simply don't have the option of leaving, life rarely is black or white

Sonics2k

anewme wrote: »

I'm in the corporate sector.

Behaviours like this no longer tolerated.

Speak up policies in place to curb this.

All you need is the person who decides to be the Whistleblower.

Not true at all sadly.

In my old job I called out serious nepotism, able to prove a severe problem of the upper management being hired based on family or close friendship to the existing senior managment.

At one point two brothers, a sister, a wife of one of the brothers and their groomsman were 5 of 6 in the most senior positions in our office. Each one hired by the other. Myself and others were able to document outright cases were some of these people had been promoted before reaching the required tenure or even basic experience over considerably more qualified candidates.

When I approached HR and eventually the senior board about it I was largely dismissed and I as a result I was declined even an interview for promotions as I wasn't a "team player", my shifts were all changed to either late nights and every weekend or 6am starts every weekend.

From what I hear from former colleagues it's just as bad now so many just keep their mouths shut and try to find new jobs.

Wanderer78

SS Paddies Division wrote:

If you're at the end of your tether, why not kill your boss instead of yourself?

Murder or suicide, interesting place to be in life

suicide_circus

utterly disgusting that this was a deliberate policy but wouldn't you just quit?

Wanderer78

suicide_circus wrote:

utterly disgusting that this was a deliberate policy but wouldn't you just quit?

So if you had a mortgage, a couple of kids, and few, possibly no other employment opportunities, deciding to stay or quit is an easy decision?

suicide_circus

Wanderer78 wrote: »

So if you had a mortgage, a couple of kids, and few, possibly no other employment opportunities, deciding to stay or quit is an easy decision?

well if i had no other employment opportunities certainly not but there's no suggestion of that. i'm not blaming the victims, heaven forbid, i just cant imagine a scenario where i'd choose leaving my kids fatherless rather than going on the dole. it must have been a culture so dreadful that it entirely broke their spirit. awful.

Mrs OBumble

Sonics2k wrote: »

upper management being hired based on family or close friendship to the existing senior managment.

Nothing wrong with that, unless it's a publicity funded organisation.

Family businesses exist to employ family members, in many cases.

Sonics2k

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

Nothing wrong with that, unless it's a publicity funded organisation.

Family businesses exist to employ family members, in many cases.

This wasn't a family run business though. We're talking about an international corporation.

Motdyeah

Used to work in a toxic environment in IT where people would cut the back of one another and management were high horse pricks who you couldn’t have a conversation with him. These managers were not tech savvy whatsoever so basically you had to do their job along with your own.

If something went wrong with a server they would immediately blame you and put you on the spot in a meeting. They couldn’t grasp the fact that stuff goes wrong in IT and that I should have seen it coming and went against me in a quarterly report by them ffs. One major thing happened and he but all the blame on me even though it wasn’t my fault and then I walked. I fixed the problem but took a while. Manager hung me by the balls to all the top execs blaming me even though he didn’t understand the issue. I walked out of the office.

Boss rang me up apologizing and then HR contacted me offering me more money but said as long my manager is there I’m not going back and worked out two weeks notice.

I left after a year, I can’t believe how toxic some work environments currrently are.

JupiterKid

About a decade ago, when my career was on a fast track and I was riding high on my publications and accomplishments, a new boss joined the organisation I worked in and proceded to bully me so badly it caused me to have a total mental breakdown. It nearly destroyed me completely.

I am only now recovering from the fallout of that episode.

I am delighted at this judgement. It should be repeated in other countries and sends a message that to bully your subordinates in the workplace is completely unacceptable.

There should be an integral part of the selection procedure for interview candidates for managerial positions on how to appropriately handle employees and this could involve a personality test.

It's well known that bullies and narcissists are drawn to positions of power...