Boss making me do inappropriate punishments at work [closed]

manpreet Best Answer 2 years ago

I have been working for this couple of investors for around 18 months. The set up is, these two people will buy small online businesses and I will run these businesses from a single office. Currently I have 5 businesses to manage on my own.

Around a year ago, my boss decided to come up with a forfeit scheme, every time I made a mistake he wanted me to do a forfeit. These were small mistakes, such as sending somebody the wrong invoice, or missing an item off of an order. These have only happened once.

Initially the forfeits were along the line of doing some press-ups or sit-ups, etc, I wasn't bothered about this. However, my boss has been pressuring me to do worse forfeits, it gets to the point he just sits there and waits for me to agree, if I say I don't want to do a forfeit he'll say "you don't have to" so I say ok, then he says "but how are you going to make up for making a mistake", and eventually gets round to me doing a forfeit. More recently he has started to say he wants me to feel humiliated for making mistakes, and tries to get me to do humiliating forfeits.

When he first started I felt ok with it, almost as if it was a good idea. The mistakes were/are not big enough for any serious action, but they are still mistakes so a small forfeit as punishment was incentive for me to double check and take more consideration with the work.

But now, its got to the point where I feel uncomfortable, pressured into situations I really don't want to be in and its almost like my boss is making me do forfeits for his personal interest rather than to help the business.

It's distracting when I am at work, it deters my concentration, I almost feel like I'm being bullied.

Is it OK what my boss is doing?

The following has been added since posting this question

To clarify I live in the UK.

I'm the only permanent employee here, I work here alone for about 2-3 days a week the other days one of the investors may come in for a few hours. There have been 2 or 3 temporary employees and a few contractors who I would only speak to via email/telephone calls.

It is only 1 of the 2 investors who is putting me in this situation. At one point the investor said just remember what happens at work stays at work, almost as if he didn't want me to tell the other investor or my friends.

For those of you who say the examples aren't small mistakes, I work as a sole employee for 5 businesses - I do almost everything to manage these businesses including processing sales/orders which is in the 1000s some months, dealing with all customers/clients briefing contractors/meeting up with suppliers, producing website content and promotional material, reporting on sales/marketing, purchasing, forecasting, etc, the only areas I do not really have an input in is the legal and corporate finance.

So in over 18 months, if the most serious error I made was amended by me apologizing to a customer and saying there will be a 1 day delay with half of their order, costing the company less than £7 in extra shipping fees, I do not think I have done anything majorly wrong.

The investor has also made me do forfeits when I didn't respond to emails with in a set time frame, when stock levels had been in accurate, and on one occasion the company who installed our e-commerce site had to add an update - after, one link was broken which I didn't notice so I was made to do a forfeit for each day the link was broken on the site which my boss decided was 7 days.

manpreet 2 years ago

Is it OK what my boss is doing?

It's not appropriate for a boss to humiliate a worker - in private or in public.

And if it's at the point where you feel concerned about being at work, then it's clearly NOT OK.

Tell your boss "No" next time, and mean it. Don't let your boss guilt you into doing something that clearly bothers you.

If it continues, quit.