A labor lawyer went viral on TikTok after revealing how some bosses force employees to resign without breaking relatiation laws.
The video features viral labor lawyer Ryan (@attorneyryan) who gives legal advice to his 1.7 million followers. In this clip, he responds to a question in the comments: what if your boss is setting you up to fail?
He explains how to tackle retaliation from a toxic boss. “When a boss doesn’t have the guts to fire you because they know their reason is illegal, they might use this trick instead,” Ryan explains. “They’ll wanna get you to resign so they can’t say you were wrongfully fired and they won’t have to pay unemployment.”
Ryan says bosses will make an employee’s life “so miserable” that the employee quits. One tactic they use is “adding lots of responsibilities” and “impossible expectations” to the workload.
How an employee can deal with this situation is to “gain control of the paper trail early,” Ryan advises. One way to do this is to send an email to the employer, pointing out that the new responsibility is “impossible.”
Ryan emphasizes drawing attention to the new responsibilities if they were followed by an employee requesting accommodation or if they filed a complaint. He wraps up the video by stating this is a “high-risk situation” and “nothing will stop your employer from breaking the law,” however, with evidence like that, the employee will “have a much better case.”
@attorneyryan Hsres how to handle a boss who is setting you up to fail #corporatelife #careeradvice #attorneyryan #worklife ♬ Blade Runner 2049 – Synthwave Goose
The Daily Dot contacted Ryan via Twitter direct message and TikTok comment regarding the video. The video racked up over 149,000 views as of Monday, where viewers added other things managers may do to get employees to leave.
“A lot of places will simply cut hours so you can’t afford to stay. hard to prove why they’re doing it,” one viewer said.
“Or when they rotate managers and promote you to a new position/assignment and get a bad manager. Yup been there done that. Had to leave. Did my best,” a second added.
“Or giving you a bad rating at the end of every project making you feel like a failure so you won’t come back,” another stated.
Others shared their experiences with bosses retaliating against them.
“Dollar general did this to me all in the same day,” one person shared.
“I had this problem. Learned the hard way that they wiped my 3 month old emails automatically, losing control of the paper trail,” a second wrote.
“This is exactly what happened to me but I was Able to do the 10 extra tasks and excel at all of them with no problem. So it didn’t work for him. Ha,” a third commented.
According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, “laws prohibit punishing job applicants or employees for asserting their rights to be free from employment discrimination including harassment.”
