Almost everyone has worked for a bad boss at some point, but some are in a league of their own.
And since 2021 has come to an end, employment law attorney and author of Ohio Employer Law Blog Jon Hyman rounded up the worst employers of the worst. He then had his readers vote for the most terrible boss.
Here are the shocking results!
Slave labor
The winner of the not-so-honorable Worst Employer title was dubbed “The Enslaving Employer.”
So what did this boss do? According to the FBI, Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS), a Hindu temple in New Jersey, recruited underprivileged Indian men to come to the United States and work for the temple, for a shockingly low rate of $1 an hour. The men were required to work 90 hours a week, as well.
Even worse, once the employees arrived at the temple, their passports were taken, and they weren’t allowed to leave the premises.
BAPS was certainly well-deserving of the Worst Employer title. But the runners-up were pretty awful, too.
Denied leave & harassment
In second place was “The Still-birthing Leave Spurner.” In this case, the employer was the District of Columbia Public Schools, and its awful nomination came after it denied a teacher leave after she suffered a stillbirth.
The teacher requested leave to recover from both the physical and emotional trauma of having a stillbirth, but the school denied her request, saying that she didn’t get maternity leave since she wasn’t leaving the hospital with a baby.
In third place was an employer that had a room called “The Cosby Suite” — and yes, it’s as bad as it sounds.
Gaming company Activision Blizzard came under fire after higher-up Alex Afrasiabi sexually harassed female employees in plain sight, and took them to his private office that he nicknamed The Cosby Suite, after convicted rapist Bill Cosby. Afrasiabi would kiss and grope female employees here and encourage them to engage in sexual activity with each other.
Afrasiabi wasn’t the company’s only problem, either. A lawsuit alleges that Activision Blizzard had a “frat-boy culture” that included drinking at work and groping female employees. One victim of sexual misconduct ended up taking her own life.
There’s no doubt these three employers are the worst of the worst — and maybe make us all appreciate our own bosses a little more!