'She fired me today [for bringing] this up': Boss reads employee's emails, writes responses impersonating them, fires them for calling her out

Brad Dickson • Managing Editor

Mar 17, 2024 6:00 PM EDT

Agency is important in the workplace; people typically need to feel as if they have responsibility over a task in order to derive satisfaction from doing it. This is one of the most basic facts that someone managing a team should be aware of.

Sure, it's important that you know what's going on with your team, but that doesn't extend to the level of having comprehensive direct access to every last bit of their personal workplace communications.

The point is that you have a certain level of trust that the people you've hired to do a job have the capability of doing that job. And, at a certain point, you need to be able to take a step back and accept that they have things handled. Still, this doesn't stop some micromanaging bosses from demanding full access to their employee's emails, interjecting their own thoughts on when and how an employee should be responding.

This boss took things a step further, responding to their employee's emails and impersonating them—without telling the employee that they were doing so. Things came to a head when the worker called them out, seeking to resolve the issue along with others they had been experiencing. Instead of partaking in a constructive conversation, the boss fired them on the spot… See the employee's brief account of events below from a thread that they shared with a popular online community.

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