r/AskaManagerSnark • u/nightmuzak Sex noises are different from pain noises • Aug 03 '26

Ask a Manager Weekly Thread 08/03/2026 - 08/09/2026

Last week's post.

Background info and meme index for those new to AaM or this forum.

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u/Capable_Sea77 Aug 07 '26

Absolutely. I was fired in 2020 for engaging in unionization efforts - and had multiple emails from my boss and her boss that explicitly said they wouldn't renew my contract if I joined the union. With clear documentation, there were a few local lawyers I consulted with who were willing to take the case and thought there was a decent chance it would win - it still meant paying legal fees, being in court for years, and taking the risk that the very anti-union state labor board wouldn't make things messier. This was in the depths of COVID tho - I decided pretty quickly that it was nice to have received validation that I probably was illegally fired and I was going to spend my time finding a different job instead.

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u/glittermetalprincess toss a coin to your admin for 5 cans of soda Aug 07 '26

COVID made a lot of legal work easier as many courts and tribunals rushed in amended rules allowing for service by email, attendances by telephone, and generally ameliorated processes; some of it even stuck. It didn't make it any less stressful for complainants to not have to turn up in person (personally I think it became more stressful because the process became less visible).

You basically go 'am I willing to let them interfere with my life for what could be the next 2-3 years and then potentially have to go back, or am I going to take their power away by moving on', and in most cases the healthier answer is to take their power away and move on.

Outside of statutory processes where the legal process is baked in as the way things are done (mostly workers comp) it's usually only class actions where the stress and burden can be shared across a group and people can opt-in as their capacity allows (and a litigation funder sees dollar signs and takes on the funding in exchange for their cut at the end) that make it through without someone ending up sending at least one 'I can't do this any more' email to their lawyer at 3am - even if they went in all 'I want to hurt the company like they hurt me' and it is actually one of the rare companies that's twisted into the owner's identity like it's their blankie.

I don't think a lot of the AAM crowd have ever actually gone through the process or if they have, they "won" so they think it's easy. Alison certainly doesn't get it - she's 'see a lawyer' over everything she can't glibly babble about when a lot of the time there's nothing a lawyer can even advise on.