‘Wounded Healer’ Wins First of Five Weekly Working America Bad Boss Contests

by Tula Connell, Jun 28, 2006

The votes are in at Working America’s My Bad Boss Contest for the first winner in the competition for America’s worst boss.

And if anyone can top this bad boss, we don’t want to know.

Although the competition was stiff—bosses who denied workers time off to attend funerals or the honcho who made workers write training manuals for their overseas replacements—some 1,526 voters cast their ballots in favor of “Wounded Healer.”

Of the 15,000 votes cast for this week’s Bad Boss winner—the first of five weekly winners—Wounded Healer’s boss was voted the worst.

Each weekly contest winner (the winner is the person who submits the story, not the boss) will receive a special prize and will be entered as finalists for the grand prize: a one-week vacation getaway and $1,000 toward air fare, compliments of Union Privilege. This week’s prize is a “Take This Job and Shove It” CD by Johnny Paycheck.

Wounded Healer in Michigan describes trying to help a war veteran brought to a hospital emergency room after suffering trauma from seeing TV coverage of the Iraq war, which triggered painful memories for him.

Wounded Healer tried to get authorization for the patient to be admitted to a hospital, but the boss refused because it was too expensive. The hospital charged $5,000 to the patient’s credit card and then discharged him. A short time later, he committed suicide.

Wounded Healer couldn’t stop crying and took the rest of the day off using personal time. But her boss complained to her supervisor.

He said, “I don’t know why she had to take the day off. People commit suicide every day.”

Working America wants to hear your story. If you have (or used to have) a bad boss and want to enter the contest, here’s how.

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