There are quite a few things that bosses ask you to do that are
prohibited for the boss to ask but not illegal for the employee to
do. "Sleep with me" is one of them.
Yes, but that's not prohibited because it is vaguely "immoral"
but constitutes unlawful sexual harrassment in the US. If you
are fired after such an incident, you can sue for unlawful
termination (and companies have paid many $millions for these
types of suits, I would know since I worked for company where
a woman in the department I worked in sued and it cost the
company about $4million total and became a landmark case that
guided employment practices throughout the US for decades
afterwards).
So is "go f*** yourself",
although it may be anatomically impossible.
Actually, the boss CAN say that legally, though it may
not be wise, and the same is true for the employee.
Funny thing, when I was going through management
training at this company, one of the classes was
how to warn and fire people, and they put on this little
psychodrama for the class where the instructors
acted out the parts of the firing manager and the
fired employee, and towards the end the employee
would scream something basically like the above
and stomp off hysterically.
I also suspect that
refusing job assignments like "crash dummy" or "experimental drug
test subject", or "gardner who mows the mine field" (unless that's
the job you signed up for) would get you compensation for the boss
"creating a hostile workplace" or "sexual harassment" if you refused,
were fired and sued the company.
Actually, those would all be violations of OSHA (Occupational
Safety and Health) regulations and could result in criminal
prosecution of the company...
This assumes, of course, that the boss is stupid enough to admit
why you were fired, rather than giving a vague reason like "lack
of work" or no reason at all.
If the harrassment or hostile work environment can be proven
to a sufficient standard, it generally doesn't matter what the
employer says in their termination paperwork...also good to see
someone admit that it would be "stupid" not to lie, since lies
like that ARE commonplace...
I also suspect that if you are asked by the boss to do things like
falsify company records, even if in a way that isn't illegal, but
violates company policy, you'd be better off refusing if you can
get people above your boss to believe you.
Nah, I've been asked to illegally falsify company records,
completely illegally, several times, and those orders came
from right on top (or at least so I believe, I know they came
from the "director" level for a fact, and I'm sure the VPs
were well aware of it). Generally, this was unlawful or
illegal time card fraud.
One time, a large project I was working on for a government
client ran out of money far short of completing the deliverable, but
they still had plenty of money for management planning activities
for a future project for the same client. So they just told
everybody
on the project to start charging to this management account, and
specifically instructed everybody that if a government auditor
asked what they were working on and who they were, to say nothing
but refer them to the project management, where presumably
the project director would lie her ugly ass off about it.
Funny thing was, I actually supervised about 20 people on
the project at the time, but I was in no way a manager by
title or pay or even a senior-level person, just somebody
they knew could get my portion of the project on track
after they had completely blown it by absurd mismanagement
previously (as soon as they were caught up to even by fraud,
they "demoted" me back to an individual contributor, and
I quit soon thereafter because I was devestated by the 0%
pay cut and people no longer screaming the "f-word" at me
when I gave them verbal/written warnings to increase their
productivity).
But that was nothing compared to this other company
where their only apparent business plan was to rip off
their customers and employees and government by any
means possible. They did a lot of work for clients
that was on a cost-plus basis, and I was ALWAYS ordered
to falsify my time card (long after I had completed
work for the client and had moved on to another project
I would continue to charge to the project while the
project "manager" would lie to the client for months
that they were still working out "quality issues" in
the project, until the client finally snapped and
stopped paying).
But they also ripped off their employees and
the government...they had this system set up in
personnel where when somebody they hired to work
on a project for client had completed the project,
and there was no immediate future project, they
would tell the employee they were firing them
for cause of incompetency, BUT, if they quit
voluntarily, they would place them in their
records as "re-hireable" (I'm not even sure how
this relates to falsifying company records since
it was such a flagrant bunch of double-dealing BS,
but the employee manual clearly stated that the
number one specific thing you could be fired for
was, you guess it, FALSIFYING COMPANY RECORDS).
Of course, most people took the "deal", but a
few didn't, they were "fired" for "cause", went
down to the unemployment office, and guess what?
THE COMPANY CLAIMED THEY DIDN'T FIRE THE EMPLOYEE
AT ALL, THE EMPLOYEE HAD VOLUNTARILY QUIT, as
a clear (and FELONIOUS!!!) falsification of
government records to avoid paying a higher
unemployment tax!!! To the best of my knowledge,
they were NEVER prosecuted for this, which is
why they did this year after year after year to
literally THOUSANDS of employees...
Now, lest you think this was some fly-by-night
organization, this company is something like the
number three company by market capitalization
currently in the NASDAQ, right behind other
tech heavyweights like Apple and Microsoft
(or at least they're in the top ten, I haven't
checked recently).
Sooooo...dunno why we have such differing
work experiences, but there it is...
