Ethics: My Boss Told Me to Skip My Best Friend’s Wedding. Now He Wants Help Getting a Job

A reader asks: My former boss once required our entire team to work through the weekend, completing a quarterly financial report. The report wasn’t really urgent. My best friend was getting married that weekend and I was a groomsman in his wedding.

When I explained the situation, my boss said, “You have a choice between the wedding and your job.”

I said, “It’s an easy choice. I’m in the wedding.” This is how he came to be my ex-boss.

Since then, I’ve started my own business as a career coach helping people get hired, and it’s going well. Meantime, my former boss lost his job. Recently, he reached out to me to ask for my help landing a new job.

I was astonished by the request. My first instinct is to refuse, of course. But my family is friends with his family. I don’t want them to suffer due to his bad behavior. What should I do?

Minda Zetlin responds:

Obviously, you have no obligation to help your ex-boss. His behavior toward you was unethical in the extreme. You’re cleared of any responsibility you might have had to help him as a friend or colleague.

In a roundabout way, he may have done you a favor. You’ve built a successful business and it sounds like you’re happier than you would have been if you had stayed at your old job. But things could have gone a different way. You could have spent a long time searching for a job and suffered financial consequences from his actions. 

I appreciate that you’re concerned for his family. That shows you’re a good person. And perhaps you might help them with a donation or a loan if needed. But you’re under no obligation to help your ex-boss find a job because of them. One could also argue that, given what you know about your ex-boss, you shouldn’t help him. You could be subjecting his future reports to the kind of mistreatment you suffered at his hands.

Do what feels right.

Having said all that, I think you can be guided by your own feelings. Would helping him make you feel good because you helped his family? Often our own kind acts benefit ourselves as much as anyone else. If helping him would make you feel better than not helping him, that’s a good reason to do it.

It also presents you with an opportunity. You could discuss your past history with him before offering any assistance. That might make you feel better and it could potentially benefit him. Let him know that his past arrogance and intransigence almost cost him your aid. That just might get him thinking about the risks that he runs by treating employees as if their lives outside work don’t matter. Tell him that if you do help him, you expect him to be a more thoughtful manager than he was with you. 

One reason there are so many bad bosses in the world is that very few receive the training they need to become good leaders. With that in mind, you could insist that he sign up for some  management training as a condition of helping him. That could benefit him, his family, and his future employees all at the same time.

Update:

The reader reports that he did help his former boss, and the boss did find a new job. But before he agreed to help, the reader told his ex-boss  just how badly he failed as a leader. “I lit into him,” he says. 

I’m hoping it taught the boss an important lesson. Most industries are like small neighborhoods. The person you mistreat today may be in a position to help or harm you tomorrow. That’s something you should consider before trying to force someone to skip an important personal event.

Got an ethical dilemma of your own? Send it to Minda at minda@mindazetlin.com. She may address it in a future column.