As an employment lawyer who has counseled people for more than twenty years, I have seen just about every wrong response to a horrible boss. By wrong I mean the response is either ineffective or will make the situation even worse.

Here are the five wrong responses to a horrible boss I have seen most often.

Quitting or seeking a severance package

Quitting or seeking a severance package is what people do who cannot solve the problem of the horrible boss.

People who do not solve problems do not get promoted. Quitting may be the first option for non-Christians. It should the last resort for Christians called to exercise the delegated authority of King Jesus in positions of authority.

If you work long enough you will run into a horrible boss. They are everywhere. If you cannot successfully respond to a horrible boss you will eventually hit a dead end at any job if you stay long enough.  

If, like so many people, you choose to leave, that means starting over. It means starting over somewhere else where people do not know you and others have more tenure. It often means taking a step down from the amount of responsibility and authority that had been entrusted to you at your previous job.

As a result, people who cannot or will not solve the problem of the horrible boss have careers that look like a graph of the Dow Jones. Perhaps over the long haul it is higher, but the ascent is interrupted and delayed by multiple downward turns.

However, the shortest way between two points is a straight line and that line often runs through a horrible boss.

Losing your cool

Jesus took this option off the table 2,000 years ago.

Nothing good comes from it, and it is likely to get you terminated, which is even harder to explain to a future employer than a bad resignation.

Losing your cool also makes it easy for employment lawyers like me who represent companies. If you go off on your boss, you have given the company a legitimate reason for termination. That means your case likely gets dismissed before it ever gets to a jury.

Reporting to human resources 

Here is the deep dark secret about human resources: They can’t really help.

They have no power. In nearly every company I have sued or represented in employment cases, human resources has little or no power to do anything absent the permission of higher level managers.

Also, human resources represent the company; they do not represent you. So, if you do complain and they investigate, they will never tell you they found your boss discriminated against you. If they say that, you could take that to an attorney, and it can be used as an admission of liability in a discrimination case.

Moreover, your boss will almost always know you were the one who complained, and you will have a target on your back. This is life in a fallen world. It is not right, and it is not fair, but it is reality.

Stop trying

To stop trying is a middle ground response between quitting and losing one’s cool, but it’s equally ineffective.

This attitude prompts statements like,“I’m being set up to fail.” While it’s natural to want to stop trying, fatalism should not be part of the Christian’s worldview. 

When one stops trying in response to a horrible boss, one’s fears become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you stop trying you are probably going to be terminated, and rightly so. No one will care why you stopped trying. When you miss your sales quota, the company won’t give you a pass because your boss was rude to you.

Not trying is not an option.

Taking legal action  

I’ve made a good living suing companies that discriminate against employees, but for Christians, taking legal action should be a last resort.

This is not because of the Apostle Paul’s admonition about Christians suing Christians. It’s primarily for two reasons.

First, filing lawsuit rarely leads to a financial recovery that fully compensates the individual for his or her losses. Second, it will almost surely result in the loss of your job. Consequently, the trade-off becomes the giving up of potential Kingdom territory in exchange for inadequate financial compensation for losing your job.

There are times when legal action makes sense for a Christian, but those times are less frequent than they are for non-Christians. King Jesus is more interested in the expansion of the kingdom of God on earth than He is in settlements.

A rule of thumb

If one were to look for a single principle that encompasses all of the foregoing poor responses to the horrible boss it is this: Whatever your natural urge, it’s probably wrong.

And since “natural” means “coming from your nature” which has been corrupted by the virus-like effect of sin, we shouldn’t be surprised.

Keep in mind, these are general principles. There are times you should leave. Sexual harassment or abuse is one example; an unethical company or one that is operating in violation of the law is another. Sometimes it becomes clear there is no path to promotion because the company is small and family owned, for example.

But by-and-large, the rule of thumb is good, and the options above are to be avoided.

Next: How to deal with a horrible boss. GS