If you’re a decent, honest, and hard-working employee, then you’re bound to be annoyed by any boss who throws fairness out the window. Say, like if they hire, promote, and reward their family and friends instead of the folks who truly deserve it. This leads to lower morale and worse productivity, not to mention how deeply unethical it is.
In an enlightening thread on the ‘Work’ subreddit, people shared the worst cases of workplace nepotism and favoritism that they’d ever seen. Keep scrolling to check out their stories, and be sure to share these with your work BFFs.
#1
There’s this guy who was leader of a major country and he appointed family members to positions without having proper security clearances. Then a few years later he was even re-elected.
41points
#2
I was a teacher at a school when I truly learned about nepotism. My boss had many of her relatives in key positions. At one point, I needed a new teacher in my department so I just looked at her and asked “ don’t you have any more relatives that need a job”.
23points
#3
In 1998, I got a contract job from a director of operations at a airplane-related facility who asked me to install a server and client software on all the workstations because the son of the owner was "head of IT" and did nothing but play video games all day. The DO was pretty desperate, and paying me out of his own pocket. He didn't go into much detail, except that the head of IT was less than useless, and this needed done and the son wasn't doing it because he was less than useless. So I did it, it worked, yay! Easiest ten hours of work I ever did.
Two weeks later, the DO calls me again. Apparently, the son had "tried to make improvements," messed it up, then wiped the server to cover up his tracks saying it was a hard drive error or something. So I got paid AGAIN to do the same job all over again. Even easier because I didn't have to wait for the install to work on the workstations.
Two weeks later, the DO calls me again. Apparently, the son had "tried to make improvements," messed it up, then wiped the server to cover up his tracks saying it was a hard drive error or something. So I got paid AGAIN to do the same job all over again. Even easier because I didn't have to wait for the install to work on the workstations.
17points
It’s not just that blatant nepotism is bound to breed resentment and frustration among your staff, but you’re also likely to damage your business as a result. For one, you’re not rewarding actually talented and skilled employees who bring you profit. On top of that, the family and friends you hire might not have the right skillset for the job.
Nepotism leads to an unhealthy work environment, low morale, higher employee turnover rates, decreased productivity, and a lack of overall respect for workplace leadership.
For instance, ‘Indeed’ notes that some obvious signs of employers playing favorites with their relatives include behaviors like:
- Ignoring their chronic lateness
- Giving them less work to do than everyone else
- Ignoring their poor performance at work
- Promoting them ahead of employees who deserve to advance
#4
My boss hired his almost 30 year old son to learn plumbing when the guy had never even turned a wrench in his life. 2 weeks later he fired him after he door dashed food to a job site and sat at a customer’s table eating it instead of working lol.
12points
#5
My boss once hired his cousin as a “consultant” who did nothing but sit in meetings and nod. Got promoted in 2 months. Nepotism at its finest.
12points
#6
My dad hired me and to avoid any appearance of nepotism treated me worse than anyone else hired, then negotiated to not have to pay my pto owed.
12points
Some major red flags that your boss might be treating their family or friends preferentially include things like that particular employee being under-qualified, behaving unprofessionally, and not being punished.
Workers who are under the protection of nepotistic bosses also tend to receive better assignments and earn more cash.
There’s no easy way to fix these situations. You need frameworks, guidelines, and systems in place on a company-wide level to ensure that everyone behaves ethically. As part of that, you need to have options for workers to report nepotism and favoritism without the threat of losing their jobs.
#7
My mother and I worked for the same company, just in different departments. She worked aged care, I worked in disabilities.
After years of consistent mistreatment and lack of help, I tried to move out of the disability sector and get into aged care. Not necessarily in the programs that my mother ran, just anywhere really. They wouldn't let me, said it wouldn't be fair to other staff.
So I stayed in a horrible job (that left me burnt out and with a permanent back injury yay) because at the time it was my only option. Cue to one day when all my easy shifts are cut and replaced with longer, harder ones, to make way for a new support worker. I fought this through my managers and HR but was ultimately told to suck it up and that it was all done legally. I'm not a petty person, I got along with the new support worker and we became friends pretty quickly. I didn't find out straight away, but she was my bosses daughter.
Years later I go for an admin role to get out of my painful job. I had been doing this role for 8 months as an acting scheduler. I was told that I was not suitable for the position due to my lack of experience. They hired someone externally, one of the big managers son, he had no experience, having previously being only unemployed, he lasted a week.
Cue to my ending at this company. I had finally worked my way to a managerial position, running groups for PWD in a centre. My mother ran this centre and had done so for years, but being in different sectors, she wasn't my boss and had nothing to do with me or my groups. The company decided this was 'nepotism', despite me being in the company for 12 years. So they removed my mother from this centre and put my boss in. Who proceeded to royally mess everything up.
She diverted funds from my groups to her failing ones, making it look as if we were in a huge deficit. She had no idea how to do her job, was always sick, working from home or in a 'meeting'. Committed numerous fireable offences but wasnt even warned. Ended up totally destroying not only my groups which had been running for 30+ years, but the centre as a whole and a huge portion of the aged care sector. She didn't even know the names of my staff or clients, but gave off this very wholesome, caring persona. Even after being violently assaulted by my ex partner, told me to continue coming to work as I didn't want to let him effect my income (turns out we actually had DV leave which she chose not to tell me).
So I was fired, made redundant, told that I hadn't been running the program efficiently and that it was all coming to an end. She went on holiday during my last months, didn't even see me once before I left, although I was supposedly like a daughter to her.
They fired my mother too, while she was taking care of my dying stepdad, she had been there 21 years. Apparently she was less experienced than my boss who'd been there 3 years. Gave her a week before she had to leave, put on numerous farewell parties for the other staff they fired (not me though lol) and gave her nothing, then lied to the CEO saying they had put on a huge bash and given speeches. Then when my stepdad died, they told one of my mums friends they'd be sending a representative from the company. It was going to be my ex boss, the woman who got me fired and schemed with the upper managers to get my mother's position. When we declined her offer and told her she was not welcome, she cried to mutual acquaintances that she was being ghosted and didn't know what she'd done wrong.
After years of consistent mistreatment and lack of help, I tried to move out of the disability sector and get into aged care. Not necessarily in the programs that my mother ran, just anywhere really. They wouldn't let me, said it wouldn't be fair to other staff.
So I stayed in a horrible job (that left me burnt out and with a permanent back injury yay) because at the time it was my only option. Cue to one day when all my easy shifts are cut and replaced with longer, harder ones, to make way for a new support worker. I fought this through my managers and HR but was ultimately told to suck it up and that it was all done legally. I'm not a petty person, I got along with the new support worker and we became friends pretty quickly. I didn't find out straight away, but she was my bosses daughter.
Years later I go for an admin role to get out of my painful job. I had been doing this role for 8 months as an acting scheduler. I was told that I was not suitable for the position due to my lack of experience. They hired someone externally, one of the big managers son, he had no experience, having previously being only unemployed, he lasted a week.
Cue to my ending at this company. I had finally worked my way to a managerial position, running groups for PWD in a centre. My mother ran this centre and had done so for years, but being in different sectors, she wasn't my boss and had nothing to do with me or my groups. The company decided this was 'nepotism', despite me being in the company for 12 years. So they removed my mother from this centre and put my boss in. Who proceeded to royally mess everything up.
She diverted funds from my groups to her failing ones, making it look as if we were in a huge deficit. She had no idea how to do her job, was always sick, working from home or in a 'meeting'. Committed numerous fireable offences but wasnt even warned. Ended up totally destroying not only my groups which had been running for 30+ years, but the centre as a whole and a huge portion of the aged care sector. She didn't even know the names of my staff or clients, but gave off this very wholesome, caring persona. Even after being violently assaulted by my ex partner, told me to continue coming to work as I didn't want to let him effect my income (turns out we actually had DV leave which she chose not to tell me).
So I was fired, made redundant, told that I hadn't been running the program efficiently and that it was all coming to an end. She went on holiday during my last months, didn't even see me once before I left, although I was supposedly like a daughter to her.
They fired my mother too, while she was taking care of my dying stepdad, she had been there 21 years. Apparently she was less experienced than my boss who'd been there 3 years. Gave her a week before she had to leave, put on numerous farewell parties for the other staff they fired (not me though lol) and gave her nothing, then lied to the CEO saying they had put on a huge bash and given speeches. Then when my stepdad died, they told one of my mums friends they'd be sending a representative from the company. It was going to be my ex boss, the woman who got me fired and schemed with the upper managers to get my mother's position. When we declined her offer and told her she was not welcome, she cried to mutual acquaintances that she was being ghosted and didn't know what she'd done wrong.
11points
#8
I worked in a family owned restaurant. The owner made her creep son a manager, despite the fact that he had no experience and was universally loathed by the staff. I caught him taking an up skirt pic of me while I was on a ladder setting up a display. I reported it to the owner, who denied it. The place was full of cameras, so I told her to check the video. She refused. .
11points
#9
At my last job only my boss’s family had the option to WFH, everyone else had to be in the office full time.
10points
Meanwhile, you also need transparent hiring practices and clear rules when it comes to hiring family members.
“Rather than banning the hiring of family members, establish guidelines for these circumstances. For instance, it may be fine for two relatives to work within the same company as long as one doesn’t directly report to the other,” ‘Indeed’ suggests.
#10
My job was eliminated and I was let go so the HR manager’s favorite pet (her assistant) could have my housing.
9points
#11
Our VP hired her godson to work for one of her managers. Really incompetent in his role. And there was no clear connection- the VP had only been in our state for like 1-2 years and the godson never worked or lived out of state. The godson spilled the beans when he had a little too much to drink at a company event. Someone searched FB and found photos of them hanging out.
9points
#12
My boss brought in his wife after our HR quit. Talk about nepotism. She is still involved with the company and it has been f’ing hell since she arrived.
8points
Be honest, Pandas, what are some of the worst, most blatant cases of nepotism that you’ve personally witnessed in the workplace? What happened?
Have you ever called out workplace toxicity before? What was the fallout like? Share your nightmare work stories in the comments.
#13
I have quite a few-
My co worker and boss would take smoke breaks together which turned into vacations together. Guess who the promotion went to? Not the ones who were covering for their vacations .
A director promoted his side piece up the ranks and then left his wife for her, claiming he wanted someone with similar career aspects
An admin was “obsessed” with one of the guys and he would act embarrassed that she would order him the fanciest equipment and bring him snacks all the time. One day he told everyone that he thought he saw her followed him home. She got laid off and the guy was treated as a hero for putting up with her. Years later it came out they had been dating but he convinced her to keep their relationship under wraps. He wanted to break up with her so he made her look crazy to the execs to get a clean break.
My co worker and boss would take smoke breaks together which turned into vacations together. Guess who the promotion went to? Not the ones who were covering for their vacations .
A director promoted his side piece up the ranks and then left his wife for her, claiming he wanted someone with similar career aspects
An admin was “obsessed” with one of the guys and he would act embarrassed that she would order him the fanciest equipment and bring him snacks all the time. One day he told everyone that he thought he saw her followed him home. She got laid off and the guy was treated as a hero for putting up with her. Years later it came out they had been dating but he convinced her to keep their relationship under wraps. He wanted to break up with her so he made her look crazy to the execs to get a clean break.
8points
#14
Absentee owner hired a manager who hired her family to "work" there. They did nothing, while the rest of us struggled to get the most basic things done. Business went under. .
7points
#15
A branch manager that the CEO really liked manoeuvred to have her mom hired as a deposit operations specialist. Over the next three years, they managed to scheme their way into getting all of the region's office supplies (toilet paper, cleaning products, paper towels, etc) delivered to the daughter's specific branch, which was small, out of the way, and not our headquarters.
Obviously, they were taking a significant portion of the supplies home, despite the fact that they were both extremely well off, with the mother living in an over a million dollar valued house in a moderate cost of living area. The daughter would buy really nice Brawny paper towels for "her branch", but they ran out constantly and everyone else got the cheap stuff. Eventually someone, somewhere caught on and the supplies were delivered to each branch instead of the one, but they never got in trouble or anything. I think it would have been too embarrassing for the CEO to admit what had been happening.
The branch manager was eventually fired for some bs reason. I have no doubt her and her mom's little stunt contributed, as she was fired pretty quickly after the supplies stopped going only to her.
Obviously, they were taking a significant portion of the supplies home, despite the fact that they were both extremely well off, with the mother living in an over a million dollar valued house in a moderate cost of living area. The daughter would buy really nice Brawny paper towels for "her branch", but they ran out constantly and everyone else got the cheap stuff. Eventually someone, somewhere caught on and the supplies were delivered to each branch instead of the one, but they never got in trouble or anything. I think it would have been too embarrassing for the CEO to admit what had been happening.
The branch manager was eventually fired for some bs reason. I have no doubt her and her mom's little stunt contributed, as she was fired pretty quickly after the supplies stopped going only to her.
7points
#16
Not a small mom and pop but an outpost of a very large foreign company. Big bosses brother in law. Fired at least twice for gross incompetence and chiseling. Kept hiring him back. Got the dude promoted to management with a HS diploma. Could barely spell an email.
7points
#17
We hired a woman as a product owner of a product that her husband was a developer of. She was easily the worst PO I'd ever seen. Would start and end a sprint review in 2 minutes flat to avoid questions, and if it went any length of time, she completely ignored any questions like she didn't hear them.
7points
#18
Worked in a luxury retirement home as the only pastry chef for 300 residents. The girl who was in charge of the waitresses did nothing but her makeup, wore no shoes in a professional establishment/nursing home. Hired nearly all her family members for nearly every position. She was not my boss. But would pull desserts saying they were unsuitable ( my boss tested and signed off on them earlier) take whole pies and cakes home then said we had none for service. It was a fight I did not want to continue due to mental health. No one deserves to be tormented at work.
7points
#19
Got fired without cause... boss put his son in my job the next week.
6points
#20
The current UNC Football coach hired his two sons to work with him on the team, despite strict university no nepotism rules. Wonder how that happened?
6points