"You might as well put your two weeks in."

That's what a manager at Anthony Roofing Tecta America allegedly told an employee who complained about harassment. The company is now paying $700,000 to settle an EEOC suit alleging that a vice president used racial slurs and sexual comments, and that employees who reported it to management and HR got nowhere.

The EEOC's Deputy General Counsel said the legal risk is "particularly acute" when an officer is the harasser. So when a complaint names one, here's what a company should do.

1. Take the complaint seriously. Listen, write down exactly what the employee says, and never suggest the employee reconsider or wait.

2. Wall off the officer. Remove the accused from decisions affecting the complainant, and tell the officer in plain terms that retaliation is off limits.

3. Bring in someone independent. Nobody who reports to the accused should investigate. Use outside counsel or an outside investigator, and loop in the board to the fact that the investigation is happening.

4. Preserve the evidence. Issue a litigation hold covering email, texts, and chat messages. Tell the officer not to delete anything.

5. Protect the complainant without punishing them. Don't move or reassign the employee who complained. Offer options and let the employee choose. Even a minor change could be a sufficient adverse action to support a retaliation claim.

6. Investigate promptly and widely. Interview the complainant, the accused, and every witness, and ask whether anyone else has seen similar conduct. Harassers rarely stop at one person.

7. Remind everyone about retaliation. Witnesses are watching how this plays out. Make clear that participating in the investigation is protected.

8. Act on what you find. Discipline the officer the way you’d discipline a line employee for the same conduct.

9. Close the loop. Tell the complainant you finished and took corrective action, without sharing confidential details. Check back at 30 and 90 days.

10. Fix what let it happen. Ask why no one stopped this sooner, and review who hears complaints about leadership.

The officer's title doesn't change the rules. It only raises the price of ignoring them, and it's not worth the risk.

     

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An office manager finds a sex contract in a folder on her desk. The COO asks if she got it. She refuses to discuss it. He fires her.

That's what the EEOC says happened at Gator Strong Services. The company just agreed to pay $25,000 to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit.

Twenty-five thousand dollars. Let that sink in.

According to the EEOC, the company's former COO subjected his office manager to a campaign of sexual harassment. He repeatedly made sexual comments to her. He humiliated her in front of coworkers. He hugged her without her consent. He shared intimate details of his sex life with a woman whose job was to run his office, not listen to his sexual exploits.

And then came the folder.

The COO left a sex contract on her desk. When he asked whether she'd received it, she refused to discuss it. According to the EEOC, that refusal cost her her job.

Think about what this woman allegedly endured. Showing up every day to a boss who treated her as his audience, his punching bag, and his prop. Being humiliated in front of colleagues. Being touched without consent. Having to navigate unwanted sexual advances from someone who controlled her livelihood.

And when she finally drew a line, she lost her paycheck.

Now look at the settlement. $25,000. For alleged harassment that escalated into an unwanted sexual proposition and ended with the employee's termination.

The settlement isn't just monetary. Gator Strong also agreed to a two-year consent decree requiring revised anti-harassment policies, training for managers and executives, and periodic reporting to the EEOC. In other words, the company agreed to implement basic protections that should have existed long before someone thought leaving a sex contract on an employee's desk was acceptable workplace behavior.

To be clear, these are allegations, not judicial findings. Still, there's a lesson here for every employer. Your anti-harassment policy is only as effective as your willingness to enforce it against the people with the most power. An employee needs a safe way to report misconduct that bypasses the alleged harasser, particularly when that person sits in the executive suite. And no executive's title should provide immunity from accountability.

For that reason, this employer has earned its nomination as the Worst Employer of 2026.

     

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Grace is earned, not owed.

On election night, Ohio's governor-elect reportedly let a phone call from her opponent go to voicemail. Vivek Ramaswamy said in his concession speech that his team "left her a message to congratulate her on her victory." Amy Acton didn't pick up.

Some people will call that petty. Concession calls are a ritual. The loser calls, the winner answers, and everyone performs a little grace for the cameras and the country.

That misses the point.

Two weeks before the election, the Ramaswamy campaign spent millions to air an ad featuring Acton's estranged mother, who called her daughter a liar and suggested she needed help. Acton has spoken openly about being removed from her mother's home at age 12, after her stepfather was charged with raping her. The ad drew condemnation from Republicans and Democrats alike, including Governor DeWine, who called on the campaign to pull it. The campaign defended it and continued to run it.

That wasn't a policy disagreement or even a hard-hitting contrast ad. It was a deliberate decision to weaponize the most painful chapter of someone's childhood.

So did Governor-Elect Acton owe Ramaswamy a conversation on election night? And what do we owe anyone who has intentionally mistreated us?

We teach people, especially professionals, to be the bigger person. Don't burn bridges. Take the call. Smile at the handshake. That is good advice for ordinary friction, like a sharp-elbowed negotiation, a bruising cross-examination, or a rival who plays hard but plays fair.

It's not good advice, however, for someone who looked at your worst moments and decided to use them against you. Grace is a gift. It is not a debt that accrues to whoever happens to be on the other side of the table. Someone who intentionally mistreats you does not get to cash in on your civility the moment it becomes convenient for them.

I see this in workplaces all the time. The manager who undermined an employee for months and then expects a warm exit interview. The executive who ran a smear campaign and then wants a "clean break" and a glowing reference. The business partner who went scorched-earth and now wants to "move forward." They want the benefits of decency without having practiced any.

You can be professional without being warm. You can be polite without being available. You can decline the call and still behave lawfully, avoid retaliation, and keep your own conduct beyond reproach. Boundaries and bitterness are not the same thing.

Respect is something people earn by how they treat others. When someone spends weeks and millions of dollars showing you who they are, you are allowed to believe them.

Leaders should remember that before they approve the next ad, the next email, or the next performance review. Your conduct is also your reputation. And sometimes the consequence of your conduct is a voicemail.

Here's what I read this week that you should read, too. 

Project 2025's Impact on Employment Policy and Practice is Controversial but Undeniable — HR Daily Advisor

Employees Had to Arrive Early. The Manager Had the Keys. Who Pays for the Wait? — The Employer Handbook

What Sycophantic AI Can Cost Your Organization — Harvard Business Review

Till Dissolution Do Us Part: Inside Weil's Biglaw Breakup — Above the Law

EEOC signals rollback of Pregnant Workers Fairness Act regulations — HR Dive

Horseshoe Casino Baltimore to pay $150,000 to settle bias suit — The Baltimore Sun

Lockheed Will Pay $29.5 Million Over Claims It Discriminated Against White Employees — 24/7 Wall St.

Democrats seize Congress in sweeping midterm repudiation of Trump — Virginia Lawyers Weekly

'Are You With Us, the Workers, Or Are You With the Big Tech Billionaires?' — Politico

Self-checkout was supposed to cut costs. Instead, it created a problem retailers didn't anticipate — Fast Company

Columbus is losing breweries amid rising costs, lower demand — NBC4 Columbus 

     

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"Quite simply, full means full and any means any."

That's a federal judge explaining to a plaintiff the meaning of a general release.

Jackilyn Bunnell sued William Beaumont Hospital for pregnancy discrimination and FMLA interference. She lost on summary judgment, won a partial reversal at the Sixth Circuit, and on remand sat down for a settlement conference with Judge Brandy McMillion. After hours of negotiation, the parties reached a deal that included a full release of all claims.

Then the deal started to move.

First she wanted a structured settlement. The court reminded her that was never a term. Next she wanted the release narrowed to employment claims, so she could carve out possible medical malpractice claims involving her minor child. Then came still more asks: 21 additional names in the non-disparagement clause, a different job title in her separation letter, and a third-party number for employment verification.

The court said no to all of it. She had to sign the settlement agreement by a date certain or risk contempt. Her lawyers, who said they couldn't ethically pursue her position, were allowed to withdraw, with their fees protected.

The timing here is what matters. The malpractice and other concerns never came up during negotiations. They surfaced only after the structured settlement idea died. That wasn't negotiated either.

For employers, the lesson is that the scope of the release is a material term. Settle it in the room. Put "full release of all claims" in the term sheet and get signatures before anyone leaves the conference. You won't always have a judge who sat through the whole negotiation and remembers every word. "He said/she said" motions to enforce settlements are messy, expensive, and uncertain.

If you're paying for a general release, make sure you get one, and make sure the other side understands it before they sign. A general release is just that: general.

     

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Notch 8 Brewery's owner told a bartender he would not tolerate her "backdoor" conversations with coworkers. The NLRB just said those words are direct evidence of animus.

Rebecca Spitzer had been a beertender at the brewery for about seven weeks. She heard coworkers complaining about long hours and missed breaks, and told them they might be owed overtime and could contact the NLRB or the Department of Labor. Then she contacted the Department of Labor herself.

Two days later, the owner called her into his office, angrily said someone he trusted had told him what she was doing, and sent her home. That same day, the brewery posted on Facebook that it was hiring beertenders.

In defending against the unfair labor practice charge, the brewery claimed that she drank on the job, served beer from competing breweries, committed petty theft, and lacked an alcohol certificate. It also said she abandoned her job. The ALJ found the misconduct unproven and concluded that the brewery had unlawfully fired Spitzer because of her protected concerted activity.

The NLRB just affirmed that decision. Sending her home, posting her job, and cutting off her scheduling access would lead a prudent person to believe she'd been fired. The Board also rebuked the brewery's claims of misconduct. It never investigated them during Spitzer's employment and raised them for the first time only after the charge was filed. That's classic pretext, said the Board.

I have three key lessons for employers to take away from this case.

1. When an employee says pay or breaks look wrong, or you have a safety or some other workplace issue, you have a compliance question to answer. Fix the problem if there is one. Explain it if there isn't. Firing the messenger turns the question into a federal labor charge or a lawsuit.

2. Nothing here required a union. Employees talking about overtime and breaks is protected concerted activity, and one employee's call to a state agency can be a logical outgrowth of that.

3. If a union is sniffing around your workers, retaliation is the best organizing pitch you can hand it. The organizer's whole argument is that speaking up gets you punished unless someone has your back. Fire the person who raised a concern and you've proven the point. At Notch 8, coworkers followed the whole thing in group texts, and one wrote that firing a whistleblower "sounds kinda illegal." Your workforce reads the same signals.

Employee complaints are free advice. Acting on them costs little, and punishing them costs far more. You don't want the most expensive thing on your menu to be retaliation.

     

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