Main Street

First two Bad Boss Contest semi-finalists announced

The people have spoken, and Working America’s Bad Boss contest has its first two semi-finalists. But the contest is far from over. The votes have been cleared from the first round and voting is underway for the second round; two more semi-finalists will be chosen July 13 based on your votes. (So go vote.)

Here are your semi-finalists, who will go forward to the final round of voting on July 20th.

“Bad Barista” was in an ambulance on the way to the hospital with a life or death heart condition when:

my boss called me several times, threatening to fire me because I was unable to do my job. She continued to keep calling me, specifically harassing me about how my health problems were causing scheduling problems for the business, until my mother picked up my phone in the ER and told her to leave me alone. (She didn’t).

Bad Barista and all her coworkers lost their health insurance just weeks later.

“Big Kitty” in Ohio was supposed to fire a problem employee. Only it turned out that:

he and his wife had recently watched from the bleachers as their teenage son died before their eyes while playing in a high school game. Their boy had suffered a heart attack from an undetected heart condition, and the employee had recently discovered that he also had the same hereditary heart condition.

No matter. Big Kitty was still given a bad performance review for not firing the grieving father.

You can help make the call about who our next two semi-finalists will be. Vote for your favorite stories today. Or, if you think you’ve had a boss who had what it takes to make you a winner, there’s still plenty of time to enter your story. Remember, the Grand Prize winner will get a seven-night vacation escape from their bad bosses, courtesy of Union Plus.