E4: Workplace Violence

In this episode, host Thom Jennings and resident expert Kathleen Jennings discuss the scenarios that lead to workplace violence and how to mitigate them. Kathleen discusses a case she handled where there was an episode of domestic violence in the workplace and then her brother has one of his classic tales from one of his many previous employers.

Kathleen gives her little brother some sisterly advice that everyone could use, and practical advice for business owners and HR managers when it comes to dealing with potential workplace violence.

Podcast Episode Transcript

Narrator (00:03):
You are listening to Cover Your Assets, a podcast that discusses the timely and significant legal issues faced by employers. Kathleen Jennings is an attorney who has over 30 years of experience in advising employers as to their legal responsibilities and has written extensively about employment law in our popular cover, your Assets blog. If your business has employees you cannot afford not to have your assets covered.

Thom Jennings (00:33):
And welcome to the Cover Your Assets podcast, the Employment Law podcast. And this is already episode four. We did take a week off because I was actually in the same zip code as our resident expert. That's gonna be your new title right now. Resident expert, Kathleen Jennings. I'm not even gonna call you my sister anymore, I'm just going to call you the resident expert. What do you think of that? Wow.

Kathleen Jennings (00:58):
I like that, Thom. I think that's very flattering and I have to say I very much enjoyed having you in the same zip code.

Thom Jennings (01:06):
So, but we're back into our, our perspective zip codes. I'm in New York and Kathleen is in Georgia, and today's topic is, well, I guess it's always a timely one, unfortunately, and it's workplace violence. And over the last couple of years during the pandemic, we've seen a lot of workplaces shift to remote, but there's still plenty of jobs where you have to show up. And I, I think that it's safe to say that there was a time where really the stereotypical work violence situation was at like a post office. I mean, I know the term, it's almost a pejorative, you really don't hear it used anymore going postal, which I think on some level is a little bit disrespectful. But there was a period of time where there was a lot of shootings and workplace violence in the, the postal service for whatever reason. I think we think we could do a whole show on that. But anyhow it seems like that...

Kathleen Jennings (02:03):
Oor not,

Thom Jennings (02:04):
Or not <laugh>, it's like that is a horrible idea, but where it, it seems like it has shifted to a place that it kind of makes sense and that's in the healthcare industry. And I know that you work with some hospitals and, and healthcare facilities and they're obviously under a lot of pressure in terms of the pandemic. In your experience so far, have you seen any kind of an uptick as far as in the healthcare sector with regard to workplace violence?

Kathleen Jennings (02:31):
I think what I've seen, Thom, is that there are people who have gotten angry at healthcare workers and at healthcare institutions because covid restrictions has made it harder in some cases to be with relatives that are not, that are sick, particularly sick with covid. People get very angry about that and they take it out on the healthcare workers, which is unfortunate because those folks are just trying to help people get better. They have enough stress already, they've been working a lot of hours and they're just, unfortunately, they're the target there for people that are frustrated and upset with Covid and with Covid restrictions.

Thom Jennings (03:14):
Yeah, and you know, we, we, I mentioned the, the postal stereotype at the beginning of the podcast, but and that that would be sort of a worker on worker crime, but I'm just pulling up some statistics and some information with regard to workplace violence and it really falls into four categories. You've got the criminal intent, which would be like what you discussed if somebody comes in and, well, criminal intent I assume would be like a robbery situation, a customer client, which is a healthcare scenario that you're talking about. And I think we've heard of situations on airplanes where people have gotten upset about Sure. Restrictions or maybe their flight is delayed, things like that. Then of course worker on worker and then another one that cop pops up every now and then, which is a personal relationship. So it, it's interesting that seems like there's a lot of tentacles and we've, we've already sort of touched on some of these things. So for instance, work around worker, when we had the episode regarding terminating somebody with dignity, I think that as sort of a preventive measure for worker on worker, you really have to be very careful in terms of how you discipline and, and maybe potentially terminate an employee. Is that an accurate statement?

Kathleen Jennings (04:24):
That's absolutely correct, Thom. And that's one of the reasons why you wanna treat people with ni dignity, because you don't want them to get so angry with their coworkers or with the workplace that they come back and do something rash. We don't want that to happen. I would say what I've seen most often, especially recently, are the domestic situations. Those are the ones that are the most volatile and those are the ones I, I probably, I, I don't know the statistics, but I feel like they're probably among the most prevalent because these are domestic abuse situations that tend to spill over into the workplace of the person who is being abused. And like I said, I've actually had two of these types of incidents with a client in the last two months. Wow.

Thom Jennings (05:19):
Now, is that when you say the, the, the situation like that, with the domestic violence, is it a case where the, there's a couple that works together and maybe are, are married and lives together? Or is it a situation where the domestic violence, you know, maybe the, the husband or the wife is coming to the workplace but doesn't actually work there? Or is it a combination of both?

Kathleen Jennings (05:41):
It could be either one. The situations that I dealt with involved a domestic partner, not a spouse, but a boyfriend who was coming to the female's workplace and making threats at her or just hanging around outside. And so the employer had to do something because they were concerned that he would injure the, the domestic partner or injure somebody else if he became frustrated.

Thom Jennings (06:13):
What's the, what is the employer's responsibility in in that case? I mean, is there is and and is there an employer responsibility if, I mean, I, I would assume that if the employer has no idea that there's a domestic violence situation or any harassment going on, there probably wouldn't be any liability there. But if they are made aware of it, what is their responsibility at that point? Or if they become aware of it because of somebody else reporting it?

Kathleen Jennings (06:38):
Well, I think there's certainly a moral duty to take some action to prevent violence from happening in the workplace. There's a legal duty, once you are aware of a situation that could result in some sort of injury or harm to someone on your premises, you want to prevent that from happening. So that's a potential personal injury lawsuit that could be filed against you if someone does get hurt. And then OSHA also has actually an entire page on their website devoted to workplace violence mitigation. Although OSHA does not have a specific standard on workplace violence, OSHA will look at a workplace and see if it has taken precautions to mitigate what they consider to be a hazard. And, and workplace violence is a potential hazard.

Thom Jennings (07:32):
Yeah, and I think in those situations it's not even just the, the, the to couple that is involved. I mean, if somebody comes and maybe they want to hurt their domestic partner somebody else could get kind of caught up in that and be injured as well. So what is, is this something that is addressed in employee manuals where, you know, if you suspect there's some kind of domestic abuse? Because I, I feel like this in some ways is sort of a gray area, because now what we're talking about is a situation that may be happening outside of their normal work hours, but clearly it's something that could impact what's going on in the workplace.

Kathleen Jennings (08:09):
There are employers that have policies and procedures for em, for employees to report potential threats against their person, and then procedures to follow in case there are threats made against the company or against a particular worker so that they are prepared in that incident or in that, in the case of an incident, it's not the kind of thing where you wanna make it up as you go along. You wanna be prepared, you wanna know who to contact, have all the numbers for law enforcement accessible and ready, and have the person who is responsible for making those contacts when the threat is communicated so that there's no delay.

Thom Jennings (08:54):
And then, then I guess the other thing, which I think will be a great topic for a future podcast is the relationships amongst employees. I, I worked for a company in the nineties that had a very strict policy in terms of dating and, and having a relationship with some, with one of your coworkers. And I think actually one of my more recent employers that didn't apply to me because I was married and actually my spouse worked at the same place I did, but they had a policy where you had to report to HR if a couple was, was dating. And I was found that to be kind of an interesting policy. And I, I was wondering what the legality was with that. And if maybe that is because they, they have those policies to kind of be aware of maybe some potential domestic violence situations or I don't know, theft or any of those kinds of things.

Kathleen Jennings (09:42):
Thom, I think those types of policies are meant to prevent potential sexual harassment in the workplace. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, especially most if not all employers will prohibit two people in a relationship have, they don't wanna have one of those people supervising the other person because there's an unbalanced imbalance of power. And what happens is, or what potentially could happen when that relationship blows up, is that the subordinate employee could then claim, well, I didn't have a choice to get into this. If, if I didn't date my boss, I was gonna be fired. Well, maybe that's not true, probably wasn't true at the time, but in hindsight they can make that allegation, especially if they're angry at the boss and now you have a sexual harassment claim.

Thom Jennings (10:36):
Yeah. Well I guess that, that makes sense cuz the, the one place that I worked at, it was a restaurant and it was the managers that were not able to date the employees. So then you obviously that would've been a supervisor and employee situation. So one thing we haven't touched on is criminal intent. So I guess what comes to mind is, I mean, there's a lot of places that handle cash. I know I've talked about the fact I was in the restaurant industry for a long time, and that was always a very real potential situation, you know, guy waiting outside the back door to clunk, the manager in the head as they were trying to make the deposit for the day's business. But I'm sure there's lots of businesses, even though I don't think we, we deal with as much cash as we used to that do still make deposits and, and there's other things that would be stolen in a workplace. What is the employer's responsibility as far as protecting the employee from a possible criminal act?

Kathleen Jennings (11:31):
Well, you know, banks come to mind, they're usually a target for criminal acts, people trying to rob banks, although they usually aren't very successful. It, it's going to be the same type of duty if you are aware that there's a danger that someone could try to injure one of your employees. And this comes up, I think probably in, in the context of pizza delivery people or other delivery people. That's why you have a lot of these delivery people or businesses that say, we don't handle cash. So that, that would deter someone from, from trying to rob them. Convenience stores, gas stations, those have a high level of crime directed to them. And so they are supposed to take whatever measures they can to mitigate that, but it's probably impossible to completely prevent people from trying to rob convenience stores or pizza delivery people or, or things like that. So you wanna do what you can to protect your employees. Sometimes it, it's hard to absolutely 100% prevent someone who has some kind of criminal intent, probably trying to support some sort of drug habit or something like that.

Thom Jennings (12:51):
Yeah, I I, I didn't even think about banks. I mean, I guess that's really the number one thing that would most people would think of as far as, you know, and, and most banks I would assume have policies as far as how to deal with a robbery. I know that actually both of our parents were in the banking industry for a long time, and our father was was a manager at a bank that was robbed and lost his job because of it, because it was a, a setup with the bank teller. But I always think of, you know, the, the, how they were instructed to deal with it. You know, don't argue, just give the cash or sometimes give the die pack or all those types of things. But man, I can only imagine how stressful it must be to be in a, a situation where somebody's threatening you, you know, and, and how do you train somebody to just kind of react in a way that makes sense and makes, makes, takes their safety into consideration.

Kathleen Jennings (13:42):
You probably can't unless they're a trained security guard or have law enforcement background or something like that. But I imagine banks probably go through a lot of training in the specific procedures that bank employees should follow. I think really the, I I think I've read somewhere that it's the convenience source that are number one in terms of violence in the workplace because of crimes and, and criminals coming in.

Thom Jennings (14:11):
Yeah. And it seems like there's just this, this weird fascination with videos of convenience store workers either reacting to crime criminals or getting robbed. And it's, I, I don't know, I, I see them pop up in my feet a lot and it, it's, it's very, it's almost like that same mentality that they had for the cop show, you know, where they say, oh, this is what ha this is what real life is like. But man, some of 'em are very scary situations and, and those are low paying jobs, typically, so it gets even crazier when you think about it.

Kathleen Jennings (14:43):
I gotta question what kind of stuff you're looking at that these things are coming up in your feed, Thom, because I gotta gotta tell you, I've never had one of those situations come up in any of my social media feeds.

Thom Jennings (14:57):
Well, I, I will say that, that my day, I know people think that I just make a living doing this podcast with you. That's, that's the perception out there. But my day gig is as a high school teacher, and I work with middle schoolers and high schoolers, and they, they watch a lot of these little TikTok videos and I think they used to have vines. I don't even know if that's a thing anymore. But yeah, you see, you see a lot for some reason, they just really love the whole convenience store interaction where the convenience store owner, like Chuck's glass soda in the guy space or all that other stuff. And I'm not saying that I enjoy it, but I do see a lot of them. And that, that's part of the reason. And in terms of my feed, I don't know, I don't think I belong to any convenient store robbery Facebook groups. Maybe one, maybe maybe two. I don't know. But

Kathleen Jennings (15:41):
Yeah, you, you might wanna leave those

Thom Jennings (15:44):
<Laugh>. It's, it's a thing. It's a thing. I promise you it's probably a good thing that you don't know and maybe not such a great thing that I do know.

Kathleen Jennings (15:52):
Yeah. It's, it's not a thing I want to get into, especially having done criminal defense work, I probably had closer experience with it than most of the people watching these videos.

Thom Jennings (16:04):
Yeah, I know. It's a lot of these drive-through things where they'll have the, some guy come up and, you know, throw a soda in somebody's face and things like that. So I, I, I for some reason, see a lot of those, I don't, I don't know why. Maybe I'm just maybe I'm just weird like that.

Kathleen Jennings (16:19):
I have no comment on that.

Thom Jennings (16:22):
<Laugh> an attorney. An attorney with no comment. That is wonderful. But yeah, let's move things along. So moving

Kathleen Jennings (16:28):
Things along, Thom, you know, normally during these podcasts we like to hear about one of your personal experiences that have to do with the topic. Have you had any personal experience with a workplace violence situation?

Thom Jennings (16:44):
Well, that right there, you know, my, my sister for those listening used to be a softball pitcher, if I remember correctly. And that was one of the greatest softball pitches ever. So

Kathleen Jennings (16:54):
I was actually a catcher, but thank you very much.

Thom Jennings (16:57):
<Laugh>. Well, maybe you just studied the pitcher, cuz that one you just hung that one one right, right up for me to hit it out of the park. And yes, I, I for some reason have had so many jobs over my lifetime that I, I have managed to have scenarios come up that seem to apply to just about every single topic, good, bad, or indifferent. So in this case, it's kind of a weird story, but what happened was is I was working at a not-for-profit agency as a social worker. And I had applied for a transfer of my job and it was a lateral transfer, but it was doing the same work but closer to home cuz I was Dr. Commuting about 45 minutes to an hour in the position I was in, and a position came up in the same town that I lived in.

Thom Jennings (17:40):
So I applied for that and did not get the job. And I made the terrible mistake when my supervisor called me and said, would you like to talk about it and tell me what you're really feeling? And I told her what I was really feeling and I, I just said to her, you know, I was, I was upset at the way the situation was handled. We'll, fast forward, I dunno, two, three months down the road, and I was having a conversation with one of our former coworkers at a concert of all places. So there's a lot of, lot of music going on in the background and everything. And at that time my relationship with my supervisor had kind of degenerated a little bit, but we had had this major audit that was going on and she was just a little bit on the cranky side.

Thom Jennings (18:22):
And so my coworker said, oh, you know, what's going on at work? I said, well, it's been kind of crazy, you know, I didn't get that promotion. So, so our, my boss and I aren't getting along and, you know, she's, she's been going nuts because of this audit. Now, my former coworker said that I used the term that everybody wants to kill my supervisor. And I'll be honest with you, I don't know if I said that, and I may have said it, but if I said it, it would've been more in the context of, you know, we just want to kill this person. Not that I actually wanted to kill them, but they were driving us crazy. So maybe the lesson here, sis, is choose your words carefully, right?

Kathleen Jennings (19:00):
I think that that is an important lesson for so many people.

Thom Jennings (19:05):
Yes. So it's kind of like you're going on to the airplane and you go, man, I wanna kill the pilot. You just don't say that, even if it's just your, just your buddy is the pilot and he's making you mad that day. Yeah. So anyhow, so this became a game of telephone as, as, as I, as the only way I can really describe it, because this former coworker told her friend who happened to be friends with another coworker who got back to my supervisor. So then it got back to me that my supervisor had locked down her office because I had physically threatened to kill her. So I get a phone call from the HR department that says, oh well we've learned that there was a threat to the life of your supervisor, and we're just following up on that. And I'm like, I don't remember threatening her life.

Thom Jennings (19:51):
Well, this person said that you said this on this day and then this day, and then this day. And I said, listen dude, that's, that's just crazy. And and thankfully I will say that from the HR department's perspective, he said, you have no history of violence. There's no criminal record. We don't, you know, doesn't even look like you own a gun as far as a even having a permitted gun, which I don't own a gun. And so they kind of dismissed it. But I just thought it was one of the more bizarre scenarios. And I've kind of chalked up to, you know, my supervisor overreacting a little bit. And also a as I mentioned at the outset of the story, I think it had more to do with kind of the conflict between the two of us that had been festering for two or three months than her actually perceiving that there was a threat.

Thom Jennings (20:39):
But as I said, obviously you have to choose your words carefully. And I, I said, I don't know if I said that we wanted to kill her, her, I, I don't, I don't think it would be out of the realm of possibilities that I said that, but you know, I, I, I, that's about it. I don't know what else to say you're giving me, see we're on Zoom and those listening can't see the look that my sister is giving me right now, my big sister. She's just shaking her head going, oh my God, my brother gets into these weird scenarios. So it's, it's up, it's up to you. Here's your opportunity to comment on that particular scenario.

Kathleen Jennings (21:12):
Well, as you said, you should choose your words more wisely. I would also add, you should choose your friends a little more wisely since somebody ratted you out to your boss at some point. But I can see from the perspective of the company, if they receive a communication that an employee who they know is a little unhappy because he didn't get the promotion or lateral job that he wanted, then made a comment about killing his supervisor, who he's not really getting along with that they would need to take that seriously. So I think it was good for them to lock things down and take the, the allegation seriously better to be prepared for the worst and hopefully expect the best, which is what happened once they looked into your background and found out that this was not a legitimate threat, then everything's fine. But what if they had ignored it and you really were the type of person who would go in and, and kill your supervisor and they did nothing to stop it. That would be a bad situation. So employers do need to take these types of allegations, these types of threats, seriously, because you just never know. Not everybody is a nice guy like you.

Thom Jennings (22:39):
Well, it's very nice of you to say that I'm a nice guy, <laugh>. I, I will say, from my perspective and looking at it at the time, I, I felt that it was an overreaction and also on, in many ways it reflected poorly on me. I mean, that's not the kind of thing that you want on your record. And this was not any kind of firsthand information. It came from, you know, this person, it, it actually came, I think it went through three people. So by the time it got back to my supervisor, it had gone from the person I supposedly said the statement to at a loud Brock concert, to her friend, to her friend, to my supervisor, which is, I, I don't know, it said in, in the end, it wound up being a fairly minor incident because the, the lockdown only occurred for a very short period of time.

Thom Jennings (23:24):
And by the time the information got back to my supervisor, it had been four or five days since the comment had been made. Anyway. So I don't know that the lockdown was necessarily that effective, but you've given me a, a new perspective in that yes, I should have, I should at least say, okay, it's understandable from an employer perspective that the facility needed to be locked down. But it was my understanding it was the supervisor that requested the lockdown and that HR stepped in and eventually said, I, I think this is a bit of an overreaction.

Kathleen Jennings (23:56):
Well, and, and again, I think from the perspective of an employer, it is important to take these things seriously. So whether it was the supervisor or hr, it's not the kind of comment that can be dismissed likely at, at a minimum there needs to be some sort of investigation to determine was this statement even made? And if so, what was the context? And if they had found out that it was Thom at a loud music concert just shooting the breeze like Thomdoes, then perhaps it wouldn't have gotten to the point of lockdown. But again, I can understand why they did what they did, because it could have been a lot worse if you were the kind of guy that was violent.

Thom Jennings (24:46):
All right? But, but as you said, I'm not, the only thing I would not, the only thing I would've done was try to kill her with kindness. Well, I can't even say that cuz I wasn't a real fan of her. She was a horrible supervisor, but that's that's for another day, right?

Kathleen Jennings (24:58):
I, I think that the lesson that we've learned from this is that you should never use the word kill in the context of anything or anyone having to do with your job,

Thom Jennings (25:12):
Alright?

Kathleen Jennings (25:12):
Unless it's killing time, killing time. But even then, that could be taken outta context. And so it, it's one of the, the things that I like to tell supervisors when I do any kind of HR training is don't put a target on your back. Don't say or do the kinds of things that it's gonna make people likely to say, yeah, Thom is the kind of guy that would do that kind of thing. Because I hear him talk about killing his supervisor all the time,

Thom Jennings (25:45):
All the time.

Kathleen Jennings (25:46):
You don't wanna be that guy.

Thom Jennings (25:47):
I'm not that guy. I don't wanna be that

Kathleen Jennings (25:49):
Guy. Don't be that guy. Don't be that guy. Don't put a target on your back.

Thom Jennings (25:54):
All right, well I think that that is a wonderful ending point, and as always, it's a, it's, it's an interest. It was an interesting one today. I I enjoyed it.

Kathleen Jennings (26:02):
I thought they were all interesting.

Thom Jennings (26:05):
Oh, well see, now you're twisting it back. Like I'm saying, they weren't all interesting, but it's always, and you know, the best part is when you get to lecture me like the big sister that you are, because in, in many ways and, and the eyes, if we could just somehow capture the eyes on audio, then I think that we would, we would've the most popular employment law podcast in the universe. But anyway, folks we'll wrap up with of course thanking you for listening. And thanks for if you have any topics, by all means send us an email. We'll put that address, email address over in the show notes. We'll be putting these up about once a week. So we've got plenty plenty of time to address any topic that you think is pertinent, sharing, giving us reviews, feedback, any of that stuff will absolutely help us grow the podcast. And anything else that you would like to say? My resident expert slash sister, I'm going to give you the sister title back as you did lecture me today.

Kathleen Jennings (27:01):
Well, thank you very much. I, I think that it's a pleasure for us to have this weekly chat so that we can also give people some information about some important topics, but also get to see each other and chat with each other.

Thom Jennings (27:17):
That's true. And you get to, to hear all of the crazy stories of my employment over the last how many years. So

Kathleen Jennings (27:23):
<Laugh> and I don't know that we'll ever run out of those, so that's a good thing.

Thom Jennings (27:28):
<Laugh>, I don't know either. All right. Well, excellent. Well, again, thank you very much. We will see you next week on the Cover Your Assets podcast. Thanks for listening.

Podcast Disclaimer

The Cover Your Assets-The Labor and Employment Law Podcast is produced by Thom Jennings of the Caronia Media Group. For more details, you can contact him at thom@caroniamediagroup.com.

The information provided in this podcast is for informational purposes only and not for the purpose of providing legal advice. You should contact your attorney to obtain advice with respect to any particular issue or problem. Use of and access to this podcast or any of the e-mail links contained within the site do not create an attorney-client relationship between Kathleen J. Jennings. The opinions expressed at or through this site are the opinions of the individual hosts and guests.