Is this the right approach for my prick of a boss?

[twigtoleaf]

My boss is a prick. I could give a million examples, but he's on the radar of executive for being generally slack and rude and unpleasant and I was told recently, and quietly, by exec member that she now sees all emails from our general team email address.

In a meeting last week we were talking about doing some more work in aged care. He said casually to me 'So what do we call people in aged care, is it inmates?' (He thinks he's witty but his wit is always, always punching down. and not funny.)

I said, no, it's residents. And he moved on.

This year my mum moved into aged care with dementia and a broken hip. It's been very difficult and sad and he knows this.

If I send an email 'clarifying language guidelines' to 'avoid reputational damage and ensure we are using the correct language now we are working more in this space' and cc the team, exec can see it. He will be in the shit.

Is there anyone in HR who can tell me if this is a good move or not? I will of course be polite. I could go to HR myself but I feel like this is calmer and will call him out to the rest of the team. He is already on notice for unprofessional language.

I wasn't comparing nursing homes to nurseries just giving related example of the same statement being appropriate for service users but not for staff.

Sadly, I have experience of nursery being a risk to life. My daughter was at nursery with a lot of allergies and we had a situation where she was given food she couldn't have due to negligence. She was also at another nursery which was closed by Ofsted after an incident that risked the life of a baby.

I have watched 2 great grandparents die in nursing homes both with dementia, between my partner and I went have had 3 grandmother in residential care with dementia. The first day of nursery wasn't a happy day for me, my daughter was going to nursery because I was too unwell to look after her and couldn't be left alone with her and a few weeks later I ended up in hospital for 10 weeks. The first day at the next nursery was not a good day either as I was then well aware that nursery was a place where your child may not come home from.

Respectfully, I was trying to support you, this is something that touched a nerve with you but you don't know what other people are going through or experiencing so don't make judgements that your experience is more difficult.

I have a mother in a care home. My brother and I have definitely used inmates when chatting between us.

There's a big difference between making a "joking" comment like he did in private, and making it in a professional situation as he did here especially in a formal meeting.

Making similar comments about the people we have a social care responsibility to would be completely unacceptable where I work and definitely be considered for a disciplinary process to be started, especially if there had been multiple incidents.

OP you need to start keeping a diary of all the occasions he says things that are on the edge of disrespect to the people you have a responsibility to, and include things he says which are clearly intended to bring someone down or humiliate them. There's a word for his behaviour, it's called bullying.

Thank you for this - someone else I know who works in health and has more experience in this kinds of workplaces has said much the same thing. I am going to go to a few more meetings, keep notes, and then go to HR.

This. If joking about vulnerable people you work with passes for a sense of humour, I'm happy to be called a humourless old cow.

If it’s a pattern of behaviour I can see why it would be jarring, what else has he said?

Do you actually run care homes, or just flog stuff to them?

If the second, then I couldn't get worked up about that.

I meant to add - OP said that most of the others in the meeting were much younger so presumably a little more impressionable. Speaking the way her boss did is normalising such language to junior staff, maybe even encouraging them to be disrespectful.

As someone who has worked in older people’s social care, your boss is not that far wrong. Having seen on many occasions physically well older people standing at the doors of the care home and demanding to be let out ‘ open the door? Why are you keeping us here? You can’t keep us here!’ And staff refusing to let them out, them well, they are deprived of their liberty. I knew one very fit resident who would regularly scale the walls to escape and had to be found and returned by police repeatedly. These people have dementia so are not safe to go out, but they are still deprived of their liberty and they know it and feel the pain, frustration and humiliation of it just as you and I would. In some homes the dementia unit is basically a corridor with locked doors at either end. And thats where people are restricted to.

There have also been concerns raised in the sector that older people who are safe to leave the home, are also locked in and that this amounts to illegal deprivation of liberty.

Your boss was making a joke. And it was one based in a good amount of reality. If he had written this term in an official letter or report you may have a point, but as a verbal joke in an in-house team meeting, no, you are not being reasonable.

It’s not a joke about vulnerable people though. It’s a satire about the institutions society puts older people n.

Just to add, it’s just as painful to watch physically I firm older people begging over and over to ‘go home. I just want to go home. Let me go home’.

The brutal truth is that people in care homes often are deprived of their liberty, can’t leave, and some of them really, really want to leave.

I think some here critical of the boss are not aware of the reality of what care homes are. They are places where some residents are deprived of their liberty.

He made a joke. A joke not that far from reality. There may be many other things he does need hauled over the coals for, but I would not see this as one of them.

The joke was on the institution more than the individual.

^ This. "Immates" is closer to the bone than many in the sector would like to admit. They just use a lot of glossy language to cover up poor practice.

This

I would take it to HR rather than just send the email. Make it more formal. He sounds like a dick. Referring to elderly people in care as “inmates” is not funny and just makes him sound like a wanker.

I think sometimes we get to a point with a person at work that , if they were to say it goes dark at night we’d take umbrage. I say this from experience! We can get a bit obsessed with wanting their downfall.

This, and look at all the furore about Ranulph Fienes at the present, and the DoLs his poa has him in a care home, “inmate” would certainly cover how he has been described

That is absolutely not what's going on here except when my noise-cancelling ear phones aren't charged.

That’s admirable then, you are a more evolved human being than me!