Boss brags to essential contractor about firing contractors without notice, essential contractor quits with 10 seconds of notice in return, leaving the company scrambling to pick up the pieces: 'Hey, thanks for everything, this is my last day!'

There's a reason why The Golden Rule is called as such and is pervasive in one form or another across cultures globally. "Treat others the way you want to be treated" is a simple yet profound lesson, one we're supposed to learn in preschool, that encompasses all sorts of moral, ethical, and social cues that we're supposed to take with us for the rest of our lives. 

It's surprising then that so many people don't take The Golden Rule into practice, seeming to have never earned a gold star on that part of their childhood development (or seemingly learned social skills and ethics past that point at all). Yet, have still progressed into roles that we would consider to be high achievement in society, and go about expecting to be able to treat others poorly, with disdain even, and that they'll face nothing of the sort in return.

You'll come across this all the time in the workplace, whether it's that coworker who thinks that they can treat you with contempt every time your paths cross—and that you should be fine with that–or your boss who hasn't learned how to walk a two-way street and thinks that they can behave with impunity.

This boss was one of those bosses, and he showed his true colors when he commanded the firing of contracted staff with no notice and then bragged to his two managers about how he hired contractors specifically so that he could fire them on the spot if he wanted to. This was either brazen or simply foolish since the managers themselves were contractors, a point that maybe the boss had forgotten. Either way, the exchange left the contracted managers with an uneasy feeling about the situation they found themselves in, suddenly aware of the precarious employment position they were in. And at least of the managers left resolved to find a new positon, and a chance to treat the boss exactly how he treated his staff.