screaming boss

A reader writes:

I have a question about a manager at work. I work in the pharmacy department of the store, but the other night I witnessed a front store manager being extremely rude and disrespectful to a front store employee in front of customers and other staff. The employee just wanted to go on break, and paged the manager. The manager dropped what he was doing and when they met, he started yelling out loud "YOU COME TO ME, DON'T YOU EVER PAGE ME FOR SOMETHING LIKE THIS AGAIN." The reaction of the customers was shocking, and also most of the pharmacy staff. If this happens again to anyone else, what rights does the employee have?

Rights, as in legal rights? None, really. It's not illegal for a manager to be a jerk. Unwise, yes (because good employees will eventually leave over it), but allowed.

However, the employees of the store could certainly complain to the manager's manager, who probably has no idea that this manager is behaving this way -- and if even nothing else, would likely object to it being done in front of customers.

If I were this manager's boss and I heard about this, I'd have a very serious talk with him, both about using authority appropriately and about not making customers uncomfortable. Of course, there are plenty of bad bosses out there, so there's no guarantee that this boss will respond that way -- but the fact that the guy did this in front of customers works to your advantage here, because you can couch your concern in that context, which makes it safe for you to bring up (you're worried that customers are being made uncomfortable). And if he's a good boss, he'll realize that's not the only troubling aspect of this.