Boss From Hell!
From the archive: first published October 6, 2011.
The owner of an Iowa convenience-store chain has been called "the boss from hell" by a former worker — who says he offered prize money to employees who predicted which of their colleagues would be fired next.
A judge deciding an unemployment benefits case involving William Ernst, the owner of a Bettendorf, Iowa-based chain of QC Marts, found his "contest" to be "egregious and deplorable."
According to court records, Ernst issued a memo to workers in March that read: "NEW CONTEST — GUESS THE NEXT CASHIER WHO WILL BE FIRED!!!" The rules: write the name of the next cashier you think will be fired, along with the date and your own name, on a piece of paper. Guess correctly and win $10.
"And no fair picking Mike Miller from Rockingham," the memo added in bold capital letters. "He was fired at around 11:30 a.m. today for wearing a hat and talking on his cell phone. Good luck!!!!"
Misty Shelsky of Davenport, Iowa, had worked at a QC Mart for two years as a cashier. The 32-year-old mother of three initially thought the memo was a prank. When she realized the contest was real, she, her store manager, and two others quit.
"It made me physically ill to think about writing someone's name down," she said. "These are my friends. And it made me sick to think someone would do that to me. Everyone's head was on the chopping block."
When Shelsky applied for unemployment benefits, Ernst contested the claim, saying she had left voluntarily. Administrative Law Judge Susan D. Ackerman sided with Shelsky, ruling she had "good cause attributable to the employer" — an intolerable and detrimental work environment created, as the judge wrote, by "suggesting employees turn on each other for a minimal monetary prize."
A company supervisor, Anna DeFrieze, had defended the contest at the hearing as aimed at rule-breakers: "If you're breaking the rules you need to stop. They're repeatedly told not to use their phones while working." Other QC Mart employees wrote letters calling the contest "bizarre and unprofessional" and saying it "created an atmosphere of distrust, intimidation and paranoia."
Editor's note: this article was rewritten during our editorial review. The original 2011 version reproduced a press report verbatim with broken links; the text above is an original summary of the reported facts.
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