You dont send a letter to the newspaper to embarass any boss without knowing your job is toast. The guy is an idiot....
I used to work for a guy that got put in a somewhat similar situation. I won't give details, but the incident grew out of what was perceived as an unfair exercise of clout. Normal practice at the end of a conflict is that troops get rotated home on a FIFO basis. At the end of Desert Storm, a lot of units that had just arrived in the theatre were told they were going home first. These were guard units that had governors pulling for them. My guy was in command of a unit that had been in the middle of $hit-show-- been over the Line of Death for months before the action started. His unit was left in the desert with no idea of when they were going home. He did not go to the media, but he did jump the chain of command, and managed to get his men a ticket home.
His boss simply said, "You do know you're out of the service, don't you?"
My guy had always thought he'd spend the rest of his life in the Army. He'd done a spectacular job in his role. However, politics were politics, and jumping the chain of command is always at least a ticket out of the service.
"You've got to remember," he said. "Your men expect you to do what's right for them, no matter what. I knew I was sacrificing my career, but I would have never been able to command them after that-- not with the same kind of loyalty. Remember that. If you're ever put in that situation, your men come first."
About 8 years later, I was put in that situation. The company my boss and I had worked for was bought out. They sent positively excremental individuals as new managers. I found myself reporting to the COO. One day, he called me into his office and told me I needed to fire one of my subordinates for cause. He didn't care which one, and he didn't care what excuse I used. He was leaving that up to me. At the time, I had two good men working for me. One had recently had twins that had birth defects. The other was a Filipino chap that was the most loyal and trustworthy man that I've ever had the honor to have under me. Neither one had done anything wrong. They just wanted to lay someone off and not get dinged for unemployment. I also knew that the COO favored me firing the Filipino, just because he sounded foreign. I told my boss that I was not going to make the choice. He replied it was them or me. I got up and left the office.
Six months later, I was fired for trumped-up reasons, and I was successfully able to get Unemployment after disputing the dismissal. My one guy landed on his feet and the other fellow, the Filipino, has stayed for over a decade. I had a cloud over me, because my previous employer would only verify dates of employment and nothing else. I was out of work for some time. As it turned out, one of the references I used to finally get a good job was my old boss that had been in the Army.
