The Question

I recently went for a waxing, and on the morning of my appointment, my aesthetician called me and asked if she could change the time. No problem, I told her. She recently moved to a new salon downtown whose owner is, to put it kindly, a raging psychopathic witch who makes herself feel better by bullying and demeaning her staff. But once I got there, she told me the owner had yelled at her for 10 minutes after the call, shrieking the whole time that she was incompetent, stupid and inconsiderate to her client.

On my way out, the owner lit into my aesthetician again in front of me and several other clients, screaming at her and accusing her of undermining her and the business.

It only got uglier from there.

My aesthetician called me that evening to apologize and told me that she plans to leave at the end of the month.

I'd really love to have good triumph over evil, but what can I do?

The Answer

Ah, a toxic boss question. I've been hoping for one of these.

I have a few thoughts on the topic.

First, despite any sanctimonious lip-flap you might've heard to the contrary, I firmly believe we live in a culture that not only condones but even celebrates bullies and bullying bosses.

"You're fired," Donald Trump smirks, his ludicrous comb-over practically twitching with schadenfreude as he dispatches another would-be mogul on The Apprentice.

"The tribe has spoken," Jeff Probst intones, extinguishing the torch of hope for yet another Survivor contestant who has proved "weak" or "useless," and who must immediately leave the island without a word or backward glance.

Or what about Hell's Kitchen? Have you checked out this bleep!-ing show? As he puts his wannabe-chefs through their paces, Gordon Ramsay is not only a bully. He acts like a man teetering on the precipice of a full-blown psychotic "break."

He screams, throws plates, kicks garbage cans in his fury at the incompetence of his kitchen minions. And what a potty-mouth. He turns the air blue with his expletives. Every other word is bleeped.

"Ah, Sharon, these bleep!-ing scallops are bleep!-ing disgusting!" he'll scream - then spit the offending mollusks into the garbage, or dash the plate to the floor, or both. Or he might press the plate of food onto the front of an underling's chef jacket, so it leaves a huge, embarrassing stain the minion has to wear for the rest of the show.

Culturally speaking, I believe we've turned a corner with Hell's Kitchen - and not in a good way. What's next? Chef Ramsay pulls a gun out of his chef jacket: "Ah, Jennifah, this bleep!-ing risotto's undah-cooked!" Blam! Blam!

But you're probably wondering when I'm going to get to your bleep!-ing question.

I will say this: Your aesthetician friend is lucky to live in Canada. In the United States, it's pretty much "Tough luck, get another job."

Here she has some legal recourse. In the past few years, the courts in this country have been sending a powerful message to employers that bullying bosses are not acceptable.

For example, in 2006, after an RCMP officer testified her hard-ass ex-military boss yelled and screamed at her ("Open your fucking eyes and look at the books!" he once bellowed at her) so much that the pregnant officer became ill, a B.C. court awarded her a settlement of nearly (and I want you to imagine me bringing my pinkie up to the corner of my mouth here, and twisting it, Dr. Evil-style) one million dollars.

Now true, the largesse of the settlement was intended to compensate for the fact she was so scarred and damaged she could not continue to work in the foreseeable future. And that doesn't sound like the case with your aesthetician.

Still, according to Toronto employment lawyer Janice Rubin, she can sue for "constructive dismissal" - one of these misleading legal misnomers with which lawyers love to stuff their briefs (in order to lend them a certain ... gravitas, I feel) that actually means: the atmosphere in the workplace became so intolerable you were driven to leave - it was as if you were fired.

And "constructive dismissal" cases carry damages, same as if you'd been fired. In the case of your friend, these damages may not amount to much. And your friend may not feel like hiring a lawyer at this moment. They're bleep!-ing expensive.

But a lawyer's a good thing for her to have in her corner in this circumstance. A lesson I literally had beaten into me, growing up on the mean streets of New Haven, Conn., the son of a poor assistant professor. The only way to get a bully to back off is to sic an even bigger bully on him. Or, to put it another way, that's what lawyers are for.

Something like 60 per cent of people leave their jobs soon after being targeted by a bully. Sadly, your friend is one of that number, but she doesn't have to go gentle out that front door. She should stand up to the bully.

Even a letter from a lawyer, "educating the employer," as Ms. Rubin dryly puts it, "as to where the lines are drawn and how she crossed them," would, I predict, bring this sadistic salonista up short.

Bullies are usually cowards underneath, as we all know: She'll probably be quaking in her pumps, thinking, "What with the damages and the legal fees, I could wind up losing my business."

And if that were to come to pass (this would be sweet), your aesthetician could conceivably swoop in, with her savings or perhaps a consortium of investors, and snap it up herself.

I know that's a long shot, a far-fetched scenario.

But still, wouldn't that be an excellent "bleep you!" to a bullying former boss?