That Ain't Right

I'm not going to mention any names, nor am I making any judgements as to whose fault it was, but the following is rather disturbing and something that should never happen in a workplace. Just to be clear, I do not know why these events occured...I am only telling you what I saw.

I'll refer to the "participants" as "the boss (former AIESEC trainee)," "the father," and "the employee." Ok, so the employee (a native) was late coming back from lunch. At about 5:00, he was called into the office. About 10 minutes after he went inside, yelling commenced. From what I could see, it was the father doing most of it. I had no idea what it was about, but I knew it wasn't good.

At about 5:30, the employee came out and sat down. I was about to go over and talk to him (we were supposed to have a meeting) when he got called in again. The yelling began again and lasted for about 10 minutes. The employee then came out of the office, began to collect up his stuff and leave. Then the father came out and got all up in the employee's grill. The two were going back and forth and then the employee pushed the father. The father pushed back and the yelling continued.

I turned my head back to the computer screen for a split second. When the boss saw the push, he stormed out of his office and told the employee to get out of the office. The employee didn't move and then pushed the father right onto my keyboard (had I not backed up my chair a little, I'd have been landed on). One thing I must explain is that our office is tiny, so all of this happened within 3 feet of the other employees.

After that fateful push, all hell broke loose. The boss grabbed the employee, dragged him to the ground, and started feeding him shots to the shoulder. At that point, I had had enough and just walked out of the room. Not sure if that was the right decision, but I had no idea why this was happening, didn't want to know, and didn't want to witness it.

The other AIESEC trainee in the room was on the opposite side from me, so he could only sit there an watch. He finished explaining the events to me: the father then began to choke the employee, while the boss continued to work the shoulders. The only audible words that were spoken, he said, was "This is a professional office...." This came from the boss's mouth.

The employee finally came outside, where I was waiting. He looked pretty rough. All I could do was to shake his hand and say "Goodbye." He definitely wasn't going to be back in that office again.