A current employee was recently demoted from Accounting Manager to Accounting Assistant. We are a very small office and this one person is making everyone tense and stressed out. She is refusing to talk to anyone, continues to bark orders as she did previously, and slams things when moving them. She also withholds neccessary information.

We have contacted our HR, but we are told to that we need to be sensitive to her situation and allow her time to adjust. We all used to enjoy coming to work, but now we all walk on egg shells hoping we don't attract her attention.

I'm wondering if there is anything in Washington State law that requires the company to do something about the stress induced by the employee. We are working in a very passive-aggressive hostile work environment due to her inability to adjust to her situation.

Any help would be appreciated.
Thank you.

Sorry, but no. What you describe does not meet the legal definition of a hostile work environment; not even close.

An HWE, under the law, means that the employee or employees is/are being subjected to either sexual harassment or illegal harassment under Title VII and related laws (race, religion, national origin, etc.). It has nothing to do with co-workers, or even managers/supervisors, being unpleasant.

Nor are there any laws that deal with this. The law does not require that all your co-workers be pleasant. The company is not under any obligation to "make" her behave the way you would like her to. I understand how unpleasant it must be but this does not fall under any legal mandates.

I went through the same type of HWE, however it was with the owners daughter! I just can not believe that our harassment laws don't protect employees from this type of HWE! I believe that the HWE was put into effect for just this type of protection, but with a good faith judgement. Because the average HWE is based on discrimination and not in general HWE this amendment dose not protect the average employee.

I also believe that one should be allowed to quit with "Good Cause" under certain HWE conditions! And we wonder why people go "POSTAL"?

This law needs to be amended to hold employers and co-workers responsible for allowing and/or creating a non-discrimination Hostile Work Environment!

How can this be done?

If you think the laws need changing, the way to go about it is to lobby for those changes with your elected representatives.

Unless you have a contract that states otherwise, you are free to quit with out without notice for HWE or any other reason.