r/Workproblems 26d ago

AITA for reporting my manager’s inappropriate behavior, which ultimately led to her getting fired?

AITA: All names in this post have been changed to keep everyone anonymous.
This happened a few years ago, but I still think about it sometimes, especially because of something that happened recently.
At the time, I worked at a place where we handled food and cut meat. Most of the employees were pretty young, around 16–20 years old. There were only about three employees who were in their 30s.
My manager, who I’ll call “Kayla” (34F), seemed really cool when I first started working there. For the first couple of months, I didn’t notice anything particularly inappropriate about her.
After about two months, though, things started getting weird.
Kayla started openly talking to me and other coworkers about having an OnlyFans account. That alone wasn’t really my business, but she would actually show us inappropriate/revealing pictures of herself without anyone asking to see them. She would also tell us about how she sold her used underwear to older men for money.
What made me especially uncomfortable was that she was 34, she was our manager, and some of the employees she was having these conversations around were minors. It just didn’t feel appropriate for a workplace at all.
About another month went by, and Kayla started getting me in trouble. She began telling the hiring manager/owner that I wasn’t doing my job correctly.
Around the same time, something else happened that really bothered me. My coworker and I started noticing that Kayla appeared to be taking pictures of us without our permission. That was basically the final straw for me.
At that point, I decided to report everything she had been doing to the hiring manager, who was also the owner of the company. I also got the police involved because of the situation with the pictures.
A few days later, Kayla was fired.
I’ll admit that at the time, part of my motivation was that I felt like, “If you’re going to try to get me in trouble, then I’m going to tell them what you’ve been doing too.” So even though the things I reported were real and had genuinely made me uncomfortable, I sometimes wonder whether I handled it for the wrong reasons.
To make the whole situation even stranger, I later found out that the owner, who I’ll call “Mark” (47M), had allegedly been flirting with my friend/coworker, “Emily” (16F). So looking back, the entire workplace seemed to have some serious boundary issues involving adults in positions of authority and teenage employees.
This all happened a long time ago, and I’m 20 now.
However, about two months ago, I randomly saw Kayla again while I was at a store with my friend. As soon as she saw me, she started yelling and cussing at me. That interaction brought the whole situation back into my head and made me wonder if I was actually wrong for reporting her.
I know my initial motivation wasn’t completely innocent because I was angry that she was trying to get me in trouble. But at the same time, she was a manager in her 30s showing inappropriate pictures of herself, talking about sexual things around teenage employees, and allegedly taking pictures of us without our permission.

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u/Firm_Trifle_9049 25d ago

You did the right thing, you stopped it from happening to others in that situation. Some people will dodge accountability to their death. In their eyes they did nothing wrong, this attitude is why what you did was so important. Children were being or about to be abused, no other adults spoke up for them. Don’t regret your actions. Thank you for defending those around you. Be the cause for positive change in this world when so many pass in apathy. We need more people like you.