Irrespective of whether or not the dealer trick is right, your argument is unconvincing.
A non-exhaustive list of things which the law allows for and which many people have the ability to do:
* Call you names
* Give you projects that are doomed to fail
* Place you on a team which will drag you down
* Use you as a scapegoat for the failure of a project
* Use KLOC as a metric of performance
* Show you the finger at a traffic light
And yet we don't approve of these things. Something being lawful is the bare minimum, not the gold standard.