I was verbally assaulted at work

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
161

An attempt to move is NOT a necessary element of unlawful restraint.

To prove unlawful imprisonment, the government [LV’s side, the people attempting to deprive Yeller of his liberty] must prove ALL these things beyond a reasonable doubt (from Wikipedia):

  1. Intent to confine another person against their will. In the United States, the possibility of negligent false imprisonment only arises if the imprisonment causes bodily harm.
    AND
  2. An act pursuant to this intent.
    AND
  3. The resulting confinement of another person against his or her will.
    AND
  4. Absence of a reasonable means of escape. A means of escape will not be reasonable if it endangers personal safety, such as leaping from the window of a tall building.
    AND
  5. Awareness of the confinement by the person so confined.
    AND
  6. Absence of legal authority on the part of the person acting to confine another.
    You’re not going to get #1. You’re just NOT. There is no way to prove that Yeller did, indeed, intend to confine LV against her will.

You’re not going to get #2. You have no evidence that LV’s will was to be somewhere other than her office.

You probably won’t even get 3. You have no evidence that LV wanted to move and was prevented from doing so by Yeller.
You need to prove ALL the elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt to get a conviction. Here, you cannot.

You don’t even have enough to get an arraignment.

To be perfectly honest, I hope I get a case like this when I move over to the defense side. After I get done suing the accuser and the state, my chunk of the settlement will get me that 1967 Corvette I’ve been wanting.

162

Sorry, but I do think it is ridiculous to claim that he intended to confine her. Did I miss where she said she tried to get away and he put himself between her and the door? Did I miss where he said something to the effect of, “If you move from this office, I’ll kill you?” The effect is immaterial without the intent, and in my opinion there is absolutely no evidence of intent to confine.

I’ve seen this happen several times on this board. I just don’t understand why people are so intent to stretch the facts to make someone guilty of a crime they didn’t commit. If we were having a conversation about assault, you wouldn’t hear an objection from me. But we’re talking about kidnapping and false imprisonment. And I think that’s ridiculous.

163

I think you’ve kind of missed my point. If you want to prove wrongful imprisonment, you need to show that the accused tried to prevent the victim from leaving. Tying them up or drugging them would be pretty convincing evidence of this intent. There’s no evidence of this intent in this situation. The jerk intimidated the hell out of her, but he made no action to prevent her from leaving the room. From reading the OP, it doesn’t sound like he even touched her. If she had tried to leave, he may have done something to stop her, but she didn’t try, so we don’t know what he would have done.

Yeah, but I don’t know that merely intimidating someone qualifies as wrongful imprisonment. Regardless, according to the OP, there was no direct threat of bodily harm. He cussed her out, and physically and verbally intimidated her, but there’s nothing in the OP to indicate that he threatened her with direct physical harm.

164

You are certainly entitled to your opinion as to what his intent was, but that opinion will likely keep you off a jury. I’d use a peremptory on you if I were a defense attorney, if I couldn’t get the judge to excuse you for me.

Even if you get on a jury, the fact is that you have to go by the facts and the relevant law, not your opinion.

Even if you went on your opinion, it is the safest of bets that the judge will throw out the conviction as a matter of law.

This is all, of course, presupposing that our drunk sympathetic retard of a DA has managed to sneak an arraignment past a judge through some combination of sex, blackmail, and exploitation of three or four phobias and a congenital developmental disability, because, opinion or no, you have to at least concede that, as a matter of law, Yeller’s actions might be the ultimate in dickery, but are not a crime, at least, not THIS crime.

165

Let me say that this discussion about whether or not it was false imprisonment is making this fucking thread unreadable. I’ve got an opinion on it, but I don’t really care, because it’s really hijacking the thread.

166

You are probably right. I’m outta here. Miller, Lurker, Pup, good points all. Apologies to the thread for the hijack.

167

I registered specifically to comment on this thread.

First of all, the actions of “yeller” were totally unacceptable and should never ever ever happen in a workplace or civilised society.

LVgeoGeek my sympathies go out to you for the way you were treated.

Some thoughts though, “You will not speak to me that way” to me is confrontational, this does not justify his escalation, but is it confrontational, particularly when you chased him out of your office to make the comment.

Personally, I would either have said something like, “please don’t use profanity” or “I would appreciate if you didn’t use personal insults” NOT because there is a need to beg or show inferiority, but rather because it would get a better resolution.

Better still, given that the incident was essentially over at that point, rather than chasing an obvioulsy angry colleague, why not wait and talk to him about it later? maybe even get the office manager or boss involved (I wouldn’t) be talk to him about how you found his behaviour intimidating and unaccpetable at a time and place removed from his anger?

Again, this should not be taken to mean his actions were right or justified, but rather, that I feel this would get a far better resolution than chasing and confronting him, and it is a good resolution that you want right?

Now to throw some oil on the fire, and bring up something that has not yet been discussed (no I am not trolling)…

What if “the yeller” has had ongoing problems with LVgeoGeek? What if he goes home at night complaining that she is passive agressive and doesn’t pay attention or give weight to his instructions (not that I think this is true) I could see this perception coming through by her almost flippant response - “ok I will do it better next time” (paraphrasing)

This would still not excuse or justify his behaviour, but would rather argue for a conference / discussion at a later time to, clear the air and clarify any misunderstandings.

At the end of the day, what you are looking for is to maintain working harmony, if yeller acted inappropriately then teach him why, don’t immedaitely pull the trigger on him. Now if this forms a pattern of behaviour, and his interpersonal interactions are not good, then by all means do fire him. But if this is an isolated incident then maybe he should not be fired.

Finally, HR and the boss should most certainly deal with the issue, LVgeoGeek should not have any input into his punishment. When I read statements like “pursueing hr to see him fired” (again paraphrasing) my internal reaction is very unfavourable towards **LVgeoGeek ** and lends sympathy towards yeller - but his actions still remain, and will always be unacceptable.

In short, I believe that the situation could have been handled better and it should be outcomes that you are looking at, not whether LVgeoGeek was justified in confronting him (she was)

168

I agree. OK boys, take it outside… :slight_smile:

I had no intention of being flippant. I didn’t actually say “…I will do it the correct way next time…” I was putting that in summary, because it would have been a huge thing to type out.

He comes in and in a very accusatory tone questioning me about it and sticks a field sheet in my face: What I said was more along the lines of …(looking at field sheet) “That’s weird. Honest error. Yeah, I should have taken another read. My mistake. I take more reads than that. Long day, I guess. I’ll be sure to watch this in future sampling events.”

Maybe he read me wrong. Maybe he was just having a monumentally bad day.

I had a meeting with the branch manager yesterday afternoon. I didn’t post yesterday, because I wanted to “absorb” the entire conversation. Overall, I think it went well and was for the most part, positive.

What was discussed, in summary, was that the branch manager agreed what the project manager did was unacceptable. He had talked to the pm before me. But he did say that this pm told him that he viewed me as a troublemaker who was “disrespectful”. The branch manager seemed confused, as was I. (I obviously don’t have the full details of their conversation.) I never had problems with anybody in the office before this pm came on board.

The branch manager said he never heard of any complaints from anyone on my quality of work or work ethic, getting along with others. Co-workers have stated to me in the past that this pm has been especially hard on me. I do my job, and I do my job well. I think that the bm knows this. No one in my office has a problem with me, except for this guy.

In a perfect world, everyone would always get along with everybody at work and life would be all sunshine and lollipops.

I went out of my way to help him out when he started. Maybe he is a little resentful (my assumption) of my experience and he feels a little lost as a project manager since he has never worked in this field before. I never hold my experience over anybody. I love my job. I love what I do. I like sharing what I know so everyone can do his or her job better.

In this field if you are a slacker or a fuck-up, you aren’t around long. Other people have done similar things, missed reads, whatever. No comment, no nothing.

One of my co-workers sampled wrong for the parameters (basic instead of full scan for last quarter), this pm didn’t freak on them. No one freaked out. It was just explained in the report, and the full scan parameters were sampled for this quarter. In a business that moves fast and there are tons of sites that we manage, fuck ups like that happen. If you make the same mistakes over and over again- then your going to be gone.

Tomorrow the branch manager wants to sit down with the pm and myself to, for the most part, to get to the bottom of this situation. I have a list of things I would like to discuss. No, none of them involve demanding that he be fired, arrested, or crushed by a giant roulette ball of death.

169

LVgeogeek - its great to hear that this is coming to a satisfactory conclusion.

I wanted to be clear - I was in no way suggesting that your were, or intended to be, flippant. Rather that the JPM may have taken your comments, tone or whatever for flippancy. I have faced problems before when people have interpreted my actions totally differently to how intended.

To say that this JPM has not reacted this way with similiar mistakes in the past must mean that something else is / was driving his actions - which is what I think needs to be hashed out between the two of you, with the input of the BM as a mediator, more knowledgeable head and impartial observer. It sounds like this is happening so I guess that it will hopefully all be good.

As a general rule, I always believe that interpersonal office relationships should be governed by standards of good behaviour, not by HRs’ rules. This is why I tend to get a little antsy when people talk about calling in HR to settle these sorts of disputes. If a partuclar colleague cannot handle my humour / agression / work style or whatever, then I do my best to accomodate them - not because HR says I must, but because I don’t wan’t to make good people uncomfortable.

170

I apologize for the hijack (although it was fun while it lasted). I hope you realize I was not being an apologist for the PM. What he did was so over the top wrong that it boggles the mind. I just don’t think it raises to the level of crime discussed. I hope it all works out for you. I hope that if he is not fired (I can’t imagine why he wouldn’t be) it is made clear to him that he will be if anything happens that even approaches this. And don’t completely discard that roulette idea. I’m thinking of patenting it.

171

snip

[/quote=LVgeogeek]
He had talked to the pm before me. But he did say that this pm told him that he viewed me as a troublemaker who was “disrespectful”. The branch manager seemed confused, as was I. (I obviously don’t have the full details of their conversation.) I never had problems with anybody in the office before this pm came on board.
[/quote]

It sounds like what I had posted earlier. He is coming into the company with next to no experience to be a manager above you. There you are with tons of experience and he is threatened by it when you had to train him, and he has never let go of that. So he is holding a grudge against you.

Let us know what becomes of this meeting you will have with him. Hopefully he will be able to get whatever has his panties in a wad about you out so it can be dealt with.

172

I just have to admit that I think you are being very…well, I can’t exactly think of a correct way to put it! It’s certainly positive though. It’s like a mixture of brave and professional. I suppose. You obviously like your job and want to continue to do good work, but you have to deal with an asshole. No offense to military folks, but the simple fact of the matter is that you can’t carry that behavior over to civilian life. The military operates in that way as it operates on the basis of breaking people down then building them up. But you can’t do that in normal life, because you don’t always start out with a bunch of newbies. Never mind the fact that it’s entirely inappropriate. But I just wanted to commend you on your extremely professional behavior in light of the situation. I hope it works out well for you. He really ought to be fired for that as he has it in for you.

173

I was just discussing this with my husband who is a Safety Officer (and therefore somewhat familiar with Alberta’s labour laws), and he mentioned a point that I hadn’t thought of - verbal assault is considered violence in the workplace, and not allowed under our laws. After describing the situation from the OP to him, he said that it would indeed be considered assault and battery, and charges could be pursued under our labour laws. I understand your reluctance to do that, LV, but it really underscores the seriousness of what the JPM did. I hope your company can come up with some real repercussions for this guy’s actions, or I can’t imagine how you will work with him. He’s put you in a real no-win situation.

174

If I may…

I see that people have been focusing on the military guy’s background, but I’m not sure that’s entirely it. Why? Well, on the occasion I had to deal personally with a similar situation, the asshole was a middle-aged woman that you could have knocked over with a feather. Part of it, IMHO, is that management made some serious errors up front in this whole arrangement, and it was compounded unwittingly by the OP and the guy’s own basic personality.

Here we have:

  • A apparently starting from scratch in a new field after having achieved a high level of training, and maybe accomplishment, in another field (the military). Like others have said, that sort of transition is almost always good for shaking up people’s confidence in themselves, especially if the transition isn’t welcome or expected (the details of which we don’t know here)… and not everyone handles it very well.

  • Not only is the guy starting over in a new field, but he’s supposed to become a supervisor after he’s trained in the basics by a future subordinate. :smack: I have no idea why any management EVER thinks this is a good idea. Here the guy is probably feeling insecure to begin with, and he’s placed in an incredibly awkward position where, on a daily basis, he has the opportunity to feel like a nimrod as a junior person teaches him his job. And, if the OP’s workplace is like so many others, there is going to be a certain… undercurrent of lack of respect accorded the guy, because everyone else knows that they no more than he does, and he is sure to notice.

Management ought to have started him out in the same position as the people he was going to be supervising eventually, so that he could learn the job and then move up. Why didn’t they? Could be any number of reasons, from simple lack of forethought to the guy being related to someone higher up… we might never know.

In any case, if he wasn’t much of a people person to start with, these first two things will be gnawing at him and setting him up for a blow-up.

Now this would have really rubbed him raw, though I’m certain the OP didn’t mean anything bad by it. He’s already got a fragile ego when it comes to this job. The OP’s wanting to be extra helpful, and her enthusiasm in passing on what she knows, was likely interpreted as condescension and taunting. Hence his bad attitude toward the OP and no one else, and his comment about the OP being disrespectful.

This whole affair should be an object lesson all around. Were I management, I would try to draw a lesson from this in how I selected my future employees and how (and by whom) they are trained. In an ideal world, everyone gets alone fine and there’s never a problem. In reality, you have to balance personalities with the skills they bring to the job, and decide how much grief and aggravation is worth their services.

Knowing what I do at this point in my life, if I found myself in the OP’s shoes before the blow-up, I would have made a point of trying to talk with the guy and get him to articulate why he was having such a problem with me, rather than letting the situation slide. A lack of success on that front could then always be brought to the boss’s attention under less difficult circumstances. We women are typically taught to be non-confrontational, but I’ve found that airing out difficulties before they get really bad is usually more productive than waiting for Vesuvius to erupt. At this point, the OP will have to accept that, unfair as it is, she is going to be associated now in the minds of management with a tough situation. It may have an impact on her own job for some time after a resolution is reached here.

As for the guy… he really ought to leave that office, and he needs to get some help in adjusting back to civilian life. His behavior was totally unacceptable.

IF the guy doesn’t lose his job over this, I will bet it’s for one of two reasons:

  1. He is related to, or is a close friend of, someone in upper management.
  2. Management is scared, rightly or not, that he will bog them down in a lawsuit saying that he was wrongfully terminated owing to a disability (PTS, etc.) for which he was not first offered treatment. The veteran angle plays to his advantage here as well, in terms of publicity.

Best wishes to the OP for everything working out in the end.

175

If pairing a “Yeah, whatever” GenXer with a former Marine isn’t a recipe for a culture clash, I don’t know what is.

No way around it, the JPM was in the wrong. Even if LVGeoGeek was flippant and not sufficiently deferential to her superior, he crossed that line in the sand. Whether he’s committed a crime or not, he’s certainly contributed to a “hostile work environment” and that is sufficient grounds for him to be shown the door.

At the very least, LVGeoGeek shouldn’t have to report to him any longer. Not sure I would demand his firing simply because I’d fear repercussions, but I certainly would demand a new reporting manager. If this isn’t part of the solution, I’d be very, very surprised.

176

I’m not offended, because this isn’t true, although it is a common misperception. Military basic training relies to some extent on tearing people down and building them back up, but that is only basic training. As I said before, in everyday military service – especially in an office setting – the behavior outlined in the OP would be considered just as inappropriate as in the civilian world.

177

My husband has provided an interesting link, with some concrete ideas of things you can do to help yourself, LV. Link to Workplace Violence article. From that article:

178

LVgeogeek’s PM’s behavior is similar to that of a past co-worker of mine.

She was the queen-B secretary of a very small law firm that I joined. The law firm was to grow, but I was the first one to come in and shatter her illusion that she was some sort of supervisor. In addition, I had greater technical skills than her and was soon involved in helping other administrative people in learning WordPerfect and other simple things. I was no great genius, but she was a very brittle, insecure person.

I later learned she was forever going to management and accusing me of “looking at her funny”, or “conspiring with others to undermine her”. She really truly believed that if I glanced at her that I was doing it with evil intent, whereas I wouldn’t even remember the offending event in question. She was quite the psycho.

She later left the firm and I then learned that she had been on diet pills the whole time.

179

Sorry about that! I wasn’t under the impression that the military did this on a routine basis, I basically thought it stopped mainly at basic training, but I had no idea that this situation wouldn’t be tolerated in the military either.

180

I dream of being a supervisor for this very reason. I would love to fire him. Twice. Out of a cannon. At the wall. Behavior like this fruitcake is all too common, and it is completely unacceptable. My boss is grossly inept, he does nothing about my abuser, even after repeated reports of his insults and threats. My bully (who has a thread on SDMB) threatened my life at 3:20 pm CST on February 13, 2007. I called the police, who said that they would send an officer if I wanted, and to call them immediately if it happened again. I didn’t have an officer come in because I just want to move on. Bullies look at “calling in backup” as a reason to turn it up a notch. Frankly, I think anyone psycho enough to threaten someone is psycho enough to follow through on that threat, so I just need to find a new job (I took this week off to search for a new job and work on my own projects). What set off my bully to the point where he threatened me? He read one of my emails to the boss where I reported his activity and unnecessary overtime. No one is weaker than he who must threaten others to get things to go his way.

Last summer, my boss had him install software on my computer that takes a screen shot every two minutes. After his threat, which revealed that he had been reading my emails, I adjusted the hours in which that program is active (it still records all of my activity), and I have several screen shots of him checking my email when he first comes in each morning. Boss has done nothing when I reported his pornography at work. (Meanwhile, I get a nasty-gram from the boss for visiting SDMB, a Christian Messageboard, and a Dukes of Hazzard site).

Firing is too kind. People like that should be getting dissected in a laboratory researching deviant behavior. Okay, I kid, but I do find bullying very perplexing, especially when the perpetrator is older than 4 1/2. What bothers me most of all is how quickly some people jump onto the Enabler Wagon and desperately search for a way to excuse it.