Ways to deal with bullying (that work)

In My Humble Opinion
21

Sometimes violence really is the answer, but other times just finding the right situation works wonders too.

While in 4th grade, I was the only girl in my class (school class, not grade) who was not part of this “clique” thing they had going on. I was not overweight, I did wear glasses, but since I wasnt wearing makeup yet or friends with any of them anymore, they decided that they could pick on me. For the whole year I was their sole target, and it was not as if I could get away, since we were in the same class all day long. So, I decided to try and outsmart them. I had told my teacher and others that they were teasing me mercilessly, but they all were like “these girls are angels who would never do anything like this! How dare you accuse them?!” So I managed to get them to bully me, pull my hair, pick on me, exc. right infront of this whole bunch of teachers. Our gym was a seperate building jutting into the playground, so we stood behind a corner of one of the popular teacher grouping areas. Everything they said to me was heard loud and clear, and the timing was impeccable. As soon as one of the girls had grabbed my hair, the teachers looked around the corner to see what was happening. After all of them had been suspended, barred from recess for a few months, and their parents called, they left me alone.

Violence is probably the easiest answer, but when you are short and weak as hell violence really will not get you anywhere. Sometimes just using your brains and getting the bullys themselves to screw up within hearing/eye distance of the authorities, that can help your case too.

Although, beating the crap out of those girls would have been fun as hell.

22

The advice I can give for workplace bullying is to document everything in case it escalates.

I used to work in an office where one employee would take her problems out on a couple other people. One of them decided to keep a notebook of all the little petty abuses she’d have to take, and asked me and one other person to do the same as neutral parties. The three of us took our notebooks to our manager’s bosses and set up a meeting to discuss this person and her actions. The bully was confronted with this documentation and told to clean up her act or else. It was strongly hinted that she could expect a reference if she left voluntarily. She quit a couple weeks later when one of our immediate managers started auditing the petty cash accounts.

Or you could do what my friend Heath did, and carry around a pocket cassette recorder to pick up verbal harassment. His tormentors ended up in really deep doodoo because it was no longer “he said, he said”; there was actual recorded proof. Check with your state and employers before you do that, though.

Robin