That’s awful and I’m sorry. Not all schools are like that, I swear. Have you thought about having her put on homebound for the rest of the year? If she has a sympathetic psychiatrist, they can write a letter and have a 504 drawn up. It may or may not be worth the bother, depending on how bad the situation is.
When the whole deal is over, I’d be tempted to write a letter to whatever school board member is most opposed to the superintendent in general. In it, I’d lay out why you left the district, with a special focus on the unwillingness to address bullying. It probably won’t help, but it could–especially if there have been other complaints.
Sexual harassment is different, obviously. It’s reasonable for all people, men and women, to expect not to be physically assaulted at work, unless there is a sexual component, in which case these things happen he said she said whatcha gonna do?
I don’t remember who it was, but someone on this board pointed out that when we talk about sexual harassment, we always make the analogue property crimes–“walking down the street with $100 bills hanging out your back pocket” or whatever. But the better analogue is physical assault: “I was hanging out with a group of guys I met at a party, and one guy misheard what I said and hauled off and punched the shit out of me”.
I grew up in a tough neighborhood and we didn’t have much bullying because bullies would be taken down quickly. They were not tolerated at all. We had a few kids who seemed to ask to be bullied and they would get beat up more than their share but they were asking for it. Even then someone would usually intervene before it went too far. Now they seem to cheer them on, very sick.
I wonder, too, if society as a whole has just become so overly sensitive and politically correct that kids are being raised to take offense at the slightest what they consider or are taught is such an affront to their identity. That doesn’t explain why they don’t have conversations about it though it seems like violence is often the first choice.
I’ve thought about it, but its pretty hard to do AP Computer Science and Spanish homebound. Plus, there is the stubborn desire to be normal, to not let it chase you away. The girls in question are in almost none of her classes.
The Super herself is actually a very nice person, and is aware. But she is in a difficult situation with her daughter - and knows it. And a difficult situation with the teachers and administrators - who no matter how much she said “hey, if my daughter is misbehaving, tell me” - well, its hard to bring in your boss’ boss into a meeting over the behavior of their child and NOT downplay it.
And since the texts are coming in from blind services - who really knows who is sending them? I have a good idea, but it isn’t like we can prove anything. The girls doing the bullying disavow any knowledge of such things.
Of course, as I said, there are bad employers out there.
I have never tolerated any sort of hostility. My current shop, where everyone is hired and trained by myself, I don’t worry about it, it doesn’t come up too often (at all, really). Other places I have managed, however, have had hostility issues between employees, and they very quickly learned I had no tolerance for it. I was observant. I saw who “started it”. It’s not that hard. Employees may think they are playing some sort of game that their managers will never figure out, but guess what, we aren’t all stupid. I have dismissed several employees over the years for hostility that was unacceptable, and counseled dozens (hundreds?) of employees that were edging into that line.
Some managers let things slide, yes, but that’s something that is changing, both voluntarily, as more of the old school bullies and bully enablers are phased out, and as lawsuits about hostile workplaces are making employers actually be proactive about such things.
So, yes, while the professional workplace isn’t perfect, and I am sure we can all point to examples of hostile environments, it is getting better, and it starts out much better than school.
Bullies hurt morale and productivity. It is often your better employees that are the victims, while it is your worst employees that are the perpetrators (not always true, but a WAG 90-95% of the time), so it’s really not that hard a choice. Even when the bully is a better performer, if he is bringing down the performance of your other employees, then it is still an easy choice.
I doubt it. Most bullies fix on something that is different about their victim, and mercilessly tease. It’s not a matter of the bully saying something that is taken wrong and the offense is unwarranted, but that the bully intentionally used as hurtful language as possible in order to de-humanize their victim. If being called a fag because of the way you walk or talk is acceptable to you (as just one quick example, I have many more.), then I guess that you may see people as overly sensitive, but I would disagree that that sort of behavior is acceptable.
I was bullied by other girls in early grade school, so girl bullying is definitely a thing. It was a very small private school where I attended kinder and first and second grade. One time a younger girl kicked me in the leg repeatedly in the gym and I did nothing - wouldn’t even look at her. I always lacked confidence and assumed that if others picked on me, it must be because I was inferior. But I think my lack of response to the kicking made that little bitch go away pretty fast - I guess she wanted me to scream or make a fuss or something? I was always tallest in my class and I was older than her so I imagine I could have kicked her butt, but I never would have even thought to try.*
In first and second grade, there were only two other girls in the class, and they were very much girl bullies to me. They’d poke holes in my notebook, belittle anything I said, try to steal my homework (the teacher did notice that one), etc. They never hit me and there was no social media back in the early to mid 70s, and from third grade on I was ignored and didn’t have many friends, but I was never bullied like that again.
It probably doesn’t seem like that severe of a bullying experience, but it has given me terrible confidence (lack thereof) issues that pursue me to this very day and have affected me negatively all my life since then.
One of the bully girls in first and second grade had divorced parents and I think her dad would always promise to come visit her and then cancel at the last minute. Maybe I was a good scapegoat for her frustrations.
*Why are there people like this? Why can’t they just leave alone people that they perceive to be “weaker” or less confident or “quiet”? This still happens in adulthood, just perhaps more subtly or in different ways than in childhood. WTF is it with the people who are always looking for blood in the water? If a quiet, socially awkward person is just BEING QUIET and not doing anything to you, why can’t you just LEAVE THEM ALONE? :mad:
I will assure you that 1) there are plenty of professional environments where this does not happen - especially when the violence is directed towards women and is “slight assault” (oh, was that your boob I just stumbled into and grabbed with my hand). 2) Not all bullying - especially towards women - be it men bullying women or women bullying women is violent. When there is no physical assault, professional organizations put up with bullying all the time. More do than don’t.
For reference, I have worked in four Fortune 500 sized companies in the past ten years, another six if you go back ten more. I have worked at levels as high as Director and as low as Systems Engineer. I have worked in law offices of 200 attorneys. Your general experience is quite different than mine
Fair enough. I suppose I was being no-true-scotsmanny, with saying"an actual professional environment", as I consider a professional environment to be places where such things are not tolerated.
So, yes, there are many environments where there are professionals that allow their workplace to be a minefield of hostility and poor morale. I would hope that by this time they are the minority, though that may be more optimism on my part than realism. I do strongly feel that at least the situation is getting better. If not, well, that sucks, and I don’t know what to do or say about that, but at least I can say that I do my part to try to improve the situation in my shop.
As to your first example of inappropriate “accidental” touching, I will agree that’s pretty hard to police and discipline, as it could have actually been accidental. Having worked in tight quarters in kitchens for most of my career, I fully admit that my hands have encountered many inappropriate areas of women’s bodies (and men’s for that matter), and entirely unintentionally. I think they probably realized that it was unintentional by how bright red my face was, but still, any one of those instances could have spelled serious trouble with an absolutely no tolerance policy, so I would look more into patterns of such behavior, and spend some time counseling, rather than just outright firing over a single offense.
As far as verbal abuse, that’s not something that is tolerable, and is easier to police. I can hear people talk. I know what they are saying. And I can very easily say that if it isn’t about work, just don’t talk about it. Then it doesn’t matter if they claim that it is innocuous or not, it is inappropriate, as it is not about work.
I suppose larger companies that have little oversight over their employees may have a harder time policing things, but even in the fortune 500 companies, you usually are supposed to have managers supervising employees.
In any case, the point of this de-rail was comparing workplace bullying to school bullying, and my point has only been that it is easier to bully in school than at work, not that such behaviors never occur at work. This is because adults have more tools at their disposal for dealing with situations than children do, and because work environments are a different dynamic, generally with better supervision, and with a desire that the workplace be efficient, which is hard when there is hostility.
In my family it never was. And in my school, bullying by the kids wasn’t acceptable either, whether they happened to be blood or not.
The strange thing is, bullying by grown-ups was (well, in my mother’s side of the family it was, and at school). One of the things that those students in my class who were bullied by the abusive teachers had in common is that all of us had parents who’d either always take the side of the teacher or were abusive themselves, sometimes both.
One of my coworkers just walked in after a meeting. There’s something which, back in December, we were told to do A. Our supervisor agreed, A. He’d sometimes ask, how are we doing it? A. Oh, ok, A. Two weeks ago he called my coworker an imbecile for not doing it B. We pointed out that the decision had been taken by the expert, and shouldn’t it be A? No, no, NO, it’s B and do it NOW! My coworker comunicated to the expert that it’s now B, as per the boss’s orders. Expert said oh? Oh well, ok, then B.
Today, the same supervisor said what? Why are you doing that without asking? How do you know it’s B and not A?
Dude is wronginnahead, but it’s his employers who are letting him get away with it. Why, I have no idea. But bullying is definitely alive and well among grown ups.