Workplace Bullying - Your Experiences

[tdn]

@Perciful

If it is equally as bad to be the only man. If there is bullying, of what kind. Any other insights to be the only man. I’m sure it goes both ways. Is it more of a problem to be the only man or the only woman?

In the case I told in my first post, it was led by a woman and followed by another woman, and there was another guy who mostly just stayed out of it.

At one job the store was owned by a woman and the staff was mostly women, and most of them lesbians. They were mostly very nice to me and the other men there, but I sometimes felt like an outsider. There was a definite “men are evil” vibe to the place, often from the customers. One customer was asking how to hook up her VCR and I explained male and female plugs to her. She took great offense at the sexist terms I was using.

Over the years working at my current job I am often the only man in the office, with anywhere from 10 to 20 women here. They are generally very friendly, but there’s a core group that tends to get cliquish and exclusive. They tend to be young.

Only in the first case did it approach anything that might be called “bullying.” But I’ve never gotten anything like that from male coworkers.

[Cat_Fight]

@Green_Rosetta

I’ve never been on the other end, other than when I worked with some extremely volatile twenty-something women when I was waitressing. I do kind of worry that I’m inadvertently on the bullying end, though- we just hired a bunch of new people at work, and those of us that have worked there since the place opened are very used to cursing, making innuendos, etc. (we work in the arts and it is an extremely laid back environment.) While we never say anything really distasteful, and most of the new people are just as terrible as the rest of us, I do worry that some people might find it distressing but are worried we’d all think they were prudes if they brought it up.

I know how you feel. I’ve always made a point of telling interns and underlings that if they ever do feel uncomfortable or offended I want them to say something to me, honestly, and I promise it will never be held against them. Then I open the floodgates…

[Cat_Whisperer]

@msmith537

“Bullied”? What are people? Twelve years old? How are people bullied at work? Is someone pushing you down on the playground and stealing your lunch money? <snip>

From this site:

What is workplace bullying?
Bullying is usually seen as acts or verbal comments that could ‘mentally’ hurt or isolate a person in the workplace. Sometimes, bullying can involve negative physical contact as well. Bullying usually involves repeated incidents or a pattern of behaviour that is intended to intimidate, offend, degrade or humiliate a particular person or group of people. It has also been described as the assertion of power through aggression.

Bullying is a problem in the workplace because people might not be in a position to respond to the bullying (as with a supervisor who is bullying them) or not of a nature to respond to it (and I’m a firm believer that you should be allowed to just do your job at work; you shouldn’t have to fight with bullies every day just to make a living).

[Alice_The_Goon]

I considered that a rhetorical question considering the asker. Some men want to believe that only women bully each other, that it’s something that’s beneath men. Of course, most of us know that bullying is an equal opportunity problem- my worst personal experience of bullying in the workplace was at the hands of a man.

[msmith537]

@Alice_The_Goon

I considered that a rhetorical question considering the asker.

If you make a lot of comments like that to people where you work, it’s not surprising you encounter a lot of hostility.

@Alice_The_Goon

Some men want to believe that only women bully each other, that it’s something that’s beneath men. Of course, most of us know that bullying is an equal opportunity problem- my worst personal experience of bullying in the workplace was at the hands of a man.

I don’t think that’s true about “bullying” being something that is beneath men. I think that bullying takes different forms depending on whether it involves men or women.

For example, in the book “Liars Poker” about bond traders at Solomon Brothers in the 80s, the author describes how traders would get extra long phone cords so they could throw their headsets at the junior traders.

Women would just exclude someone from being invited to lunch because apparently that is the most emotionally devestating thing you can do to someone.

@Cat Fight

I know how you feel. I’ve always made a point of telling interns and underlings that if they ever do feel uncomfortable or offended I want them to say something to me, honestly, and I promise it will never be held against them. Then I open the floodgates…

You start sobbing uncontrollably? I don’t understand.

[Chimera]

No, she has literal flood gates at work, behind which she stores several thousand gallons of water. Piss her off, the floodgates are opened and you’re washed right the hell out the door!

The Janitors are starting to get annoyed.

[Carol_the_Impaler]

I would trade a week of vacation for literal flood gates at work.

[MeanOldLady]

I was sexually harassed by my direct manager when I worked at a car dealership. Surprise, Surprise! 20 year old girl surrounded by men gets sexually harassed! I was surprised that the sexual harassment was from my direct manager, though. I snitched to HR. He ended up getting fired, but I’m pretty sure it had more to do with his suckage as a manager than his harassing me.

That’s not what I came in here to share, though. I’m here to share the story of the hellacious bitch I discussed in this thread. The only word that describes her better than “bully” is “cunt.” She deliberately makes your job harder once she decides she doesn’t like you, and her reasons for not liking you are far beyond me, considering two of her victims are some of the sweetest people I’ve met, one of them has no personality at all, so I can’t imagine how she can offend anyone, one is nice until provoked, and the other [del]is[/del] was me. She’s screamed in multiple people’s faces, two of whom were reduced to tears. A colleague of mine theorizes the woman is bitter, and doesn’t take well to young women (25-35, she’s around 50) telling her what to do, and points out that all of her victims have been young women. My theory is she’s a cunt.

I’ll skip the gory details of each occurrence, but suffice to say that she frequently enough goes out of her way to make your job difficult, and is unprofessionally hostile, that it was not hard for me to maintain a list of specific incidents. One day there was an epic clusterfuck that set me over the edge. It was such a spectacular display of “Watch Me Use The One Little Bit of Power I Have in My Shitty Job to Ruin Your Day,” coupled with yelling at me, slamming files on my desk and pointing her fat fucking fingers in my face (yes, the bitch pointed her fingers at my face while screaming at me), that fighting my temptation to punch her in the throat was barely containable. After the dust-up, I walked into my manager’s office, mad as all hell, with list of offenses on hand and declared “This shit stops today.” My manager went and did manager stuff, and it was supposed to stop, but the next day, the woman returned to discuss some follow-up items in full on bitch mode. After she was done, I didn’t even answer her questions. I said “Please explain why it’s acceptable to speak to me that way.” She fumbled around with her words, offered up some bullshit about being frustrated, and I repeated, “That’s fine. Please explain why it is acceptable to speak to me that way.” Of course, she had nothing, and stomped off. She’s seriously 12 years old.

So I went back to my manager and said, “That shit was supposed to stop yesterday. Why is it continuing?” I explained that I don’t wish to go to some HR bullshit, or sensitivity training, or team-building crap. I don’t need her to like me, I don’t even need her to be nice to me; I need her to stop making it impossible for me to do my job. So it ends up getting escalated to the gods, which is a shame, because my complaint boiled down to “Don’t let your cuntiness get in the way of me doing my job,” and she was eventually strong-armed into giving some BS apology. She tried to work in her feelings, and rehash the specifics of each deal, and I wasn’t interested in any of it. What I needed to end were her efforts to prevent me from getting my work done to stop, and for the childish disrespect to stop. She reeled, as though she were honestly taken aback that I mentioned the disrespect would have to end as well. What disrespect? I said, “You yelled in my face,” and she tried to tell me she was so overwrought with emotion that she didn’t recall doing so. “Well do you remember pointing your fingers in my face?” I asked her. Of course not. Bullshit, yes she does, she’s done it before to other people.

So after the epic clusterfuck and the forced apology, it’s been night and day working with her. Everything I need from her gets done quickly, she has now refamiliarized herself with basic, professional courtesy, and everyone gets their jobs done. She’s still a bitch, and I’m almost certain that she still doesn’t like me, but that’s irrelevant. We’re all grown ups here, we don’t have to like each other, but we need to work together. She still bullies other people, but not me.

So that was my encounter with bullying. Sorry for the ramblingness.

[Cat_Whisperer]

@MeanOldLady

<snip>A colleague of mine theorizes the woman is bitter, and doesn’t take well to young women (25-35, she’s around 50) telling her what to do, and points out that all of her victims have been young women. My theory is she’s a cunt.<snip>

I think you’re both right.

[msmith537]

@MeanOldLady

That’s not what I came in here to share, though. I’m here to share the story of the hellacious bitch I discussed in this thread. The only word that describes her better than “bully” is “cunt.” She deliberately makes your job harder once she decides she doesn’t like you, and her reasons for not liking you are far beyond me, considering two of her victims are some of the sweetest people I’ve met, one of them has no personality at all, so I can’t imagine how she can offend anyone, one is nice until provoked, and the other [del]is[/del] was me. She’s screamed in multiple people’s faces, two of whom were reduced to tears. A colleague of mine theorizes the woman is bitter, and doesn’t take well to young women (25-35, she’s around 50) telling her what to do, and points out that all of her victims have been young women. My theory is she’s a cunt.

That would describe my last boss except that her victims also included any of the men in our group. I’ll blow off someone occassionally getting all “snappy” or whatever under stress. But she seemed to intentionally berate and threaten people, make everyone’s job difficult or say things designed to stir up shit. From what I could tell, the group had put up with her for years and were so afraid of her.

Anyhow, after about 2 months at this job, she started to get in my face and berate me in front of our group of managers and directors. Something about some TPS report apparently I should just “know” that I was supposed to provide her. Well, I’ll have none of that so I got right back in her face in front of her whole team. That seemed to shut her up and she sulked out of the room.

For good measure, I sent an email and a meeting request to our HR rep documenting every incident of abuse or professional neglect or incompetance I had witnessed between her and myself or any member of my team.

And that was pretty much it. For the most part she never bothered me again. A few months later she “retired” from the company.

Although she did seem to pick on this one guy up until the very end. I’m like “dude…it’s her last week. Just tell her to fuck off.”

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@Perciful

A month before court my attorney dropped me. I went to pick up my documentation at his office and his At Lit-em told me…

Nitpick: ad litem.

[Omar_Little]

I guess sexual harrassment could be considered a subset of workplace bullying, as it is so broadly defined in the OP’s article. But at least in the U.S. there are legal protections against sexual harrassment and even some of the other incidences of workplace bullying described in the OP article. I mean if murder is included in the definition of workplace bullying there is definitely a legal protection against that!

My company has a respectful workplace policy and provides many avenues to report when you do not feel that you are being treated respectfully, (i.e. supervisor, HR department, legal department, compliance department, etc.)

[MeanOldLady]

@msmith537

From what I could tell, the group had put up with her for years and were so afraid of her.

Seems like seniority has given some people a free pass to be awful. This woman has worked for the company for 30 years, and that apparently allows her to terrorize everyone who hasn’t. They’re all afraid of her, bah.

[Cat_Fight]

@msmith537

You start sobbing uncontrollably? I don’t understand.

No no. Venom. And a bit of spittle.

[Perciful]

@tdn

In the case I told in my first post, it was led by a woman and followed by another woman, and there was another guy who mostly just stayed out of it.

At one job the store was owned by a woman and the staff was mostly women, and most of them lesbians. They were mostly very nice to me and the other men there, but I sometimes felt like an outsider. There was a definite “men are evil” vibe to the place, often from the customers. One customer was asking how to hook up her VCR and I explained male and female plugs to her. She took great offense at the sexist terms I was using.

Over the years working at my current job I am often the only man in the office, with anywhere from 10 to 20 women here. They are generally very friendly, but there’s a core group that tends to get cliquish and exclusive. They tend to be young.

Only in the first case did it approach anything that might be called “bullying.” But I’ve never gotten anything like that from male coworkers.

That would bother me and I’m a woman! Male and female plugs to the VCR! Please… I don’t like the man vs. woman or woman vs. man bit in the work place. We are adults and we are there to work and that involves getting along and team work. It sounds like you are a team player.

I had two long term jobs in my life and was the only woman in both because of the field of work I was in. The first company was a very nice environment that allowed no discrimination. My second was in a different state and that was the one where I endured a lot. I learned a lot during those jobs and I would say today that it has helped me overall to be a more tolerant person.

Being in a different line of work now where I work for myself I find it interesting to hear the different stories from each side of the fence.

[Scumpup]

When I got hired for my first teaching job, it was over the candidate the building principal wanted. He took it out on me for most of that year. I got called into his office on a daily basis (twice in the same day on one memorable occasion) for him to rant and rave at me. It was always over vague “we have heard” bullshit too. I was just at the breaking point and planning to go across his desk at him on the next summons, when one of the building union reps finally stepped in. He backed off and completely ignored me, to the point of refusing to acknowledge my presence in the room, for the rest of the year.
Nearly thirty years later I am now a union officer. In retrospect, the officers of that local did a shoddy job of informing new members what their rights were as an employee and a union member. I should not have been in that office unrepresented for even a single reprimand, much less dozens of them over a period of months.

[msmith537]

@MeanOldLady

Seems like seniority has given some people a free pass to be awful. This woman has worked for the company for 30 years, and that apparently allows her to terrorize everyone who hasn’t. They’re all afraid of her, bah.

The woman at my firm was there for about 30 years as well. As one of my friends put it, “think about how much you hate that place and you’ve only been there a few months. She’s been there her entire working life. Imagine how pissed off she is!”
I was reading in an industry trade publication that workplace bullies are more or less evenly split between men and women, but women are the victims of bullying about 70% of the time.

[Chimera]

My first Security job, when I became a Supervisor, they tried to play some of those games with me.

Pulled into a meeting (which I was assured was NOT a ‘disciplinary meeting’) and read the riot act over something incredibly stupid. Given very questionable and possibly illegal advise about how I SHOULD have acted rather than what I did. Then given a ‘final written warning’ because I argued my point with them.

Took to HR, the warning was tossed out immediately as being completely out of line. I was also assured that I handled the original incident properly and that, as I stated, the advice I was given was questionable at best, illegal at worst.

But it was just an attempt to bully me out of the job because the boss decided that he didn’t want me there anymore (because I wouldn’t discipline people he didn’t like for petty things when he wouldn’t punish his favorites for far worse behavior.)

[WarmNPrickly]

Workplace bullying is indeed a serious problem. It’s doubly a problem, because people in a position to do something about it most often just tell the victim to “grow up”. The typical response is to tell the victim that if he/she would just ignore them, it would go away. Of course, anybody that has ever been in this position can tell you that this bit of pop psychology is worse than nonsense, but a nudge and a wink to the perpetrators.

There are many ways that bullying can take form, and I think part of the reason it is becoming more prevalent is due to the internet. Social networking makes coordinating and spreading rumors very effective. It becomes very easy to mislead the people in charge. As good as anyone may be at their job, it is doubtful that they never make any mistakes. If you want to make someone look bad, then simply watch them and draw attention to every little mistake. Leave some broken equipment in their area, and it looks like the victim also broke that. It wont be too long before the victim is simply recognized to be incompetent.

This is particularly a problem when at first the victim doesn’t know they are a victim. One guy I used to work with used to hold a vial of ethanedithiol behind my wife as a prank. I had been a victim of this prick for years, and she and I had just started dating. Ethanedithiol is an extremely stinky chemical, so she would smell it quickly and complain to find him giggling behind her. To her it was just him being stupid. After a few times, she decided to get him back by doing the same to him. But the instant she did it, he turned around and knocked the vial out of her hands. Now the smell was so bad that he and his friend complained loudly and got the boss and the EHS and made it a big issue. So she gets blamed for something he started. Had she known, she would have reported it to the boss the instant that he started it instead of treating it like a prank between colleagues.

This type of egging her on was pretty par-for-the-course until she finally took my advice to simply not have anything to do with them. The point of ignoring them isn’t to get them to leave you alone, it’s to take at least some control of the situation out of their hands. The next step is to get control into your hands, and that is very difficult in situations that aren’t politically expedient. The victim needs help of others, and as long as people are falling for that “ignore it and it will go away” garbage, help is very difficult to find. These days its usually the response that gets punished even when there is clear history, and that is the horseshit that needs to change.

[Who_me_1]

There have been attempts to bully me, I tended to just fight back.

I once got another supervisor fired for not doing his job and the other supervisors were upset with me. Didn’t faze me… when my supervisors got in the act I went to their bosses and was transferred somewhere where I wanted to be.

In my present job, my former boss was a bully. My present boss always knew when my former boss was talking on the phone with me because of all the yelling. No real problem there either because my ex-boss’s boss hated him more than I did.