[acb-hsp] When Bullies Go to Work

[J.Rayl]

Hi.  Donna, I am soooo glad you work in a place where you are accepted and 
where, it seems, for the most part, things work well.  I never got into 
office gossip either, however I think this article explains well why I was 
bullied when I was.  I was a very hardworker, loved my job and often said 
so, and was very well-liked by my colleagues and clients--who often said so, 
hung out with me and in my office.  And my boss hated that with a passion!
However, unlike many who are bullied, I didn't accept it, and most assuredly 
do not now.  I tolerated and accepted abuse and bullying to the hilt as a 
child--from staff and other children for ten years.  I finally decided, 
after my father died and they could no longer use him as a threat against 
me, that no one but no one would ever abuse or bully me ever again, and I 
fought back--but very, very aggressively, because I didn't know the 
difference in aggression and assertiveness.  Well, I ended up in several 
more abusive / bullying relationships, and I finally learned the difference. 
Now, and for the past approximate 15 or so years, no more.  Doesn't matter 
to me whether it is at work, email list or relationship--isn't happening. 
One doesn't have to like me, and I do not particularly care, but in my 
presence, which includes my computer, I will be respected because I deserve 
it, and because I respect others, period.

I'll never forget when my boss, in his office, threw my Personnel folder 
with my documentation on the floor and told me to pick it up.  I stood up, 
told him our meeting was obviously over, walked out and went to my office, 
documented what had happened and added that to my very thick folder which 
went to my home.  We all heard him roar how I'd be fired as I calmly walked 
down the hall.  I was--several years later and I got Unemployment, filed a 
complaint which I eventually won and simply started my own business.  He was 
also terminated not long after---for other things.
I haven't a clue who picked up the papers off the  floor but I kneel only to 
my God, most certainly not to some man..

Jessie
www.facebook.com/Eaglewings10
www.pathtogrowth.org

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Donna Rose" <wild-rose at sbcglobal.net>
To: "Discussion list for ACB human service professionals" <acb-hsp at acb.org>
Sent: Saturday, March 10, 2012 10:12 AM
Subject: Re: [acb-hsp] When Bullies Go to Work


Me too Jessie.  I work at a very good place now, however, I don't get into
the office gossip.  Some of the people who do are very unhappy.  I think
this employer is the best for which I have ever worked.  I have done some
radical things sometimes to change the system and I was even slightly
disciplined for it once, but even that time my actions created change.  In
another setting I could have been bullied over this stuff.  I got enough of
that as a child.  Back then I tried to insulate myself from it by ignoring
my bullies.  I may have said this before, but I often wonder what was going
on in the houses of kids who became bullies.  It must have been terrible for
them.  I don't believe evil is inherent, but maybe I am wrong.




Go Bravely,
Donna Rose, LMSW

"computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they
make it easier to do don't need to be done."
-Andy Rooney 1919-2011
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "J.Rayl" <thedogmom63 at frontier.com>
To: "Discussion list for ACB human service professionals" <acb-hsp at acb.org>
Sent: Saturday, March 10, 2012 8:13 AM
Subject: Re: [acb-hsp] When Bullies Go to Work


> Hi.  Greatarticle.  I work with people who are referred by their EAP
> (employer Assistance Program) and often, this is exactly what is going on
> with them--being bullied at work.  This is one reason it is essential to
> work with bullies as children, because child bullies grow up to be adult
> bullies.  Its a personality thing.  And, having been there--victim of the
> bully, both as a child and adult employee, its one of the most unpleasant
> places you want to find yourself.
>
> Jessie Rayl
> thedogmom63 at frontier.com
> www.facebook.com/Eaglewings10
> www.pathtogrowth.org
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "peter altschul" <paltschul at centurytel.net>
> To: "Acbhsp" <acb-hsp at acb.org>; <gmail.com at mail2.acb.org>
> Sent: Friday, March 09, 2012 8:59 PM
> Subject: [acb-hsp] When Bullies Go to Work
>
>
> When Bullies Go To Work
>  Mary Elizabeth Williams, Salon March 8, 2012
>  My friend Dennisinin remembers the exact moment he knew he'd
> had enough.  Enough of the "nonstop nagging and ostracizing and
> accusing" that had become his weekday routine.  He was standing
> on the platform of the subway station at Union Square, leaning
> out toward the tracks to see if the train was approaching.  "And
> I thought, if I don't pull back, if I stay here like this, so
> many problems will be solved."
>  Dennis' tormenter? Not a schoolyard thug shaking him down for
> lunch money, but a high-ranking executive in one of the largest
> financial institutions in the country.  When the mean kids of
> your childhood grow up, they don't all evolve into self-aware,
> contrite adults Sometimes, they just move from the playground to
> the corner office.
>  Dennis says that his problems began the day he dared to point
> out a flaw in his supervisor's report during a meeting.  From
> there, he was swiftly taken off a project he'd been immersed in
> and moved to one "I literally didn't know anything about." He was
> also, unlike the other members of his team, billed for taking the
> company's car service after working late one night.  "They told
> me I didn't have to work overtime and accused me of malingering,"
> he says.  But what sticks with him now, long after he's left, are
> the sly humiliations and social ostracizations.  Like when he
> broke a toe and couldn't wear business shoes, he was sent up to
> the vice president's office and made to show him his swollen,
> purple foot.
>  "They'd call meetings and not tell me," he says.  "I'd see them
> going into the conference room without me.  They'd go out for
> lunch afterward and not include me." His department abruptly
> banished office birthday parties in March, and resumed them in
> May.  "My birthday is in April," he explains.  Unlike the guy in
> his department who a year earlier leaped to his death out a
> window, Dennis, fortunately, got out in time.  By then his hair
> was turning gray.  He was having self-destructive thoughts on the
> subway platform.  And so even though it was the height of a
> recession, "I went in and I quit without having another job," he
> says.
>  "There's exclusion, there's cliques -- the same as school
> bullying," says Cheryl Dellasega, a relational aggression expert
> who's written "Mean Girls Grown Up" and "When Nurses Hurt
> Nurses." But unlike school bullying, she says, the issue is still
> not widely addressed.  "There's a definite lack of awareness.
> People are very surprised when they think about these things
> happening in the workplace." Yet it's all around us -- a 2010
> workplace bullying study found that 35 percent of workers say
> they have experienced bullying firsthand and another 15 percent
> report witnessing it.
>  It happened to Nicole, who worked for two years in the
> marketing division of a fashion company.  She sensed the
> organization might be a less than great fit when she didn't wear
> makeup to work one day -- and someone said to me, "What's wrong
> with your face?" Before long, she says her boss would "wait till
> I left the office, ask for changes on work, and expect them
> before I'd returned." And when she returned to the office after
> several days off, she says, "Then my boss really started turning
> on me, not giving me work.  I got a written warning about my
> attitude.  My boss would litter her emails with smiley faces, and
> I'd get called into the office and told that my emails were too
> bfrosty." I was in complete shock.  I'm a really tough cookie,"
> Nicole says.  "I went to school for business.  And I started to
> have panic attacks at work."
>  For Beth, who worked for a cosmetics company, bullying stress
> hit her in the gut.  She got off on the wrong foot when her aunt
> died on her first day at the job.  "I told my boss I had to leave
> and she said, `Well what other days are you taking off?`" After
> that, she says, it got worse.  "If I was leaving at 5:45, she'd
> say, `Just because I leave at 5:45, that's not a green light for
> you to leave." And when she had to take time off for surgery, her
> boss asked, `Can you change it? We have all these conference
> calls coming up; you're going to have to do this from home." Beth
> says, "When HR put me on disability, she went ballistic."
>  After that, "She would yell at me in front of other people.
> Having worked on Wall Street, I've been yelled at and screamed
> at, but this was bullying like I've never seen.  I got yelled at
> in the hallway one day and almost threw up at work." And when
> Beth complained to HR, she says she was told, "Isn't it a little
> early to not be getting along with your co-workers?" Beth was
> able to set up a safety net consulting gig and jumped ship, but
> the scars of the experience run deep.  "I felt so rejected," she
> says.  "I have yet to update my LinkedIn profile because I'm so
> terrified of the idea of those people looking at it."
>  Dennis, Nicole and Beth worked in different industries in
> different parts of the country.  Yet in many ways they all fit
> the profile of a workplace target.  Dellasega says office bullies
> tend to have an "inner lack of confidence that causes them to
> lash out" -- something a competitive workplace feeds on
> exquisitely.  So who do they look for in the pecking order? "The
> most thoroughly competent person," says Dr.  Gary Namie of the
> Workplace Bullying Institute.  "The person is well-liked, has
> empathy, is ethical, and so has whistle-blower potential, and
> doesn't want to get involved in office politics.  They all say,
> "I loved my job.  I just wanted to be left alone to do it." They
> can't believe this happened to them.  What distinguishes a target
> from a bully-proof person is the target thinks, it must be me."
>  Part of what makes workplace bullying so insidious is that it's
> so deeply entrenched in the corporate cultures where it
> flourishes.  It's not just one jerk -- it's a whole department of
> sycophants and terrorized underlings.  As Liza, who works in
> graphic design, says, "One of my bosses likes to throw paperwork
> on the floor so we have to get on our knees.  I commonly see a
> reaction of, `That's just how he is,` or `He's just having a bad
> day,` when an incident occurs." Namie says this is common.  "The
> whole group adopts the practice out of survival and fear, and
> over time it becomes the norm and the bullying becomes
> institutionalized.  It's about loyalty," he says.  "Once you
> start promoting people for that kind of behavior, you've sent the
> message."
>  The stigma of being the unpopular kid in the lunchroom, of
> playing what Nicole calls the "emotional Russian roulette" of the
> workweek can wear a person down and wreak havoc on a person's
> health.  Unlike bullied kids, Namie says, "Adults are not nearly
> as resilient.  When they're devastated, recovery is so hard." If
> you love what you do and you take pride in it, it's traumatic to
> spend your days among people who undermine your confidence and
> tell you you're bad at it.  "Throughout every single week -- 
> sometimes every day -- they would point out something wrong I'd
> done.  And the constant phrase was, "You should have known,`"
> says Dennis.  "It bothers me to this day."
>  In a brutal economy, the options aren't always as easy as
> simply walking out and going somewhere nicer.  And the toxic
> workplace has been around since long before the first scribes got
> their butts chewed out for sloppy papyrus work.  But it's
> heartening that we're beginning to make strides to raise
> awareness and make the workplace less toxic.  "We're focusing on
> prevention; we're doing seminars on civility," Cheryl Dellasega
> says.  "Employers have to be more proactive now," because
> "bullying impacts on productivity." Statistics are hard to come
> by because targets themselves don't always connect the dots
> between their absenteeism-causing migraines and ulcers and their
> aggressive colleagues, but Dellasega says at least 5 percent of
> workers say they've deliberately not gone in to work because of
> stress there.
>  Work can be stressful.  Colleagues can be difficult.  It's
> sometimes easy to chalk it up to a high-pressure business or a
> prickly supervisory style, to suffer in silence and chalk it up
> to the nature of the industry.  But just like school or family,
> your job isn't supposed to give you headaches or high blood
> pressure or anxiety attacks or suicidal thoughts.  If it is,
> there's something seriously wrong.  As Namie says, "Did you ever
> wake up on a weekday and say, `Today's the day I deserve to be
> humiliated?`" And if you didn't in grade school, why would you
> believe it now?
>  stinin Some names and identifying details have been changedst
>  ininB plus Alterationet Mobile Edition
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