Here's the link: Bully OnLine
BullyOnline was started by Tim Field, who has single-handedly raised the profile of workplace bullying in the UK, and provides a wealth of advice for victims and employers, parents and caregivers.
The site says: "Half the population are bullied ... most only realise it when they read this."
Incomprehensible as that may be to the lucky half that have not been bullied, those of us who have will know its truth.
When things start to go badly at work, one's first reaction is to wonder what we have done wrong. Worse, our friends and colleagues also assume we've made a mistake that we could fix, if only we took the right attitude. This is how the bully gets his or her claws into their target ... you.
I lost my career, my home and my marriage to institutionalised bullying. If I made a mistake, it was being strong. But the idea of 'mistakes', with a full-blown bully, is as ridiculous as saying bison shouldn't graze where lions may roam! A bison surely is strong; the lion picks his/her target and goes for a kill ...
When I started a highly-paid job with a well-known media company, I replaced a friend of mine who'd quit because of ill-treatment. My friend tried to warn me - my thoughts, however, were along the lines that he'd perhaps been too sensitive. I'd worked in the media for years: I was used to swearing, off-colour jokes and egotistical bosses. I thought I'd handle Peter, my new boss, better than my friend had done.
I should have listened to him.
Peter, one of those Jekyll-and-Hyde characters who are all charisma on the outside, started off with run-of-the-mill sexist comments which quickly expanded to include accusations that I was a drunk, skiving off all the time and alienating clients. A fitness freak at the time, I used to go power-walking in my lunch breaks. Peter sent search parties round the bars & pubs (on expenses: he wasn't short of volunteers), to find out where I was drinking and 'rescue' me. This didn't yield any results ... but it did cement my new reputation as a secret drinker.
He took my best accounts (which I'd built up over years, in previous positions as well as this one) away from me. When I asked my clients why they'd requested a change of account handler, they told me Peter suggested it. He was the overall manager: without his approval, I couldn't deal. They were sorry, but ... My earnings began to go down because of my reduced responsibilities.
Peter frequently yelled across the floor that I was "too f***king thick to be trusted" with my work; a "stupid c*n*"; instructed his PA to wipe the hard drive of my computer - afraid of him, she did it - and gave me huge projects to complete, which he then presented as his own work.
One of Peter's neatest tricks involved taking me out to lunch or to a meeting then, while we were alone, regaling me with stories of the sexual harrassment & abuse he'd perpetrated in his earlier jobs. This was all presented as "fun". Telling him I didn't want to hear those stories, I might as well have saved my breath - he just carried on.
Peter's rages were legendary, but they were interwoven with periods of great affability. We, his team, had to gauge his mood every few hours, so we'd know how to behave. We used to phone ahead before coming into the office, to ask one another for a "weather" (= the boss's mood) report - despite Peter's highly effective campaign to divide us. He once sat us down to explain - with diagrams - his team management strategy, which boiled down to creating mutual distrust!
My team-mate famously informed me: "If you don't like being bullied, you're in the wrong job." While being bullied didn't feature in the job description, he wasn't far wrong. A culture of backstabbing, back-handing and power struggles reached all the way down from board level: Peter was certainly the most volatile of the managers, but he was not the only bully.
My mistake was standing up to him. It was widely agreed that I received the worst treatment of all his victims - in that company; let's not forget the girls he'd previously humiliated sexually! - and that I got it because I answered back. Some of the men told me they'd stopped Peter from victimising them by physically attacking him. This wasn't really an option for me, though I believed it was the only method that could work.
All through those years, my husband - tired of my endless complaints and crying about work - was convinced I merely had the wrong attitude. My friends & family offered well-meant advice on how to mollify a demanding boss. Nobody understood that, for Peter, this was sport and I was the quarry. I felt utterly alone.
Naturally, I wondered whether everyone else was right: was I "difficult"? My confidence at an all-time low, I failed to get another job. Potential employers, ringing my boss for an informal reference, were treated to a witty but slanderous summary of my supposed shortcomings. I was stuck.
My attempts to discuss the problem with HR only made my problems harder to bear. The HR director was part of management's crony cartel - everything I said was reported directly to Peter but, I later learned, never logged anywhere in HR's files. After the Freedom of Information Act, I requested my employee file. It contained two pages: my application, and an assessment form. Nothing else.
It was a bit like those nightmares where you're shouting to people, but nobody hears ...
After a family bereavement (I was refused leave, but took time off anyway), my marriage broke down and so did I. My GP gave me a six-week sick note, which meant I had to see Occupational Health for assessment. To my astonishment, the company doctor listened sympathetically! He told me stress-related conditions were the biggest cause of absence within the company, and that he'd submitted endless reports on the costs of institutional bullying - only to be branded a troublemaker.
Thanks to the doctor, I was transferred to a different team within the department. Another woman - also a feisty, experienced account handler - took my place on Peter's team. I told her that, should she ever have difficulties with Peter, I'd try to help her. She said she could handle any awkward manager ... and I must have been too sensitive. Heard that before somewhere!
Peter crossed the line with her just as our company was sold.
A new board in place, her complaint was heard by a new, impartial HR director. Unable to make sense of the conflicting accounts he was receiving, he asked her team-mates (my old colleagues) for witness to her abuse. They had been in the room with her, but said nothing. She asked me for support. I wrote a summary of my experience working for Peter. It was taken seriously.
Now the whole department closed in on me, the whistle-blower: my new manager told me of an earlier member of his team, who'd committed suicide due to workplace stress, and then asked me to call the girl I had replaced on his team. She was suffering a severe breakdown. My new boss's affectionate manner - subtly and suddenly - became sexual harrassment. He took to issuing weird threats of everything from physical violence to blackening what remained of my reputation - which he did, successfully.
Now diagnosed with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder!!), I needed loads of time off. I was given no work to do, cut out of the bonus scheme and my salary was reduced. In the office, no-one spoke to me.
By this point, my only priority was trying to hold some semblance of a life together. All my high-achieving ambitions were so far out the window, I couldn't even remember what they were. I talked to some lawyers and some union officials about formalising my complaint now there was a 'clean' board. But, all agreed, I was already too broken to pursue another stressful procedure.
It could have left me permanently ill, like my predecessor on the 'new' team.
Here's what happened in the end:
* My replacement on Peter's team negotiated a comfortable payoff, left immediately and went back to her old job.
* Peter was fired. Hurrah!
* The woman I had replaced on the 'new' team never recovered.
* The new managers gave me a wonderful new job! 6 months later, they made me redundant.
* The remaining 'old' managers were made redundant at the same time as me.
I left with six months' pay and a mental illness; Peter left with an early pension, a very large severance cheque and a hefty shareholding. So he won. But he won a little bit less than if I hadn't blown that whistle ....
* The website, Bully OnLine, provided a precious chink of sanity throughout my ordeal. If you feel like your boss is wrecking your life, I recommend it to you - urgently!!
My other advice to you is:-
1. Run like hell while you still have strength.
2. If your professional confidence has been undermined, seek out your old bosses. Mine rallied around brilliantly - too late for me but I realised, then, what a fantastic resource I'd overlooked.
3. Being targeted by bullies is not weakness: in fact, bullies often target the strong and the competent. They get a bigger kick that way.
4. If there is a union, join it. They are not very powerful these days, but they can provide great advice & worthwhile support.
5. If you get sick, get help. This is not the time for 'pride'. If anything, your pride IS your weakness - as far as the bully in your life is concerned. Be healthy!
6. When support is available - use it. Bring the bully down if you can. It probably won't stop him/her ... but it might trim their wings
Something had stopped Peter's sexual abuse: I bet it was a court case
Thank you for reading. I wrote this on another website, but felt it could be helpful to someone here one day.
If you're being bullied at work, don't think you must be imagaining it - you're not.
And, please, don't join in workplace harrassment even if it feels like harmless fun. You have probably been manipulated into it by someone else, who knows exactly what they're doing. How would you feel if the target of your teasing suicided because of the harrassment?
BullyOnline was started by Tim Field, who has single-handedly raised the profile of workplace bullying in the UK, and provides a wealth of advice for victims and employers, parents and caregivers.
The site says: "Half the population are bullied ... most only realise it when they read this."
Incomprehensible as that may be to the lucky half that have not been bullied, those of us who have will know its truth.
When things start to go badly at work, one's first reaction is to wonder what we have done wrong. Worse, our friends and colleagues also assume we've made a mistake that we could fix, if only we took the right attitude. This is how the bully gets his or her claws into their target ... you.
I lost my career, my home and my marriage to institutionalised bullying. If I made a mistake, it was being strong. But the idea of 'mistakes', with a full-blown bully, is as ridiculous as saying bison shouldn't graze where lions may roam! A bison surely is strong; the lion picks his/her target and goes for a kill ...
When I started a highly-paid job with a well-known media company, I replaced a friend of mine who'd quit because of ill-treatment. My friend tried to warn me - my thoughts, however, were along the lines that he'd perhaps been too sensitive. I'd worked in the media for years: I was used to swearing, off-colour jokes and egotistical bosses. I thought I'd handle Peter, my new boss, better than my friend had done.
I should have listened to him.
Peter, one of those Jekyll-and-Hyde characters who are all charisma on the outside, started off with run-of-the-mill sexist comments which quickly expanded to include accusations that I was a drunk, skiving off all the time and alienating clients. A fitness freak at the time, I used to go power-walking in my lunch breaks. Peter sent search parties round the bars & pubs (on expenses: he wasn't short of volunteers), to find out where I was drinking and 'rescue' me. This didn't yield any results ... but it did cement my new reputation as a secret drinker.
He took my best accounts (which I'd built up over years, in previous positions as well as this one) away from me. When I asked my clients why they'd requested a change of account handler, they told me Peter suggested it. He was the overall manager: without his approval, I couldn't deal. They were sorry, but ... My earnings began to go down because of my reduced responsibilities.
Peter frequently yelled across the floor that I was "too f***king thick to be trusted" with my work; a "stupid c*n*"; instructed his PA to wipe the hard drive of my computer - afraid of him, she did it - and gave me huge projects to complete, which he then presented as his own work.
One of Peter's neatest tricks involved taking me out to lunch or to a meeting then, while we were alone, regaling me with stories of the sexual harrassment & abuse he'd perpetrated in his earlier jobs. This was all presented as "fun". Telling him I didn't want to hear those stories, I might as well have saved my breath - he just carried on.
Peter's rages were legendary, but they were interwoven with periods of great affability. We, his team, had to gauge his mood every few hours, so we'd know how to behave. We used to phone ahead before coming into the office, to ask one another for a "weather" (= the boss's mood) report - despite Peter's highly effective campaign to divide us. He once sat us down to explain - with diagrams - his team management strategy, which boiled down to creating mutual distrust!
My team-mate famously informed me: "If you don't like being bullied, you're in the wrong job." While being bullied didn't feature in the job description, he wasn't far wrong. A culture of backstabbing, back-handing and power struggles reached all the way down from board level: Peter was certainly the most volatile of the managers, but he was not the only bully.
My mistake was standing up to him. It was widely agreed that I received the worst treatment of all his victims - in that company; let's not forget the girls he'd previously humiliated sexually! - and that I got it because I answered back. Some of the men told me they'd stopped Peter from victimising them by physically attacking him. This wasn't really an option for me, though I believed it was the only method that could work.
All through those years, my husband - tired of my endless complaints and crying about work - was convinced I merely had the wrong attitude. My friends & family offered well-meant advice on how to mollify a demanding boss. Nobody understood that, for Peter, this was sport and I was the quarry. I felt utterly alone.
Naturally, I wondered whether everyone else was right: was I "difficult"? My confidence at an all-time low, I failed to get another job. Potential employers, ringing my boss for an informal reference, were treated to a witty but slanderous summary of my supposed shortcomings. I was stuck.
My attempts to discuss the problem with HR only made my problems harder to bear. The HR director was part of management's crony cartel - everything I said was reported directly to Peter but, I later learned, never logged anywhere in HR's files. After the Freedom of Information Act, I requested my employee file. It contained two pages: my application, and an assessment form. Nothing else.
It was a bit like those nightmares where you're shouting to people, but nobody hears ...
After a family bereavement (I was refused leave, but took time off anyway), my marriage broke down and so did I. My GP gave me a six-week sick note, which meant I had to see Occupational Health for assessment. To my astonishment, the company doctor listened sympathetically! He told me stress-related conditions were the biggest cause of absence within the company, and that he'd submitted endless reports on the costs of institutional bullying - only to be branded a troublemaker.
Thanks to the doctor, I was transferred to a different team within the department. Another woman - also a feisty, experienced account handler - took my place on Peter's team. I told her that, should she ever have difficulties with Peter, I'd try to help her. She said she could handle any awkward manager ... and I must have been too sensitive. Heard that before somewhere!
Peter crossed the line with her just as our company was sold.
A new board in place, her complaint was heard by a new, impartial HR director. Unable to make sense of the conflicting accounts he was receiving, he asked her team-mates (my old colleagues) for witness to her abuse. They had been in the room with her, but said nothing. She asked me for support. I wrote a summary of my experience working for Peter. It was taken seriously.
Now the whole department closed in on me, the whistle-blower: my new manager told me of an earlier member of his team, who'd committed suicide due to workplace stress, and then asked me to call the girl I had replaced on his team. She was suffering a severe breakdown. My new boss's affectionate manner - subtly and suddenly - became sexual harrassment. He took to issuing weird threats of everything from physical violence to blackening what remained of my reputation - which he did, successfully.
Now diagnosed with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder!!), I needed loads of time off. I was given no work to do, cut out of the bonus scheme and my salary was reduced. In the office, no-one spoke to me.
By this point, my only priority was trying to hold some semblance of a life together. All my high-achieving ambitions were so far out the window, I couldn't even remember what they were. I talked to some lawyers and some union officials about formalising my complaint now there was a 'clean' board. But, all agreed, I was already too broken to pursue another stressful procedure.
It could have left me permanently ill, like my predecessor on the 'new' team.
Here's what happened in the end:
* My replacement on Peter's team negotiated a comfortable payoff, left immediately and went back to her old job.
* Peter was fired. Hurrah!
* The woman I had replaced on the 'new' team never recovered.
* The new managers gave me a wonderful new job! 6 months later, they made me redundant.
* The remaining 'old' managers were made redundant at the same time as me.
* The website, Bully OnLine, provided a precious chink of sanity throughout my ordeal. If you feel like your boss is wrecking your life, I recommend it to you - urgently!!
My other advice to you is:-
1. Run like hell while you still have strength.
2. If your professional confidence has been undermined, seek out your old bosses. Mine rallied around brilliantly - too late for me but I realised, then, what a fantastic resource I'd overlooked.
3. Being targeted by bullies is not weakness: in fact, bullies often target the strong and the competent. They get a bigger kick that way.
4. If there is a union, join it. They are not very powerful these days, but they can provide great advice & worthwhile support.
5. If you get sick, get help. This is not the time for 'pride'. If anything, your pride IS your weakness - as far as the bully in your life is concerned. Be healthy!
6. When support is available - use it. Bring the bully down if you can. It probably won't stop him/her ... but it might trim their wings
Something had stopped Peter's sexual abuse: I bet it was a court case Thank you for reading. I wrote this on another website, but felt it could be helpful to someone here one day.
If you're being bullied at work, don't think you must be imagaining it - you're not.
And, please, don't join in workplace harrassment even if it feels like harmless fun. You have probably been manipulated into it by someone else, who knows exactly what they're doing. How would you feel if the target of your teasing suicided because of the harrassment?
