Bullying isn’t just confined to teens; adults in the workplace are targeted, too
I recently met a remarkable woman who has a lot to say about a kind of adult bullying that hits straights as well as LGBTS, that hurts men as well as women, that harms older and less connected workers the most, and that is so pervasive it’s called “The Silent Epidemic.”
Esque Walker, who lives in Corsicana and drove up to Dallas recently to give a Saturday morning presentation on workplace bullying, has an undergraduate degree in health information management, a masters in healthcare/health information management and a doctorate in public policy and administration.
She also has a score of certifications and areas of expertise.
She has been working diligently for the passage of the Texas Healthy Workplace Bill, authored by Dr. David Yamada of the Workplace Bullying Institute. It’s hard going, as you can imagine.
So far, Dr. Walker has been unable to even get a meeting with Gov. Rick Perry. Perhaps he is too busy campaigning. More likely, if his many aides have put her name and credentials before him, he has retreated into his good-hairyness.
Remember: He scraped through Texas A&M with Ds; she has a Ph.D.
But the governor is not the only impediment to getting this bill in place. So far, Dr. Walker and her associates have spoken with a great many Texas state senators and representatives. Not one has agreed to sponsor the bill.
Dr. Walker was herself the target of workplace bullying some years ago. But instead of simply taking the abuse — as most women and many men have done over the years — she aligned herself with others who understood the issues involved.
So, what are the issues?
To begin, Dr. Walker asserts that adult bullying is based on the bully’s need for power and control. It’s closely linked with competitiveness; the bully may resent the target’s appearance, education, personality or any number of facets of the other person’s being. He or she definitely does not want the target to advance.
So how do you know you are targeted, assuming the bully does not actually taunt or threaten you, as happens so often to children and teens?
You start with power disparity; the bully may have a higher status, longer tenure or perhaps corporate protectors to give him or her a sense of strength.
Then you look at four other criteria: repetition, duration, intensity and escalation.
Workplace bullying, says Dr. Walker, usually plays out in a predictable way. First, the bully criticizes you or gets someone above you in the pecking order to do so. Next, the bully involves others, usually four to six people who may see you as a threat or just want to curry favor with the boss.
Then, no matter what you do, it is not enough or not good enough, and coworkers are not allowed to “help” you. Eventually you are fired — after being told, “You are not a team player.”
Here’s how it looks by the numbers:
• 62 percent of bullies are men (who may bully other men, straight women or, of course, LGBTs).
• 58 percent of targets are women.
• 18 percent of adult suicides in the European Union are attributed to workplace bullying.
• An estimated 1 million Texans are bullied at work every year.
As the economy has worsened, pushing out older workers has become the norm; counselors report the escalation, although putting a number to the pain is virtually impossible.
So what to do if you are the target?
First, document everything, with specifics of person, time, place and comment or event. Second, do not go to your organization’s human resources person or department; HR works for the company and could care less about you.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or your union representative — if applicable — can help; the latter may be especially important in education and medicine, where power disparities and bullying are common.
The Workplace Bullying Institute (WorkPlaceBullying.org) publishes a newsletter and other materials that can offer insight plus specifics. The Dallas Public Library has books by Gary Namie and Ruth Namie, Ph.D.’s known for their groundbreaking research and writing on workplace “jerks, weasels and snakes.”
And of course Out & Equal has done and continues doing great work on behalf of our community.
Final thoughts: The worst that can happen is that Texas will continue to allow vast amounts of cruelty in offices, factories, fields and stores. The best that could happen is that our next Legislature will pass the Healthy Workplace Bill, recognizing the problem, mandating anti-bullying education, and allowing victims to sue.
Meanwhile, if a workplace bully is making you frightened and depressed, find a counselor in whom you can confide. And don’t wait ’til tomorrow. Do it today.
Phyllis Guest is a longtime activist on political and LGBT issues and is a member of Stonewall Democrats of Dallas.
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition November 18, 2011.
Thanks for your worthwhile article. As someone who was the target of a bully at St .Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise, Idaho for over 2 and a half years, I want to especially affirm two of the points you made. One is to keep a detailed record of all the bullying incidents. This record will be especially valuable as documentation of the problem. The second point is to not expect any help from Human Resources. I tried to report the problem to an HR manager and he responded by indicating that he wasn’t interested in hearing my story. Later when I was diagnosed with PTSD as a result of the bullying, and reported it to him, he responded by threatening to terminate me. I had to eventually leave my 30-year employment there and get a new job elsewhere. I also was on medication for two years and counseling for six year. St. Alphonsus is a part of the Trinity Health care system headquartered in Novi, Michigan. I suspect that bullying is problem throughout the whole system. If interested you can read more about my experiences on my blog “the Cambium Level” at http://www.leonardnolt.blogspot.com or simple place my name in google with bullying as this: “Leonard Nolt” + “bullying” Keep up the good work. Thanks.
I am very surprised that I actually found web sites under this topic. I am a victim of workplace bully. I deal with it every single day, five days a week. I sometimes have one good day out those weeks when the bullies are not working. I work at a casino in Niagara Falls NY and I have been dealing with this problem for 31/2 years. At has taken a toll on me. I am so agrrivated by the end of the day that I end up taking it out on my family at home. I feel bad too because, I don’t want to bring them down too. I am a pit clerk at the casino, I work with table games. Pit Clerk is like data entry clerk. I enter data in the computer for table games. I enter what is called table fills for the pit managers when they are low on chips. I also issue markers to credit players, that is when a customer wants credit from the casino, it’s kind like having a credit card. The job is easy but, some employees make it difficutl to work with. The two employees that I have the most problems wiith are two female pit managers. Actually the one pit manager is a duel rate pit manager. Some days, she is a floor supervisor. The other pit manager is a full time manager. They like to make my work environment a living hell. I know when they are talking about me because, they will look over at me and I will catch them laughing at me, like idiots. Of course, I can’t hear what they are saying because it’s too loud in there. When they are handing me paper work like, the fill requests or marker requests, they will throw them on my key board. If I am handing them paper work, they snatch it out of my hands and don’t get a thank you from them. A couple weeks ago, my shift manager encourage me to wrie an incident report on the duel rate pit manager, Andrea because, she embarssed me in front of customers. I also print patron cards for the patrons, new player cards and replacement cards. The cards they used to accumulate points. Before I can start entering the customer’s info, I got a call for a marker request, a customer was asking for a counter check.. I had to stop what I was doing because, the makers are number one priority. Well by the time I got back to print the players card, Andrea started to make a scene in front of other customers. She accused me of taking too long, that it took me 20 minutes to issue the players card. She even got the customer angry with me. I had to repeat myself several times that I had a marker they come first and she knows it. They guy was playing at the craps table and hates waiting. She makes me sick, she gets away with bs because her fiance’ is a shift manager on grave shift. Then, she got her buddy Sue the other pit manager involved when that wasn’t her pit. Sue is the other employee I have a problem with. I had to wrte another incident report this week because I had a problem again on Monday. Like, I said I have been dealing with this for a long time. I started working at the casino when it first opened In December 2003, New Years Eve. I have been in the same department since. I didn’t start having this problem until years later. There’s a supervisor that works in my department that caused this. She is a trouble maker, she stirs up a lot of crap. She gossips, she tells people all of our department business. There are other employees that had problems with her. She tries to get oher employees in trouble, she lies and can easy manipulate people into believing crap. When last manager left to work in PA, his assistant took over and she is dumb as they come. She believed everything that came out of Dawn’t mouth. Dawn dragged me so many times in our manager’s office, I lost count. It was over stupid stuff. Thank God our manager stepped down, we have a new manager that started last month, he is in training right now. Back in Feburary of this year was the last time she dragged me in her office. I threatened to call my lawyer and that I haven’t been that office since. What happened was, someone wrote a letter to Debbie, the manager, that I was talking about Dawn on Facebook which, wasn’t true. I figured out who it was, it was Dawn and another casino employee that works in the table games. I know they had something to do with it. Of course no one would look into it to see if I was right. Debbie told me that I wasn’t allowed to talk about employees on facebook or any other social network as well as via email. I was so upset over this. I told her that I never talked about any one on facebook, that I am hardly on there. I mentioned using status shuffle, that uses expressions and It was never about anyone at work. The things that she said had me think Dawn and Kyle the other employee that had something to do with it. Debbie took Dawn’s side. She had stated that, I don’t think this person would make it up, she said this person had a statement that you have said. I coudln’t belive what I was hearing. Then, Deb had the nerve to say that she thinks I am full of rage and that I should seek counselng. She suggest the EAP, that companies encourage employees to use if they are stressed. I was in that office with herself, as well as Dawn, so she said this in front of Dawn. I was so mad. Dawn has a big mouth, I am sure she told everyone. All this crap happened after another incident that happened between Andrea and two of my other co workers and Kyle was involed too. Kyle is a female that I think had something to do with the facebook thing. She was mad at me because I defended my co workers when Andrea tried to get them in trouble. Kyle saw me on facebook one night and was sending me nasty messages accusing me of talking about her behind her back. Dawn probably had something to do with that too. I went to human resourse after all this happened but, they are no help. They have done nothing to help me. I guess they figure because this isn’t sexual harrassment that there’s no need to intervene. Now, Dawn is gjvjng more promblems because, I mentioned her name in an incident report this week because it involved her too. I told my husband today that I wish I can put this behind me and move on with my life and enjoy watching my two boys growing up. I have a seven year old and ten year old and they are so sweet. My husband is very supportive and said I should just find another job, he doesn’t care if it’s less pay, he hates seeing me so upset like this. But, my husband, my family members and friends ask me how I deal with it? They tell me that they would be fired the first day because they would tell someone like that to f off or punch someone. They tell me that they couldn’t last one day in that place. I ask myself that same question. I have to deal with them on Sunday, afer writing an icident report on them, they’ll probably retailate. I am at my witts end, I think I have reached my breaking point. I can’t deal with it no longer. Sometimes, I feel bad about myself, I feel like this is all my fault, what is happening to me. I forgot what it was like working in a normal environment, that it feels like this is it, this is what I get. There is nothing eles out there, jobs wise. I am currently taking antideppresent to help me cope but, sometimes it doesn’t seem enought. Besides, what else I have said, I feel worthless, like crap. Yes, I wish I can put this all behind me someday. I live in the Western New York regiong, I am wondering if there are free support groups around that can help me cope. We don’t have a whole lot of money so, money is an issure when it comes to something like that.
Thanks for all your comments and support with your article: I am from EL Paso Texas and one day I thought I was the only one going through this type of situation when I were a victim of bullying by my own Supervisor in an Non-Profit Organization. When I reported the abuse I suffered retaliation and I was forced to resign. It has changed my life forever and it happened to me twice in two different Organizations. One day I decided to go back to school and get my Bachelors on Health and Human Services to be a part of a NASW’s and one more year to graduate. Thanks for everything.
I have post my main story on the site.Now I have collected evidence that they have been poisoning me.Last week I talked to our local Sheriff about the main actor.He bhas a bad record.Somehow he found out and has kind of stopped but some of nhis cohorts have upped your efforts to kill me.His last statment to me was”they will get somebody to shoot you and give your familt 5000 dollars and they’ll be happy.”I’m a PI and I know how to collect evidence.The thing I really can’t beleave is how they all expect you to put up with it and say nothing.They know you need your job and don’t really have much money to suit so without help you’re between a rock and a hard place.I think we need to expose each and every one of them.Put them in jail when they break the law.If you call the law and they don’t serve your rights,raise holy hell with tehm as well.I need to raise funds to collect my evidence and I wilol catch them.
Targets, victims and witnesses of bullying have a few avenues to pursue (as compared with victims of sexual harassment) when subject to obvious acts of aggression, spreading malicious rumours, excluding someone socially or from certain projects, undermining or impeding a person’s work or opinions, unjustified exclusion from certain projects, removing areas of responsibility without cause, insulting a person’s habits, attitudes, or private life and intruding upon a person’s privacy. Others include being rude or belligerent, destroying property, assaulting an individual, or setting impossible deadlines. In the United States, although bullying is recognized as detrimental to occupational health, there is little political or corporate interest in stopping it.
In schoolyard bullying, the bullies are children, whose behaviour is controlled by the leaders, i.e. the school administration. In workplace bullying, however, the bullies are often the leaders themselves, i.e., the managers and supervisors. Therefore, reporting a bully to the HR dept, for example, exposes the target/victim to the risk of even more bullying, slower career advancement, or even termination, on the grounds of being a “troublemaker!”.
Workplace bullying has severe consequences, including reduced effectiveness and high employee turnover. An employee who suffers any physical or psychiatric injury as a result of workplace bullying can confront the bully, report the bully to the HR department or to the trade union, if any, or bring a claim of negligence and/or a personal injury claim against both the employer and the abusive employee as joint respondents in the claim. If the law does not persuade employers to deal with workplace bullying, the economic reality will persuade them. Training sessions can help when combined with a confidential reporting structure, but it is difficult to alter the basic nature of some individuals, who may need counselling.
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Though you have some valid points, not all are correct. I work with a lot of HR departments and am Director of HR for my company. The HR department works for the company AND the employees. Lookf at our name, Human Resources. That is people. I haven’t met any of my HR colleagues who do not care for their employees, as you stated in your article. I totally disagree with you in that respect. I can understand your frustration but feel you are wrong in targeting HR.
Thanks to all of you for sharing your stories. As a psychologist, I know that it always helps to know that you are not alone. In fact, this problem is much more widespread than we have thought. Also, please know that if you are a victim of workplace bullying, it is not you. But you are the one who is suffering. I urge each one of you who wrote regarding being bullied that you find a counselor who can help you get through this without further emotional damage to you or your families. Also, if you choose to leave, and often that is the only thing to do in the current situation, it is critical to your future mental health to be in control of your exit. The book, “Bully at Work,” which you can find and order from the Workplace Bullying Institute web site gives very practical advice on just how to do this. Don’t keep suffering. It won’t get better. You have to take some control and some action. Just be smart about it.
My union membership has saved me from the bully who fits the profile of an organizational psychopath. With the support of the union’s industrial officer my colleagues and I made sure the organization received 10 official complaints. Ten was the magic number before management decided to address the issue. In the meantime one employee left, one took 5 months leave and another 2 weeks. Both lodged worker’s compensation claims for psychological injury. I believe early intervention would have benefited both parties. The best thing is to speak up if it happens to you and most definitely don’t be silent bystander if you witness this happening to someone else, say something.
Dahlia Rochell writes that I have it wrong and that she and others in human resources work “for the company AND the employees.”
In 50 years of working — on staff and on contract for organizations large and small — I never once saw HR help a worker out of a difficult situation. To uphold her assertion, she should offer examples of disputes she has settled in the employee’s favor, firings she has averted, new and better-paid positions to which she directed employees who sought her protection against bullying, etc., etc., etc. If she cannot do so, she is wrong and the rest of us are right.
Unfortunately.
Our family has been working towards the passage of the Healthy Workplace Bill both in Wisconsin & New York, and any other place we can put in our two cents. We became involved when we lost our beautiful Niece, JODIE JONES ZEBELL, three years ago, due to Psychological Harassment in the Workplace. We had nurtured her. She was cherished; only 31 years old, married, with two precious little children. Her story has been reported many times, as well as a small documentary made by famed documentarian, Beverly Peterson, of New York and covered in a book by Dr Lisa Barrow In Darkness Light Dawns: Exposing Workplace Bullying”.
Google Jodie’s name and check these websites:
Beverly Peterson’shttps://nojobisworththis.com/2010/02/no-job-is-worth-losing-the-precious-gift-of-life-hd/
https://bullyinworkplace.wordpress.com/2011/09/27/jodies-law-needs-teeth-to-fight-workplace-bullying/
Dr. Lisa M.S.Barrow:https://www.lmsbconsulting.com/
We fully identify with this article and encourage Dr Guest’s work. We wish her God’s speed.
I want to emphasize that HR is not your friend or advocate in these situations. Please remember this. Their loyalty is to the employer. I agree with Phyllis that Dahlia Rochelle should offer some examples of disputes she has settled in the employees’ favor, etc. In working for a healthcare organization for more than 20 years, I can tell you that you cannot trust HR.
My sympathies with Mr. Bostwick. These stories and others are reminders of why we are working to stop this scourge in the workplace. I know individuals, while not having committed suicide, have still never gotten over what happened to them, even though it’s been years in come cases.
I was self employed for close to ten years before marrying a sociopath. Once I was set free from that nightmare, and educated on the patterns of behavior, as the mother of a small child, I entered the workforce. That was over ten years ago. I have had the same recurring pattern of workplace bullying affect every single job I have landed in this period of time. Every sinlge one has involved a bully who is a church going Christian woman. Every single employer took the easy way out and fired me instead. The Workplace Bullying Institute describes why I am the target. I find comfort in knowing that my morals and values as an employee, as a Christian and as a family constituting an orphan and widow in distress are and always will define who I am, not the bullies. It is disturbing when a single mother with the gifts and talents I have been given, has to suffer not only while married to a bully, but also as an employee trying to provide for her child. My last empoyer was a Non-Profit Organization. A thirft store in conjuction with a “ministry” called “Door of Hope USA” that is supposed to HELP the needy. The owner of the non-profit is the church facilities manager, full-time. He has cameras and concelaed tape recorders, one that he revealed half way through his conversation on why he had to terminate me. His wife is the church administator, and also owns and runs the church bookstore. My bully attends the church that runs this non-prophet. She has been attending for the past 8 years. Her father is a pastor. She and her children are still being provided for by the husband/father while he lives his new life with his adulterous male lover. She does not have to work full time to put a roof over their heads like I need to. She collects welfare services while in her still married status. She plays the single card at the church. I have defaming emails that she sent to the church pastors secretary, a personal friend, and another church attendee regarding my work ethic. From what I see in this article, my documentation throughout this nine month ordeal, that ended in termination two days before Thanksgiving is helpful in filing a complaint with the EEOC. I already know that this non-profit is violating other employee regulations as well as how misleading the local community is being led to think the non-profit is assisting the community. I am sure my ongoing questions only fueled their discomfort with me in the workplace and help explain why they did nothing to protect me. Obviously my concerns were documented and emailed consistently to the men in leadership, all to no avail. At least for now. Thank you for the suggestions.
I appreciate the comments to this article. I want to respond to the positive comments about human resources made by Dahlia Rochell. If the HR Dept. where you work is as fine as you suggest, you are blessed indeed. Try to keep it that way. But also understand that your situation is an exception to what most people experience in the workplace. My experiences with HR at St. Alphonsus were extremely negative and include being told that they were not interested in hearing my side of the story, being threatened with termination for reporting a potentially disabling on the job injury, being ordered to lie about the injury if anyone asked, and having the bully’s false accusations repeated back me to me work for word as if they were correct. The HR manager was clearly a bully also, and supported others who bullied. You pointed out the name, “human resources,” as a positive but I see that as a negative. Lumping people in with other resources such as inventory, money, facilities, is demeaning and insulting. The literature on workplace bullying also strongly cautions targets of bulling against going to HR. Gary Namie writing in “The Bully at Work” says that “the HR person feels compelled to support the bully.”(page 236). Wyatt and Hare in “Work Abuse: How to Recognize and Survive it” write on page 261: “Understand that the human resource or personnel department will seldom truly assist you even though they may promise to. Beware of trusting them…..Human resources or personnell people are seldom experienced in conflict resolution or even basic communication techniques, although they may advertise themselves as having these skills”. Those knowledgable about workplace bullying almost universally agree that in the US at least, HR Departments are a friend of bullies, and an obstacle to safe, healthy work environments.