Responding to a Bully (DEPHA Example)
Seth Godin’s post yesterday about not tolerating bullies in the workplace rang a familiar bell with me. I’ve walked out of a few situations where this was happening, including a resignation from the Tasmanian Department of Environment, Parks Heritage and the Arts in late 2008 when the designer / team leader continued to talk to me like crap and take out her meagre leavings of a life at my daily expense. It’s not my fault her mother is dying in Britain from cancer, nor is it my fault her expensive printer that allows her to work freelance as a card designer was broken, nor indeed was it my fault that she had non-designer managers sitting on her shoulder all day telling her to push pixels this way and that. That, actually, was her business entirely.
In fact, regardless they had this South African woman earmarked for management material, my experience with her was almost psychotic in that you really couldn’t judge what the cause or effect of any situation would elicit. Abuse? Swearing? Or a sweet hello as if none of the aforementioned existed. I have no doubt she’ll do well in her chosen career but not in the company of this little black duck, that’s for sure. I followed the exact advice Seth put over in his post – I took my bat and ball and went home. I hadn’t even really thought about quitting until the moment I did, too. I’d just had enough.
Add to that, the Information Management manager above us actually tried to further bully me into signing a resignation he drafted and made it very clear where I stood. That’s two levels above me in the bullying hierarchy. And as the one bullied it was obvious to me way before discovering that second level that it existed – there really was nobody to complain to even if I’d wanted.
But by taking my bat and ball and going home I made a statement to myself as much as to those people. I won’t tolerate it. I won’t work with people who spit acid comments at me or bark at me like I’m a small child (especially in public). It’s not like I didn’t notice, for example, that nobody else was being spoken to in that manner by that particular woman. And, I’ll be honest, I’ve quit from contracts before when the abusive nature of someone got the better of the relationship. A particular guy in Sydney I contracted for was such a pig I just sent him an email half way through a job onetime and just said that’s it – game over. Why? I had several hundred dollars of work I’d just done on my desk and it meant not being paid.
I quit because there has to be a little bit of respect for a business relationship to work.
So, if you’re being bullied, realise you have the power. They need you. And, like in the Department of Environment, Parks, Heritage and the Arts, the clues were there in the first week. I got an email apologising for swearing at me (which I should have forwarded directly to the department manager, but I didn’t).
If you do happen to be an organisation thinking of employing me. Please consider this before wasting both our time and resources. Do you want my skills, input and professionalism? If so, protect me from bullying. End of story. It should not be my job to feel like shit every day unless it’s in the advertised job description, right?
How to obtain and retain talent 101, guys. Get it right.
