What is your definition of an office bully? Have you ever experienced one?

[susans]

What is your definition of an office bully?  Have you ever experienced one?

[suis]

My definition of a work place bully is someone who does major or minor things to make their co workers look bad.  Steal ideas, take credit for others have done, keep information from others so he would look good with the current information, basically intentionally or unintentionally does stuff to make others look bad and them look good.   Thank god I only have had to work with one person like this and it didn't affect my position.   It did affect his peers in his group.   In this case I don't think he was ever intentionally mean, actually maybe he was, but it was definitely related to his personality type.  He was very egoistical, always right, wanted to be the star of the show.  

[gee4]

Well I have experienced this recently so apart from the obvious traits, here are others to watch out for -

- isolation
- belittling
- talking over someone or through them without acknowledgement
- withholding information
- nit picking
- always focussing on the negative
- never praising for a job well done
- undermining confidence

[kriysta]

Office Bully!  I have one I have to deal with right now and there is not a THING anyone can do, except deal with it.   She has alienated several people in the office with the prima donna attitude where they won’t deal with her, nor talk to her unless they absolutely have to.   She will take any success that everyone has contributed and pat herself on the pack and let everyone know, it is “ALL because of her.”  She is lazy and can’t do simple tasks, will ask you to “check something” though it is her job not yours, then NEVER need the information you are nice enough to help out with.  All I think is what a WASTE of time that was.   She doesn’t take constructive criticism well, if you point out something that can be improved or an error, she will find your weakness in work and throw it back at you and ignore the comment, she manipulates the situation well.  She says very cruel, unprofessional things about others behind their back, but at the same time, would probably say them to their face if push came to shove.    I am surprised she doesn’t take her heals and step on peoples feet while walking by!    As I said in the beginning, there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it but be supportive the best I can be and deal with it the best I can.  But it sure is nice to vent about it.  I really do not like (understatement) working with this women.  I have the best job in the world, if you take her out of the equation.

[raindance]

The Office Bully is a Blot on the Landscape.  We have one, and after many years of suffering this appalling woman, I have decided to view her as a sort of office pet - a malicious and untameable one.

Each Office Bully is different, but still has the same outcomes.

Our Friendly Office Bully will:

get very upset if its little ego isn't regularly fed flattery and platitudes;
organise its little friends not to talk to a specific person;
walk past its current "victim" and not greet them, and will then proceed to tell its little friends about how "clever" and "daring" it was;
exclude its victims from birthday parties, drinks, office lunches etc;
give its victims the very worst Christmas card it can find, whilst giving its friends the nicest ones;
ignore requests for help, information or repairs to equipment that it is responsible for carrying out.

A number of people have come to me about our Friendly Office Bully over the years to complain, and I have raised their issues with our CEO.  Nothing much happened until I was talking to its manager about a year ago.  Friendly Office Bully's manager (a Director) was complaining to me about something and I suggested that he might consider sorting out his own department starting with the Office Bully.  He went very quiet and white-faced.  Funnily enough, it has been reasonably well-behaved since then.  And its beginning to help people when requested.

[itsme_calista]

I feel very lucky not to really have to deal with a bully at work.  There are a couple of people I would say are borderline but at the moment, both seem to be ok.

We have one of our customers based in the building and the boss there is a real tough cookie!  Thinks as she is the customer she is always right (which she rarely is!).  She once organised her office to send me to Coventry, which I wasn't bothered about ... let's face it she's always going to need me before I need her due to the nature of the role/business.  I just sit and wait!

I sympathise with all those who have to deal with this on a daily basis.

[Cathy S]

I am posting this because if just one person experiencing bullying now reads it and gains some hope or some strength to take action it is worthwhile sharing the pain I felt.

Sorry this is a long post; I have abbreviated as much detail as possible.  I know some of you will read this and think “well I wouldn’t have put up with that ….”  I am considered by most people who know me, to be a strong and determined person, but the effect of the harassment reduced me to a quivering wreck – that is the real impact of bullying, it totally changes the person being bullied.

In my last company it was accepted that Managers would bully the support team and there was little we could do because it was part of the culture of the firm, although we did talk about it between ourselves and create a support network.  

The worst example though was when the company, following a restructure, promoted someone to Regional Managing Director; and in order to move a different assistant to be PA created a ‘redundancy’ situation.  We knew that it was fixed and that there was nothing that we could do about it.  On the day we were to be interviewed for our own jobs, my colleague couldn’t take any more and opted for the redundancy; I was not surprised to be told I hadn’t got my own job; they offered me a different role at a 25% cut in salary, effective immediately.  I couldn’t really afford that but it was better in the short term than no job (single parent, bills to pay etc).  The next 6 months were miserable - the Regional MD would send his Assistant (by this time one of them had bailed and left one person doing two jobs) to find out from the 4 Directors I supported what hadn’t been done on a daily basis.

I was summoned to a meeting and with no warning was told by the Assistant “I have to give you a verbal warning for dereliction of duty”.  I was completely stunned but predominantly I felt sorry for her because she clearly hadn’t got the slightest clue what our Disciplinary code was.

I had gone from being a confident, competent supervisor and PA to being almost at rock bottom.  I felt physically sick at the thought of going to work; I would struggle to walk the half mile to the office and would burst into tears at the drop of a hat for no reason at all.  Up until the ‘Disciplinary’ Meeting I had not told anyone within the company about what was happening, however, after that meeting I did speak to a colleague.  The next day one of my Directors asked me to ‘grit my teeth and keep going for a couple more weeks’ and I found out the Assistant had been told to leave me alone.  

Three weeks later the Regional MD was fired.  I don’t know how much was directly related to what happened to me and how much to other stuff going on with him.  I do know that I had enough evidence to have made an harassment case against him which would have resulted in immediate dismissal and I was at such a low point I had nothing else to lose by taking that action.  His Assistant lasted a further couple of weeks and then went long term sick with the pressure of her role.

After he was sacked the company did try to make amends – I was offered a specialist role which I made my own and where I felt reasonably valued, but I couldn’t ever feel totally settled there and so when I had a chance to move I took it.  I can think back on it now without any emotion, but it took a long time to let go of the hurt and the anger.

By the way if you are wondering what possible dereliction of duty I was guilty of … A Director asked me mid morning to arrange a meeting with several internal staff and staff from a client company, it wasn’t urgent and of course it had to fit the client’s availability as a priority – by 12 noon I hadn’t arranged it!  {I subsequently found out that he hadn’t accused me of anything – the questions were very carefully worded so that the Directors were unwittingly making a complaint and none of the 4 directors had any idea that the questioning was part of a regime targeting me alone.  In fact the Director in question became my Line Manager in the new role and we developed an extremely good working relationship.}

[misslynn]

To cm_stephenson - wow, that's incredible. I'm happy to hear you're out of that situation now.

For myself, I've had a couple situations with office bullies. The worst one, he set up a campaign to sabotage me and actively worked against me (jealous because I worked for the VP? not sure, never quite figured out the "why"). Bossie told him to leave me alone, that he was not allowed to even speak to me, etc.  He eventually ended up getting fired because it turned out I wasn't the only one that he was bullying, I was just the only one at that point that was speaking up against it.

The other one is actually a positive story.  Some people just have conflicting personalities and aren't meant to get along well, that was the case with me and a high-level manager in my area.  He has a strong, intimidating personality and I felt like he would run over me (being that I'm "just an admin").  However, we both respected the job that each other did and have now worked it out between us through some open and honest conversations.  I'm more patient with him and he's more respectful towards me, we've made it work.

[Atlanta Z3]

My description - I called her the office island.  I came into the company and was trained by the island.  She wouldn't let go of any work, and her methods created so much more work, it was not a wonder she needed to work 80 hours a week.  We were a facility mgmt company and had taken on a new account.  The accounts payable was a wreck, researching payments by the old mgmt company and really past due accounts was difficult and our accounts payable department was not fully staffed to handle the additional work.  However the spreadsheets and filing system she used was only understood by the island.  This passed and we separated with the island supporting the operations buildings and myself supporting the property managers.  The island would only support the director and ignored the property managers of her building.  
Then the next level up decided we needed to POOL admin resources cross train and have one senior PA directing the flow of work.  The island was not the senior PA and at this point gave a draft resignation letter.  (I still to this day do not know what a draft resignation letter is.)  She had the goods on someone is all I could ever figure out - because she was there nine months after I left and two years after the pool situation did not work.
The POOL situation was supposed to help me and another PA lighten our workloads - all the property and project managers had figured out who could accomplish work, know the systems and in general be pleasant to work with.  So as you might guess we were swamped while the island looked busy and was always overloaded with Critical Work Orders.  (I was later trained on Critical Work Orders - once again she made this impossible difficult - she was the only one who could do this and she didn't have time to train... ugh)

We also had an older lady who was the admin for the HR department.  She was close to retirement and marking time.  She refused to learn anything, telling us to our faces - you young girls have to keep current, I don't need to learn anything new since I'm retiring soon.  (I think she was in her late 50's)  She was french and wore the heaviest worst smelling perfume she could find.  Complaints to hr went unheard.  This lady would not even create folders in her email - if we needed an insurance form we had to wait at her desk while she scrolled through 1500+ emails (if you left she wouldn't send it to you) trying to find the form. She also work satin pajama bottoms to work as pants. (head shake)

Then there was the place that had a supply nazi - if you needed a pen you had to turn in the empty to get a new one.  You had to take your stapler to her desk to get one row of staples.  

Ah the good old days - I sure do love my curent job - no bullies, nice bosses!

[lgsx3]

An office bully is someone who makes themselves look good, but makes life miserable for those around them.  They never seem to do their job because they spend all their time looking for things that other don't do. For example, they come in late and leave early, but if another employee comes in late due to a mitigating circumstance, everyone knows about it, and more often than not that person is called in for being late.  

[diotima]

The last boss I had before I retired was an absolute bitch; the more I think about this question the more I wonder whether a psychiatrist would call her a sociopath.

She was a salaried partner in a firm of solicitors here in Wiltshire, and she was very clever and devious, a really successful bully. The ones I've met before have been third-raters compared with her. I went to work for her as a temp during which time her behaviour to me was normal, the bullying started when I became permanent. She knew I was vulnerable; after our divorce my ex skipped off to the middle east without paying me the settlement, and I needed every penny to keep my home. In your mid-50s jobs aren't easy to get however good you are.  She knew, and used, every way of belittling and manipulating people, not just the office staff. Bossie blamed me, endlessly, for losing files, documents, whatever, even for losing her security card for the electronic banking system. This last one, when I tipped her wallet out of her handbag the security card fell out with her credit cards - she didn't say anything, she couldn't. She'd often use the most sarcastic and condescending way of speaking to me, as if I was incapable of doing anything properly. Lord knows how many times I bailed her out of her mistakes! In between she gave me jewellery, a handbag, expensive scarves, none of which I ever used; it was impossible to refuse them, she could be so charming when she wanted. Fortunately for me, when I worked in the railway industry I was a union rep and had training in dealing with bullies, and recognised her behaviour. I'm also very organised, methodical, had a good detailed map of the caseload in my head, and strong enough to have kept telling myself that she's responsible for her own behaviour, it's not my fault, and that it reflects only on her, not on me. Even so, I was worried about being hounded out of my job and not being able to pay the mortgage, and it made me ill. She has no regard at all for anyone else's feelings, and no conscience about her actions and hurting people, she's only interested in her own gratification.

She slipped up one day when she called me into her office and started to give me what amounted to a performance review. This firm doesn't do performance reviews. She made several accusations that I could refute with facts and witnesses, and I wrote a formal letter asking for written evidence to back up her statements (I have legal training too), stating that if I didn't have a written retraction by a given date I'd put it on record that she and the firm accepted that her accusations were untrue, and copied it to the senior partner. The date went by without any response, which was what I expected, and I put it in writing, again copied to the senior partner. He came into my office red-faced and shouting that I couldn't say that. I just said, very politely, that I could, and had, and if he didn't like it, we'd just have to agree to disagree. He never said anything else about it. Neither bossie or he had realised that I knew she was leaving but the daily impromptu meetings behind closed doors and her sudden enthusiasm for catching up with things she'd ignored for ages, were a dead giveaway. I'd promised myself that I would see her off, and I did. I also sent back all her presents, packed in a jiffy bag with no postage on it and no note. You can tell how low I was feeling by then, to get some satisfaction from a gesture like that.

I have a lot of legal experience and unfortunately, that industry has a real problem with bullying, it's endemic because the industry is class-ridden and very old-boy male dominated. A poor Oxbridge degree still counts for more than real ability and a red-brick uni qualification. It might well be different in central London, but it's definitely this way in the smaller towns. She got away with it for 13 years (and 15 secretaries, I discovered along the way) because the firm knew of the problem - they could hardly have missed it - but didn't have the moral courage to do anything about it. Solicitors in UK do seven years' training, but none of it is in management; no legal firm I've worked for outside a big city has ever had anyone with even the most minimal management training, apart from in I.T. The Law Society (the solicitors' training body and trade union, for people outside U.K.) has a lot to answer for.

I worked for myself for 18 months until I hit retirement age, then packed it in. My own solicitors (a very big firm in central Bristol, not a market town hack)  managed to get my ex arrested at Heathrow Airport earlier this year and a judge took his passport away until he paid me everything he was supposed to plus interest. Now my house is my own, there's a decent sum in the bank, and I can afford concerts, the theatre, and other things I enjoy. Life is great :-)

Bossie's career move, intended to get her an equity partnership, didn't work out, and she's now working in another firm in the same town, as an assistant solicitor - the lowest grade of qualified solicitor.