I am realistic, I know that odds of anyone reading this are pretty much non-existent. I just have to post about something that I have been thinking about for a long time. It is something most people would have experienced or been through, it is not uncommon and unfortunately sometimes it rears its ugly head even in your adult life.
I am of course talking about bullying….
I, like many others, was bullied at school, nothing unusual there. I was called everything under the sun and as you will note from my other post (even though you are likely a ‘bot’ and not a real human) that I did actually have a hard time at school.
Normally I would never discuss any of it, as far as most family and friends are concerned, I have always been a pretty carefree guy and it takes a lot to get under my skin. It hasn’t always been like this, school was pretty SHIT! I finished school over 8 years ago and it still bothers me. Today I seen the clip from Jonah http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdkNn3Ei-Lg&feature=youtu.be and really made me quite upset.
Watching that I could relate to the torment that the school yard dishes out to kids, it is just awful and the fact that someone so young and innocent has to put up with that and feels any less human is just painful to me.
Now to the point I wanted to make, while things do get better, I have professionally come across people who still use bully tactics to push their own agenda. It is not the same as what happens in the school yard, there is no verbal bashing, there is no physical harm, no, this pain is psychological.
I changed jobs about 4 months ago, and to be honest I haven’t looked back. My new work place is very accepting, friendly and open place to work. What I now realise is that I have this strange feeling I ‘ran’ away from my last work place in a haste and without getting my story out.
My old manager was just really not a nice person. It isn’t that they were bad; they just could never be nice and always thought the worst of ever situation. I would regularly have meetings were I would be made to feel my worth was nothing, I would be humiliated by having decisions I had made overturned as they didn’t fit with their way of working. I cannot count the number of times I was physically ill from the stress and emotional turmoil it put me through.
To put the whole situation in perspective, I have always been a top performer in the work place, I generally can work with the most difficult people around and can also work my way through some pretty complex things. What I have never encounted, which unfortunately my old work place encourages, is a push from ‘above’ that anyone below is just a pure number and has no voice.
While I worked through the majority of this, the one thing that always upsets me is how I was made to feel less worthy then my colleagues because of my age and my sexuality.
Big claims I know, however take this, when I would present ideas or be working through a project where I was leading or providing sign off, I would obviously work just as hard as everyone else. Then my manager would veto anything I had done, suggested or even worked on and ensure they put their ‘skew’ into everything. Fair enough you bots out there are thinking, they are just a micro-manager. Well when I would go back said manager and ask why my decisions where any less valuable they would use the ‘I know this place better then you’ or my personal favourite, ‘Your too young to remember how things used to be done’.
The issue which truly hurt me though which for me was a big ‘Run as fast away as possible’ moment was when my partner fell ill while they were away and I had to jump on the first available flight out to look after them. When I reached out to my manager and said what was happening, it wasn’t an initial ‘oh I hope they get better’, it was ‘Make sure you do a hand over document beforehand’.
Of course with everything happening it took me 36 hours to complete a full handover document while sitting in a hospital room next to my partner hoping they would be ok.
Upon my return over a week later, I was pulled up by my manager and provided not the pleasure of well wishes. I was instead provided the pleasure of a formal warning for lack of hand over, I of course could not take this and just stated there should have been no issue as it was provided just delayed with flights, time zone changes and obviously other priorities on my mind.
Another colleague had unfortunately had the exact same situation around the same time and they received no word of punishment. In fact they had no access to hand over anything at all and simply were out of the country for 4 weeks.
The difference between the two is that my partner is of the same sex, I am a man (my colleague is a women) and I am in my mid 20’s.
Of course I left that environment and provided feedback to the leadership team on how I was managed. That feedback I was told was appreciated and that it would of course be used in a constructive means. That manager has now actually been promoted.
Justice has a funny way of showing its self, I do however live in the comfort that I am happy, and even if I do come across these sorts of people I can rise above it and move on. I then say to those who ever come across bullying anywhere, it is not something you should have to deal with and where ever possible remove yourself from harms way.
