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.

I went to school in Western Sydney, it was not a particularly conservative area, it is though a very ‘restricted’ place in terms of representing different parts of the community. I knew of not one single gay person in the area, I had no exposure to a same sex couple’s or any ‘out’ peers at school. My family was the furthest from religious and was always loving and open so it is not like I was ‘protected’ from it by any means. Being gay just wasn’t something that was talked about beyond my brothers and the guys and girls at school calling me a ‘Faggot’ and a ‘Poof’ in a derogatory way since I was about 10, there was no other influence or exposure to the gay community I received in 13 years of school.

Then came the story of the guy who was just a year or two older than me who had been assaulted and bullied at his school and was suing them for damages due to neglect in their duty of care in the late 90’s. I specifically remember this as it happened around the same time I entered high school. We heard he went on to go to a number of different schools in the area and left each one due to being physically assaulted and tormented for being gay. The other stand out fact was the reporting on this in the media at the time was clearly skewed and created a fear in my own thoughts at the sight of peers and parents saying things like ‘he should just keep quiet’.

While school is difficult for most kids, going through with thoughts that you’re different and not like anyone else created a lot of angst and anxiety that I still carry to this day. I remember being consistently bullied and tormented for no other reason than being less testosterone driven then my peers. Not a day would go past without being called names at school, being spat on, pushed or just ignored by my peers. Teachers would turn a blind eye to this happening unless of course something bad happens and then they would turn it on you to make it somehow your fault.

An example of this was having paper planes being thrown at me one day, the teacher just ignored what was happening until the inevitable occurred, and it hit me in the eye (yes it does happen, that is why you’re told not to do it). The teacher then instructed me to just wash out my eye and get back to my seat, clearly I was in pain but they insisted it was ‘fine’. Later that day when I got home my mum took me to get my eye looked at and it was confirmed I had a paper cut on my left eye, which is still visible in my vision to this day. My mum went up to the school and ‘blasted’ them for their incompetence and the teacher was reprimanded.

My entire school life consisted of similar acts which had I been alone, I fear what would have happened to my sanity. I was lucky enough to form a group of friends who even to this day keep in contact and regularly get together. The year after we graduated I meet my current partner and I was lucky enough that my family and friends embraced us, a few months later another of my school friends ‘came out’ and then another.  It was as though we had somehow formed an unconscious support group to make it through school.

I am realistic, I do not think that same sex marriage is going to change the school yard, I also realize it isn’t going to change everyone’s opinion, and I realize that there will always be those who just don’t understand. They do not understand because they do not want to understand, that is fine and I am not discounting their right of a different view. However when you write, speak, act or even think derogatory comments based on someone’s sexuality, gender, race, etc. you are not just hurting that person directly, you are influencing those around you and to hear our politicians who are there to represent their constituents comparing the debate to same sex marriage to that of polygamy you have to wonder how it is effecting those who are already struggling.

I call on Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott to make a stand, this isn’t just about allowing two loving and consenting adults the right to marriage, this is about creating a change in the culture of Australia, this is about allowing the acceptance of everyone, this is about taking a stance and this is about Love which is something we all wish to give and receive. As the saying goes “If you don’t like Same Sex Marriage, then you don’t have to get one”.

When I came out to my family as gay, my eldest brother feared I would be ridiculed and treated as a second class citizen and that it would restrict my ability to fully grow. I have been very lucky in my life and have never come across this too much personally and have been fortunate enough to progress through a career that most people my age would never even dream of.

This is done on an individual’s merits and should have not impact from what ‘stereotype’ they are apart of. I am regularly told, “I would never have guessed you are gay your so ‘normal’” which I do take as offensive as I should not have to prance around like a fairy in order to be a successful gay man.

An example of the reason this happens is clear from an old friend of mine, I will call Mitch. They live in a typical western suburbs Sydney and play up to the ‘gay’ character so much that it is annoying, even to me. This would be fine under most circumstances as I have noticed that when large groups of stereotypes live/work/stay close together it is acceptable to live up to these supposed expectations. An example of this is just going to Auburn in Sydney’s Western suburbs where there are large Arabic communities, while to an outsider it may seem as though they are all over the top, locally it is expected. The same could be said for locations such as Kings Cross with the gay community, Cabramatta with the Asians and Penrith with the bogans.

Now I am fine and completely appreciate all of these mixes and find it interesting to visit these areas, but the concern I have is when my mentioned friend ‘Mitch’ who has not many gay friends plays over the top and almost uses it as a character. He has no real friends as they are all infatuated by he’s character rather then him, which happens constantly as he becomes closer to people they actually tend to find it all a put on.

It gets worse as he continues to play up to this, he has been struggling with he’s career, he has never had a relationship, and feels as though he has to match the persona displayed in popular media outlets of what ‘the only gay in the village’ must live up to. This madness must stop before someone gets hurt. He has regularly been threatened with physical violence and insists on being a victim because that is what is expected.

People need to learn that you do not have to ‘meet’ the stereotype set out for you, and infact it would be best if people were just themselves rather then trying to fulfil this instant decision to subject themselves to being something they are not.

This raises greater concern as we move progressively towards a society loving their exercise. I am the first to admin I hate it when someone walks in groups of 3 or 4 along the sidewalk at a pace 1/3 of every other human. I believe I am not alone when after numerous attempts to just walk up or down an escalator to be faced with that one person deciding to stand in the way.

I think the solution is simple, let us put together sone simple rules.
1/ take note of those around you and if you would be shitty with someone doing your actions then don’t do it
2/ just give way to those around you, if people are getting out of the lift then you stand tithe side, it ain’t rocket science
3/ when walking in groupstry to be considerate for those around you especially when stop starting
4/ now tothose who stand on the wrong side of an escalator, I hope your laces get caught and you learn your lesson

As the blog name would indicate it’s nothing specifically that pissess me off but a whole range of moronic actions. So watch out world I’m gonna bitch till my hearts content.

Last time I checked I actually only have a small group of friends, which have now been re-classified as “Close/immediate Friends”. I then have the general friends and then all of a sudden there are those people who do not qualify as acquaintances but also are not in the “General Friends” area.

I propose that we create a whole new scale on how we rank the people we know, what better way to do this then a 5 tiered system.

1. Close/Immediate friends
2. Friends who we meet with occasionally
3. Online Friends (People we have known for a long time, but don’t fall in the above area but are closer then the below)
4. “Ignored” Friends, the people once upon a time a friend who we ignore requests to add to our “friends list”
5. Acquaintances, people that you do the polite smile and wave to in real life, but would never actually associate your selves on Facebook or similar.

This might sound complex but think about it, we are Gen Y this should be easy. Our parents would have a group of friends then move to another eventually loosing track of all previous groups. Occasionally bumping into them at random locations, this was almost like “Darwin’s evolution” theory. We would eliminate the people that were no longer relevant in life.

Society now as we know it means we will never officially “Loose” track of our friends, we will forever be reminded they are “now single” or that their favorite song now includes some crap. At the tender age I am at now (early 20′s) I feel like I have meet and be friended more people then I ever would have though possible.

We also then see the development of “Facestalking” where I will on the odd occasion track down one or more people from my life just in order to see what they are doing these days, if they still speak to particular people or not. While it is kind of sad… Yes even I admit I do it, and think it is sad. It seems to give you a warm fuzzy feeling to see the horrible wedding photos, or the person who sat behind you in Math’s who thought they would do everything and be the greatest who is now a checkout chick at the local supermarket.

This warm and fuzzy feeling is quite gratifying, however morbid and sad.

Well here is my first post, I hope if you liked, that you leave your comments

I am going to play around with some posts, so if you happen to come across this, sorry about the mess….