Chicken Shit Boss

I do apologise. I don’t normally use foul language (if you’ll pardon the unintended pun). I think we can accept that the Boss has proved himself to be worthy of the accolade Shit Boss however much I might have hoped otherwise. However, now he has proved that this doesn’t do him justice; he is clearly also a coward, captain of the chicken club.

We (the FD, Chicken Shit Boss – CSB, for ease and elimination of bad language –  and I) have been ostensibly working on a new structure for several months, pretty much since coming back the second time. I have provided all sorts of options, spent hours producing spreadsheets and redundancy calculations. I have included mine for the sake of completeness, but there has never been any indication whatsoever that there is any lesser need for an HR department, especially as we are growing in terms of staff numbers, and in an industry where a high turnover is a recognised phenomenon.

I predicted in my previous post that I, and the brave colleagues who have supported me, would be the criteria for the restructure. Yesterday, CSB  called a number of head office staff into his office one by one, to read from a script that told them their posts were safe. For now. Unless anything changed in the rest of the consultation process with those at risk, which in theory is the whole of the senior management team. He also told them that he would be writing to everyone at risk by the end of the day. Oh, and that we’d just won a significant contract that should set the business in good stead for the future.

He then appeared briefly in my office, and handed me a letter, and a chart of the new organisation. I tried to engage him in conversation, but he ran away, mumbling that he was in a meeting. Opening the letter I realised why he couldn’t face me. The chart is hilarious. There are obvious posts for every one of the senior management team, with clear indications of their remits. Except for HR. There is no HR department, no HR manager, no HR administrator. No HR function whatsoever. Lucky there are no HR issues to deal with, then. And no mention of the remit my lovely colleague busts a gut covering (and for which I note CSB has recently added credit for on his linked in profile).

If he had any balls, or any belief that what he was doing was justifiable, or any desire to treat those affected fairly, he would have sat down with me, explained the shift in thinking, set out the savings that would result from eliminating the smallest of the support functions in terms of budget and staff numbers, and set aside time to answer any immediate queries I might have. Such as, seriously? After 4 months of proposals and counter proposals? Do you not see what this looks like? Calling it a fair process doesn’t make it substantively any fairer, just as calling a spade a fork doesn’t mean the flat shovelly thing will instantaneously sprout prongs.

Bullyonline refers to three phases in workplace bullying;

• Isolation – being ostracised by the In Crowd, nit-picking fault found with everything you do, and generally being overruled and undermined;
• Control and Subjugation – singled out for different treatment (eg the letter of the policy applies to target, but the In Crowd say, “rules, what rules?”), or being the target of reputation damaging gossip; and
• Elimination – reorganisations are a favourite tool; “ones with a disproportionate amount of disruption in relation to the perceived benefit can be a smokescreen to conceal, and a vehicle of, bullying”.

I survived phases one and two, more or less in tact. Phase three approaches. The thing is, Chicken Shit Boss knows I was an employment lawyer in a previous life. He never bothered to find out anything about the real me (as opposed to the versions Yvonne et al bandied around). My success rate at Employment Tribunal was 96%.

And the one I lost was overturned on appeal.

What doesn’t break you makes you stronger.

Whistleblowers and the NHS

There’s been an incredible amount in the press recently about the culture in the NHS, about bullying, intimidation and fear.

The pros
On the one hand, it is great that it is being talked about as headline news. The more the fact and effects of bullying are out there, the more it becomes common knowledge what constitutes bullying, the better, surely? If it is better understood how this pernicious poison can manifest itself for far too many people in far too many workplaces, the sooner more of us can stand up to it, name it, shine a spotlight on it, and eventually, maybe, diminish it. A bullying culture flourishes in the dark, under stones people are too frightened to overturn. Even just reporting it in the press, encouraging dialogue about it, is a small step that encroaches on that darkness.

And the cons
The flipside is that it is exactly that; a small step. The number of comments by people with stories to share tells a distressing tale of its own; it is everywhere. Bullying in the workplace is rife. The NHS has had a report identifying the problem which has taken months, years to come to fruition. But the report is the very start. It is still going on.
Publishing the report hasn’t stopped it happening. It hasn’t compensated those who have lost jobs, careers, homes, families as a result. There’s still so much work to do in shifting attitudes to identify what is happening in the first place, and then, to start to eradicate poor practices that keep this type of culture alive and kicking.
Even on the Today programme, one commentator (who shall remain anonymous only because I wasn’t paying sufficient attention at that precise moment to capture his name) said, authoritatively, that one man’s bullying is another man’s firm management. No, no, no, no and no! Bullying has no place in any management at all. Good management is about treating people fairly, encouraging the best out of them, and if they are not delivering what is expected of them, guiding them openly – and firmly if necessary – on what is. Bullying is about treating people unfairly, stifling potential and withholding information to retain unmerited power.
Most depressingly of all, it only serves to show how rife it is. For anyone in any doubt, workplace bullying is happening in a workplace near you. What are you going to do about it?

Spot the difference

Well, I have returned to the office, and am still here to tell the tale. So far.

Of course things aren’t going to revolutionise overnight. Sadly. The people are still the same people after all. Before there is any hope that they will change, they have to acknowledge that they have done things that weren’t right. And that’s probably a hope too far.

Things that have changed: the office lay out. I am grateful that I have a lovely new office that at last has room for the number of people on it. It has French doors that open onto an outside space. It gets the sun most of the day. In times of frustration, opening the doors and inhaling fresh air makes deep breathing feel just a tiny step up, touching on not glamorous exactly, but definitely better quality. Yes, I know; I do need to get out more.

If I was feeling negative or paranoid, I might be left feeling the tiniest bit duped: the Boss sold us moving into his office as the cheapest, easiest option, implying that then the organisation wouldn’t have to pay to have our cavernous training room converted into office space. Only, it has been, for the Boss and for Yvonne, who now has an office in front of his office, making access to him figuratively, and now physically, through her. And although Sandra has been moved out of the main office too, the location of her office means that the three of them now have a corridor to themselves. So they can do all the things they’ve always done, just without anyone else seeing. Note to self; I must remember that I’m imagining it when I feel excluded.

Things that haven’t changed: the little things. The rooms other than the main, open plan office all need tables for meetings. HR ask for one, and there’s none available. A new person starts in finance, and a new desk, new table, chairs etc instantly appear, as if by magic. There are lots of chairs lying around everywhere. We help ourselves to some of the nicer, cushioned blue ones. Overnight, they are removed from our office, leaving grey, school-like ones, though every other office has kept their blue ones. Note to self; I must remember, it’s not personal. There’s bound to be an entirely plausible excuse, I mean explanation.

Although I am ostensibly in charge of my department, I find out through an email from our fundraising manager that ID card responsibility is being passed from a finance manager to HR. Logical, but we seemed to have missed out on the bit in the middle where it actually gets discussed and decided. We just get told.

And then there’s the stuff that relates to jobs. New jobs are created, and need to be recruited for. We get told when an ad is produced, but it’s so urgent that we can’t discuss the (totally misleading) job title, the clunky wording of the ad, and have had no involvement in any discussion about what the role is, yet are expected to finish drafting a job description (that still has the name of the organisation it was cribbed from in it). I have a degree, but can’t fathom what the job is all about from the detail that manager has produced, who is then on leave having “done my best given my time constraints”. Smile. Un-grit teeth. Open double doors. And breathe.

As for the Boss, who was found to unintentionally have favoured S and Y to the exclusion of others, he has managed to speak to me once in the three weeks I’ve been back. Told me I’ve got lovely, shiny new targets. But not replied to a single piece of work or email, and certainly isn’t there to deal with anything in person. I’ve drafted a new Anti-Bullying Policy and Code of Conduct for managers which we’re supposed to be discussing at our senior management team meeting this week, done a pay review coming under budget and harmonising rates for 70% of the workforce (up from 50), and we have legislation changes that could cost the organisation 10s of 1,000s.

I know everyone has frustrations in their jobs. I know it’s common to have to work with people who seem reluctant to embrace the concept of “with” rather than “over”, or even “without”. But how do you do your job without access to the people or information you need to be able to do your job?

Answers on a postcard, please, to ‘the courtyard outside HR’s office’ where you’ll find me deep-breathing for the foreseeable future. Well, didn’t we agree that I do need to get out more?

P.M.A

Positive Mental Attitude. I preach to the Offspring about it, so I ought to put in a bit of practice.

I met with the Boss last week. As ever, I was nervous about how it would go. Following the nonsense that came out of the most recent meeting with the Trustees, I had sent them the statement I gave to the neutral assessor all that long time ago. I explained I really don’t want to go the grievance route, but currently the seesaw of gossip is tipped heavily one way. I simply want the seesaw to be balanced, to remove any doubt that there is more than one side to this whole sorry saga.

I sent it to the Trustees the evening before my meeting, concerned that if it arrived too soon, my Boss might cancel and we’d have to go through all of the details rather than focus on moving forward and organising mediation, and if I sent it too late, it would look like a response to my meeting with the Boss. The long and the short of it is that during the course of our meeting he referred to a 12 page statement, which must mean the Trustees had told him about it, even if they hadn’t given him all of it. I explained that I had almost cc’d him into it, to which he replied with a firm, please don’t, as then he’d have to reply to every little detail, which I guess is fair enough. I don’t want this to be a he said she said exchange, as I’ve mentioned; I only want the seesaw lifted away from me to stop me being crushed beneath the weight of its unfairness.

Although some more nonsense came out during our meeting (my fears about Zoe having ceased to back me have been proved right as the Boss made some allusion to something I’m supposed to have said to her regarding when Paula goes on maternity leave: she’s not pregnant, but I have encouraged her not to wait too long because I’ve come too close for comfort to the world of IVF anguish, and having been constructively sacked for coming back from maternity leave pregnant, I am the last person to be anything other than supportive. However, putting the anger at such outrageous nonsense aside, where was I?) I do think the Boss is finally taking me more seriously. In the spirit of openness, I explained to the Boss that I’m not the only one with nonsense being spread about me, and ventured forth the common misconception about the Boss and Yvonne. Funny what seems right in the spirit of the moment that ordinarily would be so off limits I can hear QI type sirens even just thinking about it. We agreed the best strategy for dealing with utter nonsense is to rise above it.

So, floating significantly upwards, the promised positives:
The Boss has already conceded that our office is too small; he offered his own much larger, airier and altogether more pleasant office space as one of three options, the one he claimed is his preferred option. When the subject was initially broached, this was my preference as the simplest and easiest (and far and away the cheekiest), but at that time he dismissed it as his least favourite. So that in itself is big progress. Not only does it publicly and indefatigably recognise that those who shoehorned us into the tiny office were wrong, and that I was right about it being too small, it also gives the message that the Boss does place some importance in HR.

I have been offered mediation with Yvonne and Sandra, separately. How many ‘victims’ get to tell their perpetrator what the effect of their actions has been on them? I am absolutely dreading it but I will try and be strong and I will try and convey what their actions have done to me, and others, over the last 2 years. I know there will be twisting and turning things back onto me, but there will also be a third party present, and even if they are utterly useless, it has to change the dynamics, which also has to be a good thing for our first one-to-one encounters.

I have been offered coaching. Initially, and truthfully even now, I think it is unfair that I am singled out for additional support, as if I am the only one that has been in the wrong. However, the HR Trustee views it as an extremely positive offer, a privilege and something she would have given her eye teeth for. Irrespective of how it has come about, it should be a very useful developmental tool, so another outcome to see as positive.

And lastly, I have been asked to write a Code of Conduct for the senior managers, and rewrite the anti-bullying policy. And then, once approved and adopted, I have been asked to take it out to the services, to train managers on it, and generally distill it throughout the organisation.

When I started all of this, all I wanted was for the bullying to stop and for me to be able to expend my workplace energy working. If I now take up this new gauntlet and use this opportunity to the fullest, this outcome is possible. And not with me swimming against the flow, in the dark, slowly sinking under the streams of shit flowing my way, but out in the open, calling spades spades, and with the backing and assistance of the Board.

There are definitely negatives in this tapestry of outcomes; if I can find the wherewithal to focus on the positives, remembering always that this too will pass when things (people) become difficult again, then I, we will have moved on. Or at least taken the first tentative footstep in that general direction. Which surely is a big, fat, juicy positive if ever there was one.

Always The Way

It is every bit as bad as I feared. The uphill fight has got steeper, just when I had momentarily allowed myself to think that the worst might be over. The books warned me, but unless you go through it, you can’t imagine it’s really going to happen to you. It seems so ludicrous. So cliched.

On the other hand, I suppose it’s obvious. One of the predictable dangers in standing up to people who are adept at twisting the truth, ganging up against you and casting you in a negative light is that they will continue to do what they are good at, just with a wider audience. It will get set down on paper which will make it true, though of course you can select the parts you want to consider as true.

Because the report has 16 different references to bullying and behaviours that amount to bullying, I felt relieved for a while; someone had heard me. However, despite those 16 references, the Trustees somehow have managed to read it without concluding that there has been bullying in the workplace! In a note of a meeting with 2 Trustees, it says the report refers to unacceptable behaviour “which in her [my] view constituted bullying” as if it were unreasonable and they couldn’t understand how I could possibly have concluded such a thing, or at the very least, that there is room for doubt!

And most galling of all, although the report refers to this as being the behaviour of long serving employees, those who served under the previous scape goat, I mean CEO, which I did not, I am the only one with personal recommendations. I am the one whose behaviour needs looking at. I need to learn how to listen, need to think about how others might react to what I need to say, how I might need to explain the context. No specifics, mind, so my request for examples was repeatedly met with the refrain about not going over the past. All these things that I have being trying to get Sandra and Yvonne to do are thrown back at me so that they get to walk away unscathed.

And just as I thought it couldn’t get worse, in discussion today, the Trustees let slip that they have had fed back to them BY THE ASSESSOR not only that I shout at people, but also that I throw things!!!!

This neutral assessment is all very well, but it has concluded things that have been said about me without me having any right to give my version of events. I’m not sure that that is an entirely fair way to go about things.

I must keep reminding myself of the words of Mahatma Gandhi quoted in Fighting Back; overcoming bullying in the workplace by David Graves, which has been one of my bibles over the last few months;
“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murders and for a time they seem invincible but in the end they always fall – think of it, ALWAYS.”

Tell that to the Palestinians, the Syrians, the Ukranians, the Iraqis. I hope with all my being that he is proved right.

One step forward, two steps back

The Boss told me he had been consulting one of the Trustees who has a background in HR. In discussing who would deal with the investigation, he steered me towards someone that the Trustee ‘knew of’, though he made a point of saying he was unaware how they know each other. Following my agreement to use them, he has contacted Trustee’s Acquaintance, asking me to get in touch with them to progress things asap.

Of course, I checked out the Trustee’s Acquaintance, and the consultancy they work for. Easy peasy; one click on the link at the bottom of their email and there you have them. And who should appear on the ‘about’ page of the consultancy’s website but Trustee themself.

What an odd thing to mislead me about. So easy to find out; did the Boss really not check? If he did and knew full well how Trustee and Acquaintance knew each other, why specifically tell me that he didn’t. It is so easy to get pulled down by the ever increasing eddies of paranoia; Acquaintance might be perfect for the job. Or Acquaintance might be malleable, linked to Trustee who in turn, might be looking for more work. Only surely there’d be a conflict of interests in them proving HR services to the charity Trustee governs. And if there’s a conflict of interests in relation to one piece of work, surely there’s a conflict for this which ought to be totally, completely objective. Whiter than white and all that Jazz.

I wonder if I’ve just answered my conundrum. I don’t want to be a pain for the sake of it, I don’t like having to challenge left right and centre, but really, shouldn’t standards demanded of me also be shown to me?

Ten Little Incidents

All the main books and articles on workplace bullying agree that it is usually made up of a constant stream of trivial incidents, none of which by themselves are usually enough to take action over without feeling, or indeed looking, foolish. This is one of the reasons it is so pernicious, and what means that it can live for so long under the radar. Tim Field, in Bully In Sight, calls it

an unnecessary hell

and continues

as with other forms of violation…only those who have suffered it fully appreciate the sheer awfulness of daily unremitting abuse that has no answer, no reason, no value and no end.

Here are some examples, none of which is worthy of complaint individually, it is the number, variety, and continual flow that make them significant:

1. When I first started, I was “in favour” and part of the crowd that were invited to the pub for irregular, spontaneous post work socialising. Then it all changed, and I would suddenly find that the whole of head office had left en masse, though the inner circle’s cars all remained in the office car park. Occasionally, Yvonne and the other principal gang leader, Sandra, would walk past my office to the Boss to invite him too. Fully aware of what was going on, I would wait in my office (working late was a regular feature, done willingly to ensure a job I enjoyed was done to the best of my ability) till the Boss could bear it no longer, and after several entreaties for me to go home, he would finally disappear down the back stairs – as if that made it ok, or I wouldn’t notice everyone’s cars still there; I mean, really?

2. As HR Director, pensions and the new auto enrolment scheme ought to have fallen within my remit. So when Sandra arranged a meeting with her finance team and our financial advisers that I found out from a neutral party was to do with pensions, I asked her to her face why she hadn’t thought it relevant for me to be included. Her reply was to turn on me and complain that she felt she was under attack. I had remained calm, asked in a completely neutral tone, and even preceded it with a round of tea making just to demonstrate there were no hard feelings. This tactic of turning it round, onto the target (ie me) is very effective. Everyone’s ears suddenly prick up and the public gaze is on me and what I might be making a fuss about.

3. Following on from this, there was a meeting with another provider who this time could offer a complete set of automated admin functions, including HR. The Boss’s comment afterwards, when he and Sandra were publicly discussing the amazing array of reports, monitoring and other possibilities on offer, “It would have been useful if you had been there”. What a shame no one had realised this glaringly obvious point when the meeting was booked in the first place.

4. Another pensions meeting; this time the Chairman, Deputy, the Boss and Sandra are all meeting. They regularly meet to discuss finances, so initially, I was completely untroubled. Deputy popped in to say hello on his way to the meeting, and let slip it wasn’t finance, but rather pensions. When I afterwards asked the Boss why on earth I wasn’t included, I was made to feel in the wrong for not just popping into a meeting I hadn’t been invited to if I thought I should have been there.

5. The first Christmas party with the Boss. He has been made aware of the previous culture of bullying and favouritism. No one seemed to want to sort out a seating plan, so it was left to our Marketing Manager and me; and I volunteered to sit next to the Boss. I thought it might be a good occasion to develop working relations. However, the inner circle, led by Yvonne and Sandra, all met up before hand to begin drinking together. The seating plan has been rearranged, so they are all together, with the Boss at their heart, and the Marketing Manager and me at the furthest end of the table away from the Boss. The Boss then proceeds to buy champagne for the inner circle and table wine for the rest of us for the rest of the evening. At the end of the evening, one of the ongoing targets lets rip at Yvonne for being evil and making her life a misery. Yvonne is visibly, theatrically even, distraught and the target is made out to be the bad guy in every recounting of the evening’s events. The target has since left, after 7 years and her own breakdown, conveniently assigned to relationship and family problems.

6. We used to have whip rounds for birthdays. I contributed as was expected. When it got to the end of the year, Yvonne announced we weren’t doing collections any more as it took up too much of her time. I had joined at the beginning of the previous year, too late to be included. Guess who has the first birthday in the calendar year. Hence the expression always a contributor, never a receiver. And whip rounds still happen; occasionally they forget and ask me if I’m contributing to x’s birthday present, quickly followed by muttering about, although we’re not doing it any more, just buying x a little something myself…

7. There are constant criticisms about HR, nothing unusual there, I hear you cry. If there is any delay in the recruitment process, it’s because my team don’t do their job properly. If anyone doesn’t get paid because they’re a new starter or their hours or pay has been varied, it’s HR’s fault, never mind that the manager in question hasn’t notified us, or payroll has overlooked it (payroll comes within Sandra’s realm).

8. Sick of all the snide comments about recruitment, I set up a working party to look at how we can speed up the process, and take a couple of random examples to assess how long they took and why. The longest one takes 26 weeks because the recruit doesn’t do his DBS check, and although the manager chases, he doesn’t respond. It is then quoted that recruitment takes 26 weeks as standard, even though this was an outlying exception.

9. We are starting a new charity shop. I find out when the advert for volunteers is produced to be vetted. It has discriminatory phrases and is informal to the point of unprofessional. I redraft it. Sandra and Nina are in charge of this project and rumoured to need 40 or so volunteers – there is no discussion with me or any of my team at any of the planning meetings, I presume they must have had. There is a later rumour that they want a manager and deputy, though already have people (friends of friends) in mind, so the ad is just a formality. I suggest that it would make sense to recruit manager and deputy first, not least to be able to interview the potential volunteers. This is completely ignored.

I am working at home (my turn to man the poorly children) when I receive notification that the ad has been placed: my heart hits the floor when I realise it’s the original wording. I immediately telephone my assistant, Paula, who instantly bursts into tears saying it wasn’t her fault, she was so busy that week, I’m not being fair etc etc. She slams the phone down, and my HR Manager, Zoe, rings to tell me that Paula has been running through the office, crying her eyes out, demanding to speak to Sandra. The long and the short of it is that I bundle up Poorly Children and go into the office and pull the ad. Nina had been emailing Paula regarding changes to the wording without copying me in so it is clearly not Paula’s fault. Nina is irate that the ad is being pulled. I point out that it makes more sense to recruit manager, deputy and volunteer coordinator first anyway, as I have already said. Nina cannot bear having her way of doing things questioned and ends up shouting at me that if I did my job properly, we wouldn’t be in this mess. I ask Nina to leave my office before I lose my cool. She takes great umbrage with this, and raises it on several occasions, omitting the reason why I asked her to leave.

10. There is an ongoing issue regarding the post. Although Yvonne is office manager, she doesn’t think post (or stationery, or buying office milk, tea, coffee etc) comes within her remit. It is sometimes forgotten, and Yvonne then tells whoever was last out of the office off for forgetting it. One evening, I hear her walk up to the post tray, read out who the letters are addressed to, dismiss them as ‘just HR’s’ put them back in the tray and ignore them. As I leave, I mention this, asking whose responsibility she thinks it is, and inquiring why she would pick them up, examine them and then put them back? Was she hoping I would fail, I ask her? She gets extremely emotional, says she feels like she has to walk on egg shells with me and my team. Her final blow is that she feels bullied by me. I am (naively) thrown by this. I end up leaving, taking the post with me.

Yvonne spends the next few weeks complaining to all and sundry about what an awful atmosphere there is, and how depressed she is for having to work in such conditions. When I ask her what WE could do to change it, how we could fix it, she shrugs and changes the subject.

There are many, many more. I am not by any means the only one to bear the brunt of Yvonne’s treatment, but I do stand up to her, for myself or anyone else who complains to me about her. Unfortunately, few others feel able to say anything. When she has spent two hours buying shoes on the internet, or paraded round the office in her new slinky underwear, Lin does nothing when she is berated publicly for talking to Paula about their sons for 2 minutes. But it drives me spare. I cannot bear the hypocrisy and the double standards. I don’t understand the mentality that undermines rather than helps colleagues. How can anyone act so blatantly; isn’t she scared her bluff will be called? Therein lies the rub, I suppose. Yvonne has been there for 17 years. Other office staff have seen targets leave one after another. Indeed Paula told Lin that I wouldn’t survive as Yvonne doesn’t like me.

And now I’m off, and she’s sent a get well card and bunch of flowers from head office. Won’t the Boss be impressed at how thoughtful she is? What a lot of fuss HR make about nothing.

A fine mess

So, the back story.

The office move. No, before that, ganging up on Tim Nice But Chaotic. No, before that, even. The day I started; can’t get much more beginning-like than that.

The climate I landed in on day one was one of fear. My then boss had been signed off with stress and hadn’t even met me before I started; I was recruited in absentia. Within weeks, days perhaps, the absence was transformed into a complaint with 30 separate items laid by our founder and Chairperson, and I was being pulled between my boss, and my boss’s boss. Long story short, my then boss became my ex boss.

Meanwhile, back in the office….
It had started ok. My personal life was in turmoil, as was the organisation. The job itself was fine, it was manageable, distracting, absorbing even. But unwittingly, I was a part of the gang that now derives gratification undermining me. We all worked well together, initially, taking time outs to discuss the under performing, over promoted Tim Nice But Chaotic(NBC)

One fine day, the ringleader – who I shall call Yvonne – suggested to me that I might like my two assistants and all the HR files moved into an office that had originally been for one, but which Tim NBC had been forced to extend to two from the day I joined, as there was nowhere else to put me. A short while later, there I was abandoned in a sea of files, no space to move; definitely not big enough for 3.

I tried reasoning with Yvonne, but she and one of the many who learned she was the one to back, Nina, turned on me. Didn’t I realise how much worse it was for everyone else in the main office. True there were more of them, but they could at least walk around each of their desks with ease and no risk of tripping over wires or bumping into desk corners. There was no room for discussion. They had decided all of HR should be tucked out of the way, and that was how it should be.

I wasn’t happy. Writing about it now it seems so trivial, but it’s how things were done more than the little insignificant digs and sleights that take their toll. Defiant, I proceeded to move the third desk out by myself, and then set about ordering all the files that had been taken out of the filing cabinets in order for the filing cabinets to be moved into my office, without anyone offering to help to put them back into said filing cabinets after they had landed in their new home.

Eventually, everything was straight, though I was still fuming, and for the first time left work in tears. It was to be the first of many.

The following day I was relieved to be away from Head Office at one of our 15 or so sites around the country, taking statements to investigate a grievance, which was turning out to be, as I had suspected, largely groundless. I was having a brief break between interviews when I received a text from Abi, another of Yvonne’s followers. I don’t remember the exact wording but it announced that my office had been rearranged, the third desk moved back in, and it was now looking lovely.

And that set the tone for the next 18 months. Relentless chipping away. Little things that of themselves aren’t worthy of a formal complaint, can’t be dealt with by policies or procedures. There is always a plausible justification; Yvonne claimed she thought she was helping by reorganising everything for me whilst I was out; hadn’t I just complained that no one had helped me put the files away the day before?

I don’t think this is a breakdown exactly, but I have reached the point where I am so fed up with the constant undermining, questioning, challenging and double standards that I have taken myself off to gain some perspective. The fact that I’m on anti-depressants and constantly cancel any social arrangement I make, doesn’t mean I’m not coping. The house is untidy, the kids’ clothes un-ironed, the fridge empty, but I’m not in a corner sobbing. I even got up today. And started this.

Now to try and work out ways of fixing that fine mess I seem to have got into. Answers on a postcard please…

Everyday invasions

Bullies are everywhere. Let’s face it, Mr Putin’s pushover invasion of Crimea isn’t the way you or I would behave. Invite a neighbour round for coffee; fine. Takeover your neighbour’s coffee, house, coffee houses and take away their keys/army; not quite so fine.
He’s also deployed the typical bully tactic of using a tiny grain of truth from which to distort invasion into liberation (isn’t that also how the Chinese described what they did in Tibet?).
I haven’t started this to rant about politics and the daily injustices that happen under our noses and all around the world. I started this to save my sanity. I am being bullied, at work. For my own survival, I am reading up on all things bully-centric, of which more in another post. I wish to try and use the most pernicious, destructive of experiences for something a little more constructive.

Watching the news last night, it struck me that whatever scale it is played out on, there are striking similarities:
A self-motivated, malevolent act portrayed as, perhaps genuinely believed to be, benevolent.
Twisting a tiny amount of truth into a big fat lie that the majority are too scared to stand up to.
Holding enough power, enough ways of being indispensable (whether office supplies or oil supplies) for those that should know better to do no more than lip service to stopping it, for fear of jeopardising bigger interests that lie closer to home, ie that could affect them.

I am the HR director in a medium-sized organisation, the one others come to when things aren’t working as they should. Unfortunately, I am good at my job, have high moral standards, stand up for others, cannot bear injustice and will say if I see it. Unfortunately, because this is what has made me a target. I have been standing up for myself gently, calmly, quietly. Today, I’m going to start to use the experience in an attempt to do something constructive with this most negative of experiences.
If you’re going through the same, perhaps we can help each other. If you’ve been through it, perhaps you have some advice you could share. If you’re not sure, this might help crystallise whether what is going on with you does fall on the dark side.
My starting point was this: Bullyonline.org. It describes what I have being going through, confirms it is bullying, and might help you. I can’t describe what bullying is any better. What I’m going to do it describe what happens to me as I live through it. I have just been signed off work. I have a draft email to my boss that will set in motion things over which I will have no longer have any control. I will document whatever happens, however it plays out.
If you’re just starting down this road too, let’s wish each other luck, take a deep breath, and jump off into the unknown.
Remember, it will work out ok in the end; if it’s not ok, it’s not the end.