2189: Reflections on the Last Five Years, Or: Life After Games Journalism

I’ve had a whole lot of thoughts swirling around in my head for some time now about various matters, and I feel as a therapeutic exercise — not to mention an opportunity for some of you to get to know me a bit better — it’s important that I express them somehow. I know all too well how frustrating, stressful and ultimately unhealthy it can be to have unresolved emotions and thoughts surrounding things that have happened to you — particularly bad things — and so this is my attempt to reboot my mind and try to move on a little.

Consequently, certain aspects of this post are more than likely to rub a few people up the wrong way. To those people whose jimmies are rustled I say simply: fuck you, I don’t give a shit, and if you really cared you wouldn’t have done the things you did in the first place.

In the interests of at least a facade of professionalism, I will not be naming individuals who have had a negative impact on my life in this post, though it will doubtless be extremely obvious to anyone who has been following me for a while who the people in question are. I will, however, be naming the companies involved, since that is less personal; everyone knows how unpleasant it is if you Google your own name and find something not terribly complimentary, whereas, unless you own a monolithic corporation, you probably care a little less about someone talking smack about your monolithic corporation. That’s how I’m going to attempt to justify myself about this, anyway.

Also, this post is crazy long, so for the benefit of those who only read on my front page, here’s a Read More tag.

Continue reading “2189: Reflections on the Last Five Years, Or: Life After Games Journalism” →

1507: Why I Went Back, and The Fear

I was going to write about something else today, but after Mr Russ Pitts kindly linked to a piece I wrote this time last year in an excellent article regarding online abuse and trolling, I felt I should probably elaborate on some things that have happened since then.

Firstly, despite what I said in that piece, it transpires that I did eventually go back to Twitter. Why? Because, to be frank, I was lonely; I have a lot of friends on that social network, and it was difficult to stay in touch with them via other means. It’s also a particularly convenient means of reaching out to people for my current profession.

So I went back. However, I did so under a new username and a new email address — and being much more mindful of what I shared in my 140-character bio.

This is in itself kind of silly, really; I have to effectively “silence” an aspect of my personality based on my previous experience, and cannot be fully open about the things I enjoy or love, because it might attract organised bile and vitriol not just towards me, but towards people close to me, too. Thankfully, on the few occasions I have happened to mention ponies recently, things have passed without incident — I suspect the charmers at the “GNAA” have moved on to new victims by now.

Thinking of all this brings up an important consideration that I don’t believe a lot of Internet commenters stop to think about before spraying vitriol over an article they disagree with: the fact that the words you read on the Internet are, for the most part, written by an actual person with a brain, a heart, a soul and, you know, feelings. People disagreeing over various things is a fact of life — the world would be a boring place if everyone felt the same way about everything, as The Lego Movie suggested in a somewhat hamfisted way — but it’s the way you go about those disagreements that is important to consider, because arguing your case in the wrong way — or wilfully misreading or misunderstanding something someone has said — can have a severe impact on their mental health.

I’ve been fairly open on this blog about my own self-esteem issues and occasional feelings of “imposter syndrome” — the feeling that one day, you might be “found out” and have everything taken away from you. I consider myself hugely lucky to have the job I have, working alongside people I have respected enormously for many years — since childhood in at least one case. There are days when I feel like I’m even quite good at what I do — but there are also days when I seriously consider throwing in the towel and going to do something “invisible” with the rest of the drones in the daily workforce.

The difference between those two types of day can often be just a single comment. Just one, regardless of how many otherwise positive or supportive comments you might have that day — one single, unpleasant, negative or abusive comment can completely ruin the day of someone like me.

I’m not saying all games journalists are like me — though from some conversation during the establishment of TakeThis.org, which Russ mentioned in his post, mental health issues of various descriptions are alarmingly widespread in our profession — but it’s surely just basic human decency to not, in effect, walk up to someone and start hurling abuse at them. And yet it happens. And not just from inconsiderate gamers angry about the score you gave Titanfall, either; sometimes even people who claim to be fighting for worthy causes can be needlessly aggressive, confrontational or even abusive, too. It’s a plague across the whole Internet.

This leads to what I call The Fear, which in turn leads to what Russ talks about in his post: the assumption that “do not engage” is the only way to deal with bullying, abuse or even just plain unreasonable comments. There are days when I write things and I’m genuinely afraid to look at the comment section — it’s an irrational fear, I know, but it’s what this age of anonymous abuse has wrought.

And what a ridiculous situation that is, when you think about it. People who write for a living — many of whom are considerably more talented than I am — are subject to The Fear on a daily basis. You never can tell what it is that’s going to attract the next batch of abuse, or death threats, or defamation, or simple spitefulness. It’s a horrible feeling.

And yet we still stick around, for the most part. Why? Because even amid all this, we love what we do, and we love engaging with those people who like to have a reasonable discussion about things without necessarily agreeing on everything — those people who, if we’re honest, make up the majority of our feedback. Sometimes we even become friends with those people.

But as I say, it only takes one nasty comment to undo all the good those people do for us. Just one.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could live in a world where we could just love what we do without having to worry about The Fear ever again?

One day, perhaps. But there’s a long road ahead before we get there.

1425: An Open Note to @Twitter

[Note: Since I wrote this post this morning, Twitter has reversed its policies on blocking. That was fast!]

I’m not normally one to jump on the controversy du jour and add my voice to the throngs of people yelling about a particular issue, but in the case of Twitter’s recent changes to its “block” system, whereby blocked users are now effectively “muted” in only one direction rather than truly blocked, I feel it’s important I share my experiences.

Earlier in the year, I suffered an organised campaign of harassment that was enough to drive me from the Twitter service and completely close my account. I only returned a while later for professional reasons — in my occupation of online journalist, Twitter is a convenient means of both getting in touch with people and promoting content. Were it not for my job, I doubt I would have returned.

The harassment stemmed from a single word in my profile: “Brony.” Lest you’re unfamiliar, this term describes an adult-age fan of the TV show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic by Lauren Faust and her team. The “Brony” community is a large and active one on the Internet, and for the most part a hugely supportive one, with its creed being “love and tolerate”. It accounts for a significant proportion of creative derivative works such as fan fiction, artwork and music videos, and is a fascinating cultural phenomenon. I always considered myself somewhat on the periphery of this fandom, since although I liked the show I wasn’t so deep in that I was making these creative works; I included the word in my Twitter bio as a means of showing my support for the community, however, and acknowledging something I found to be enjoyable.

What I wasn’t aware of until my harassment incident was the fact that there are people on Twitter — and the Internet at large — who specifically seek out self-professed “Bronies” and torment them, usually through repeated and public accusations of paedophilia. In my case, this began as a series of Twitter @mentions that grew in frequency and intensity over the course of several days; I quickly blocked the main instigators without engaging with them, but more and more people came as the situation escalated and the group responsible for the harassment — known as the GNAA — came together against me.

I changed my Twitter username in an attempt to deter the attackers, but all this achieved was causing them to take over my original username, pose as me and post links to pornographic content.

The harassment went a step further than just Twitter @mentions, however. My Twitter bio also linked to the Twitter account of my brother, and to the video games website I was, at the time, managing editor of. The instigators of the harassment followed these links to my brother’s personal website and the site I worked for, trawled the WHOIS records to find the phone numbers of the owners — my brother himself and the person who was paying for the hosting of the games site respectively — and then called them to make further accusations of paedophilia against me.

These calls continued for several days, and prompted me to contact the police to find out if there was anything I could do. Unfortunately the police were unable to do much save for keep the incident on file, and recommended that I work with Twitter to resolve the situation.

I contacted Twitter to explain the situation and point the support staff in the direction of the accounts that had been instigating most of the trouble, and which had hijacked my original account name to pose as me. After several days of waiting, during which the harassment continued, Twitter’s response was that those responsible were not in breach of Twitter’s terms and conditions because it was a “personal dispute”. It took another round of contacting them to convince them to suspend my original username, at which point I decided to leave the service entirely, and had no intention of returning unless I absolutely had to.

Without Twitter’s Block function allowing for forced unfollows and true blocking of troublemakers, this incident would have been even worse than it already was. Moreover, Twitter has shown itself to be either incapable or unwilling of dealing with persistent and organised harassment that spills out into the non-online sphere.

I am not the only person who has suffered such abuse at the hands of online bullies, but everyone who has has something in common: all they are doing is attempting to be their true selves, unashamed of who they are, what they do and what they like — and attempting to engage with like-minded or supportive people. Harassment on the grounds of something that you are — or, in my case, something that you like — is completely unacceptable, and it’s not at all appropriate to just brush these levels of personal attacks off as personal disputes, then do nothing about them.

The changes to the Block policies do not encourage a change in behaviour on the part of the bullies. If anything, they punish the victim more by forcing them to take their account private when they may wish to remain public in order to meet new friends. Twitter is taking its policies with regard to harassment and bullying in the wrong direction — and these policies weren’t in a particularly good place to begin with, as I can say from first-hand experience.

I would encourage Twitter to rethink how it is handling this situation, and to ensure that more robust solutions are in place for blocking and reporting persistent offenders. Twitter is an enormously useful online communication resource, and the means through which I have come to know a significant number of friends a lot better. But it needs to be a safe place; for marginalised and vulnerable groups, those who have suffered previous harassment or those who simply suffer from social anxiety, these new changes are not a step in the right direction.

Please consider the good of the community that has been built and not just the supposed needs of the business. When you build a social network, both aspects are important; without the former, the latter simply ceases to exist.

1158: Forking One’s Dongle

Some of you may have been following this recent unfolding story via the social Web and other avenues, but I thought I’d mention it here for those who haven’t seen it. I am talking about the recent incident at PyCon, a conference for Python developers all over the world.

There’s a comprehensive rundown of what happened over at VentureBeat (and follow-up here), but in case you can’t be bothered to read all those difficult words, here are the pertinent points:

“Evangelist” is an actual job title these days outside of the religious community. Sweet Jesus. No pun intended.
Adria Richards, a “developer evangelist” for a company called SendGrid that has something to do with email (I don’t really understand it, to be perfectly honest, but that’s not massively important) “called out” two male developers during a keynote session at PyCon for making allegedly “sexual” jokes about “forking repos” and “big dongles”. She did this by taking a photograph of them and then posting it to Twitter.
“Forking a repo” apparently refers to taking a piece of source code and developing it into a new piece of software not, you know, fucking it, despite the fact “I’d like to fork that” is a somewhat innuendo-laden phrase, particularly if you say it like a Cockney while rubbing your thighs, which reports don’t suggest these two gentlemen did.
“Dongle”, a piece of hardware that allows a particular function to happen, is an indisputably funny word because it has the word “Dong” in it. “Dongle” is also ripe for innuendo because it has the word “Dong” in it.
The inevitable Twitter shitstorm kicked off as a result of Richards’ tweet.
Richards started receiving rape and death threats but continued to feed the trolls.
One of the developers in the photograph was fired after the incident.
One of the developers (I’m not sure if it’s the same one who was fired offhand) apologised to Richards.
SendGrid suffered a DDOS attack following the incident.
SendGrid fired Richards today, explaining that the company supported her right to speak out against content she found objectionable, but not in the very public, provocative manner in which she did so.
???
Profi– wait, no, that’s something else.

Now, I’ve said a number of times on here that I recognise and accept that women in the tech industry generally — not just the video games sector — are in a difficult position, having to compete against something of a “boys’ club” mentality. And these women should speak out when something inappropriate is said or done to them.

This incident, though? I could tell yesterday when it all kicked off that it was going to be a real mess. The big issue we have here is that the things the male developers said weren’t really sexist comments. They weren’t directed at a woman, they clearly weren’t maliciously intended and for all we know, they really were talking about literally wanting to fork the repo under discussion rather than making the rather childish joke it seems they were making. (And come on. When your profession requires you to talk about “dongles” with a straight face, even the most sour-faced git has to crack a smile every so often.)

There’s also the issue of Richards and whether or not she invaded their privacy. The comments were made between the two men as a “private” joke — or as private as a joke can be in a crowded conference hall, anyway. Richards, the argument goes, eavesdropped on their conversation then shared details of it to the social Web when what she should have actually done was spoken to the two men herself, told them that the things they were saying made her uncomfortable, given them the opportunity to apologise if they wanted to, and that should have been that.

The flip side to the issue, of course, is that by making innuendo-laden jokes at a tech conference like this, these gents could be seen to be perpetuating the “boys’ club” mentality — even if the comments weren’t directly addressed to a woman. But in response to that I would again point out that at worst they were indulging in a childish, harmless pun that even a primary school kid would shake their head at, and at best they were simply using programmer slang with absolutely no intended sexual connotations whatsoever. Besides, I know plenty of women who are a dab hand at the old innuendo game themselves. And even Richards herself was caught making jokes about stuffing socks down someone’s pants for when the TSA felt them up at the airport.

In short, the whole thing ended up being rather surreal, and no-one really came out of it a winner. Richards came out of it looking like one of the stereotypical feminists that those ridiculous “men’s rights” groups get up in arms about, getting offended at something that really wasn’t worth getting offended over. The developers who made the comments have had their names and faces dragged through the mud. And in the meantime, two people have lost their jobs and at least one of them is suffering a considerable amount of bullying and abuse as a result of this whole situation.

Ultimately, Richards’ “speaking out” against the two developers’ behaviour has probably done more harm than good, not least because the manner in which she did it cost her her own job and attracted the wrath of the very worst the Internet has to offer. I sympathise with her from that perspective, having suffered cyberbullying on a far smaller scale than this incident — but I also think she was a complete pillock for inciting this whole shitstorm in the first place. To reiterate: that doesn’t justify the atrocious behaviour and abuse that has been directed her way, but at the same time, she’s not at all blameless in this matter.

The social Web is a powerful tool and can be a force for good. But it can also destroy lives. Think about that before you do or say anything stupid.

1125: Low Ebb

After the events of the last few days, which I won’t go into right now, I feel compelled to write a few words about bullying in general. I’ve already written a considerable number of words on the time I suffered workplace bullying towards the end of my time working at an Apple Store (check it out here) but I wanted to talk a little more about the subject in general.

The word “bullying” is an incredibly loaded one that brings to mind images of schoolkids taking the piss out of each other for the most ridiculous reasons. When I was a young child at primary school, it was my ears. They stuck out and looked quite large, so naturally I was picked on and ridiculed for that — not just occasionally, but pretty much daily. The experience left me with mental scars that are yet to heal, and which manifest themselves in my cripplingly low sense of self-esteem.

But bullying isn’t just something that children suffer from. Adults can suffer bullying, too, in a variety of forms. It could be workplace bullying such as that described in my previous post, where those in a position of “power” or “authority” use their influence to negative, unfair ends; it could be one group of people taking an irrational dislike to another group and expressing that dislike through verbal or physical abuse; it could be organised campaigns of hatred using the Internet.

The latter is an option that didn’t exist when I was a youngster. The Internet wasn’t a widespread thing until I was well into my teenage years, and social media certainly was nowhere to be seen. As such, any instances of bullying tended to confine themselves to the “real world” where they could normally be dealt with relatively easily, since there was usually an identifiable perpetrator to pin the blame on. It wasn’t always easy for the victim to come forward and report the perpetrator, of course, for fear of reprisals — that “knowing them in real life” thing worked both ways — but if they could muster up the courage to do so, then the situation could often be dealt with.

With online bullying, though, it’s a much more difficult proposition. There isn’t always a visible perpetrator, because they often choose to hide behind a veil of anonymity. Some particularly arrogant online bullies do so under their real name because they’ve also taken steps to ensure that they will never get caught, and herein lies part of the problem: the very nature of online crime makes it extremely difficult to police, meaning that more often than not the groups responsible for making some people feel really, really shitty go completely unpunished and thus receive the message loud and clear that what they are doing is Okay.

The worst thing about bullying in all its forms is the degree of self-doubt it can instill in its victim. Am I worthless? they’ll think. Do I deserve this? Are those things they’re saying actually true? Do people really think that about me? Is that how other people see me? These are, of course, all things that I’ve found myself thinking at various points in my life.

It’s useless and irrational to think that way, of course, but sadly, often the sort of people who are affected the worst by the actions of bullies are those who, like me, turn irrational when they have to deal with a difficult situation like this. Because it’s not easy to stay rational in the face of totally irrational, unprovoked hatred, either, for in many cases these instances of bullying are born from little more than boredom rather than feeling particularly strongly about the person or group in question. It becomes a sport for the bullies, more about the chase and the observation of the victim’s behaviour than specifically trying to hurt a person. This is particularly apparent when it comes to online bullying, where it’s very easy to conveniently forget that the target of your vitriol is actually a real person with real feelings, and that any hurtful things you send off into the ether after you click that “Send” button may have a very real impact on that person’s emotional, mental and, in some cases, physical wellbeing.

There’s no easy solution, either. And that’s sad. What’s even more sad is the fact that we seem to have got to a stage as a society where we just accept that this sort of thing happens, and we don’t do anything about it. I don’t have any suggestions or solutions, either, mind you, but surely by the year 2013 you’d think humanity might have gotten over irrational hatred by now.

But apparently not.

(Sorry for the lack of comic today. I’m emotionally exhausted and there’s no real way I can make all this shit funny.)

1123: Assholes with Nothing Better to Do

I don’t know if any of you reading this have ever been properly trolled by someone who really knows what they’re doing, but I have. Twice.

The first was during my GamePro days, and I believe I’ve mentioned it on this blog before. Basically there was this dude who frequented the GamePro Facebook page and was a bit of a nutcase, to put it mildly. He’d often come along and comment on updates, talking about how debit cards were somehow evil and various other ravings. He seemed mostly harmless, however, so he was tolerated, left alone and largely ignored by other members of the community.

That is, until I posted a news story about Singapore-MIT Gambit Game Lab’s interactive JRPG-style exploration of queer issues, A Closed World. Suddenly, nutjob went on the offensive, posting raving comment after raving comment and directly attacking me, accusing me of being a paedophile and all manner of other slurs. Apparently he was a big fat homophobe as well as a crazy person, it seems, so he got summarily blocked from the GamePro Facebook page, reported to Facebook and also blocked from the main GamePro site despite his best efforts to continue harassing me. This rapid response (largely from me, I might add, without engaging with him) meant that he went away pretty quickly, thankfully, but it was still a somewhat unpleasant experience to go through, even though I knew that none of the things he was saying were true.

Something very similar happened today. Yesterday, I received a bizarre tweet from a complete stranger that wasn’t a reply to anything which I had said, but which simply called me a “sick, sick man.” I took a brief look at this person’s profile and they appeared to be… not the sort of person you’d really want to associate yourselves with, let’s say, so I immediately blocked them and thought nothing more of it.

Today I received an email from Rob, the owner of Games Are Evil, informing me that he’d received a voicemail from someone — someone who neither he or I knew, I might add. Apparently they’d made some rather unpleasant allegations about me and had supposedly contacted the authorities. Much like the previous time I was attacked without provocation, my heart almost stopped, even though I knew there was absolutely no truth to these allegations whatsoever. It took me quite some time to calm myself down.

Calm myself down I did, though, and I did a little digging, as I was suspicious about a few things. So firstly I went back and looked at the Twitter account that had sent me the strange message last night. The location on it matched the location the caller was supposedly from, and the first name on the account also matched the Twitter account. Things were starting to fall into place.

I checked the WHOIS records for Games Are Evil and discovered that, as I suspected, Rob’s phone number and contact details were recorded alongside the site’s other information, which explained how this person was able to contact him by phone when the only information on the site itself is a selection of email addresses. The only question left was why someone would do all this.

And the best answer I can come up with is “because they had nothing better to do.” My attacker is, according to his Twitter profile, a member of an anti-blogger group with a spectacularly offensive name whom I’d never heard of prior to today, and it seems they have something of a habit of attacking people in this manner for reasons best known unto themselves. It seems that today, I was just unlucky enough to be the one in the firing line. I’m now not all that worried about this ridiculous turn of events, because frankly I don’t really see the “authorities” — if they were contacted at all, which I seriously doubt — trusting the word of someone who voluntarily chooses to associate themselves with a group called… well, this. (Wikipedia link, offensive name. You have been warned.)

Still, it sucks that there are people out there malicious enough to pull shit like this against complete strangers. May they all fall off a cliff and land arse-first on a sharp spike. Cunts.

So yeah. Happy Valentine’s Day and all that.

#oneaday Day 807: Bully for You

Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Bullying is an odious practice, awful to witness and even worse to be the target of. Yesterday — and I am going to keep details deliberately vague here — I witnessed a good friend of mine get pretty ruthlessly picked on by people who should know better. Their words were continually twisted and very selectively shared with a wider audience in order to gain support for the bullies and tear down my friend piece by piece until the point they were trying to make — which I shan’t go into here but I actually agreed with — was all but lost. My friend was left ridiculed and humiliated having been called a whole storm of names from people he had, in some cases, never had contact with before. Meanwhile, the bullies were left looking like white knights who had saved the day.

It made me very angry.

Bullying is about power, insecurity and, very often, a desire for approval. This incident — which took place on Twitter — was an apt example of all of the above. The bullies had a great reach thanks to their profession and their high follower counts, giving them a large amount of power by default. The fact that they were only selectively sharing the things my friend said with their followers was a sign of insecurity and a lack of faith in their own argument. And their desire for approval speaks for itself, really — otherwise why would they have engaged in such a toxic, public argument? It was deeply unpleasant to see and, as I say, the perpetrators in question should really know better than to behave like that.

I’ve been the victim of bullying on a number of occasions through my life, so I can relate to the feelings my friend has undoubtedly been suffering as a consequence of this incident. I suffered physical violence and ostracisation by my peers at primary school and, to a slightly lesser extent, at secondary school. I’ve been a victim of what I call “passive bullying” at one of the schools I worked at, where I was regularly left to sit by myself in the staffroom and was never invited into any friendship groups or cliques — a situation exacerbated by my own social anxiety, which was made worse by this going on.

And I’ve suffered outright workplace bullying, which is what I’d like to take a moment (edit: several thousand words, I apologise in advance) to talk about here, as it has relevance to the incident I described above — adults who should know better, in other words. Disclaimer: I shan’t be naming specific names here, but those who know me well will likely already be familiar with the particular incidents that I’m about to describe. Those who aren’t familiar with the specific instances I’m going to refer to, I hope they open your eyes a little to the fact that bullying among adults is most definitely alive and well, and it should really be unacceptable in a civilised society.

This is not an easy thing to write about, and will likely go on for some time, so I thank you in advance for indulging me and reading this.

It started with a review meeting. These were a regular occurrence at the place of employment in question, so there was nothing new there. Said employer had fairly strict policies in place to help control its public image — namely, employees were not permitted to engage in discussions relating to their job and the things they dealt with in the course of their daily work, and were not permitted to speak to the press. Not that that was ever an issue to my recollection. Given that all this was around the time that everybody and his dog was getting around to joining Twitter, it was a hot topic. I knew this, so I always took great care to never refer to my employer by name online and never to discuss the specifics of what I do.

So it was with some surprise that in my review meeting it was “suggested” to me that my target for the next review a month later should be to “stop talking about work on Twitter”. At the time, I didn’t think much on this until a little later, when I realised that such an “admission” — which had come from my reviewing manager, not from me — would look bad in the cold, hard light of the Policy and Procedure manual. As such, I took the opportunity to take the managers aside and politely request that my “target” be changed to something more appropriate.

My request was bluntly declined, and one of the managers even offered to go back through my tweets and highlight the ones he found particularly objectionable. I knew the ones they would be referring to — but as I said previously, I had always taken the greatest care to never share my place of employment in the public domain, and never to mention the specifics of my job. Their justification was that “people who knew me would know what I was referring to”. I could see that fighting this would be an uphill struggle that I didn’t need to have at this time, so I reluctantly acquiesced and the “target” stood firm on my file. I never mentioned anything even vaguely work-related from that point on.

I worked in a small department at the employer’s place of business. We were understaffed and overworked, and this situation wasn’t helped by the hasty dismissal of two members of our team who had been with us since “the beginning”, as it were. One was dismissed for a Facebook prank gone awry, the other was dismissed following the complaint of a client. Both were disproportionately harsh penalties for the supposed misdemeanours in question — in the latter case, the client who raised the complaint was notorious among the non-management members of staff as someone who was difficult to deal with and rude as well as being someone who completely flouted the terms and conditions of her working relationship with us. The situation could also have been completely averted with managerial involvement — something which my colleague immediately sought when things got heated, but was unable to secure due to the fact that they were all locked in their office (busily dismissing another colleague, as it happened).

I sat in on the disciplinary proceedings and subsequent appeal for my colleague and friend. It was horrible to see. His arguments were fair and valid, but little heed was paid. As his nominated “second”, I was able to ask questions which were to be recorded on the official notes of the proceedings, so I took great pains to think of some questions which would help clarify the situation in a way that would make my colleague look — as he was — innocent. Three questions into my list I was effectively told to shut up and stop slowing things down. It was abundantly clear at this point that no real consideration was being given to my friend’s arguments and the issues I was hoping to raise — the decision had already been made before we walked into that room, and the same happened in the appeal process. It was utterly demoralising to witness.

So, two members of our team down, we struggled to keep up with the increasing demand for our services from clients. Our efforts were not helped by the introduction of a new initiative which had come down from Head Office which made life considerably more inconvenient for both us and our clients. As a team, we called an urgent meeting to discuss this initiative and how it wasn’t working, and were ignored — despite the fact that written complaints from clients had come in echoing our own sentiments along with frustration at the fact that the two dismissed team members’ particular, specific skill sets were no longer available.

One manager in particular had started watching us — and particularly me, for some reason — like a hawk. When we weren’t dealing directly with clients, we were supposed to have time to train and improve our own skills so as to be able to provide a better service. It was a system that had worked well in the past and had allowed all of us to learn a lot both independently and from each other. By this point, though, any training session we held proceeded with the manager in question breathing down our necks, regularly asking what we were doing in an accusatory manner and frequently sending passive-aggressive emails about all the things we were supposedly doing wrong.

By this point, I had come to the conclusion that I did not trust the managers, particularly after witnessing the way they had treated my former colleagues. As such, to avoid hassle and confrontation, I made a point to stay out of their way, keep my head down and just get on with my job. My clients appreciated what I did for them (I’m aware this makes me sound like a prostitute but I’m being deliberately vague in all this!) and frequently sent in glowing letters of praise, and my colleagues appreciated it when I helped them using my own specialist knowledge. In short, I was doing just fine by myself.

One day, I was pulled aside by another of the managers and asked why I wasn’t talking to them any more. I was accused of blanking them on the way into work — patent nonsense, I might add — and threatened with “behavioural conduct” proceedings if I didn’t change my ways. I wasn’t clear at all on what I had supposedly done wrong in their eyes, however — since I had had no need to speak to them except when seeking permission to perform specific tasks, I simply hadn’t. A “keep out of my way, I’ll keep out of yours” situation, if you will. It worked fine for me, but I wasn’t specifically blanking them or anything, nor was I “resisting” any suggestions or feedback on the rare occasions when it was provided.

The latter incident, however, convinced me that it was probably time to move on. To prevent awkwardness, I spoke to one of the managers — not the one who had raised the “behavioural conduct” issues, but the one who had been watching over our shoulders while we trained, as it happens — and explained that I wasn’t happy, I wasn’t satisfied with my career progression (I couldn’t see a clear onward path from my position at that point) and that I was considering moving on. I explained that I wanted to be open and honest about the whole thing, and that I did not want it to be the cause of any ill will or bad blood.

It was at around this point that the opportunity arose for me to do some “work experience” of sorts with a friend in the local area. Said work experience would provide me with the opportunity to move sideways into a different career that I was qualified for, and it would be a good opportunity to get some references for job hunting, since I already knew that my then-current employer’s references were nothing more than stock letters that confirmed start and end dates. I explained to the manager that this was a possibility, but that I did not yet know the dates for when it would be happening as my friend had to clear it with her employer. I also explained that I would simply book holiday for the time in which I would be undergoing this (unpaid) work experience, as I still had the vast majority of my holiday allowance available.

As it happened, the week for this work experience eventually fell a week after a week-long holiday I had already booked months in advance to go and visit some friends abroad. I followed procedure to the letter, booking the extra week well ahead of time and going to the extra trouble to include a letter explaining the situation — that I understood it would be inconvenient for me to be away for two weeks instead of one, but that I had booked it as early as I could and that the unfortunate timing wasn’t really up to me. I even offered to compromise by working some extra shifts in the couple of days I had between the two holiday periods. I got no response at the time, and when I checked in the system just before I left for faraway lands, my second request was marked as “approved”.

While I was away, I received an email from the manager in question explaining that they were supposedly still considering my second week of holiday, and that I should go in to discuss it with them upon my return. It had already been approved, remember, so upon getting back home I printed out proof of this approval, took it to my meeting, expected to show it to the manager in question and that be the end of the matter.

It wasn’t. Suddenly there was a whole ton of conditions attached to this week of unpaid work experience, the reasons for which I had been completely transparent about. Suddenly I needed a letter from the place I was going to confirming that they were going to offer me a job (I’d never said any such thing was a possibility). Suddenly there were all these hoops to jump through for a week of “holiday” that was, let’s not forget, already approved.

I’m afraid to say that I lost it at this point. I was frustrated, tired, upset and angry, so I lost my cool and demanded to know why the manager was seemingly going out of their way to make my life difficult. It was a mistake to get upset — I knew that at the time, and I regret it — but while I was stood there talking about it there felt like no other way to express the frustration that had been building up inside me, the culmination of what had been by this point months of harsh treatment, mistrust, passive-aggressive messages and a complete refusal to listen to the team.

It had the desired effect, at least. The manager was stunned into silence, but unfortunately their next move was to phone up our overall manager who happened to be on holiday at the time. By all accounts, our overall manager was a rather weak, ineffective sort of leader, so I didn’t expect him to achieve much. I lost my patience and simply left. Reasonable discourse was obviously out of the window on both our parts. Eventually, I simply left on my work experience week and heard nothing more about it until when I returned, at which point I was summoned into the office and invited to discuss the incident in a “recorded conversation” typed up by one of the other managers. I was totally misrepresented in the course of this meeting and made out to be the aggressor rather than someone simply frustrated by being continually stonewalled, and I was not allowed to leave until I had signed this document which contained numerous inaccuracies that would undoubtedly not look good on my file. Panicking and upset, I signed the document and left, not sure what to do next. I spent the remainder of the day regretting that I had signed the incriminating document, wishing I had torn it up instead.

To cut an already-long story slightly shorter, over the course of the next few weeks, the managers in question were even tougher on me. I found myself accused of various “misdemeanours” when in fact there were legitimate reasons for all of them — lest this sound like “she doth protest too much”, let me give you a rather vague example: one client had a question about a particular service, I happened to be in a position to answer a question and demonstrate a solution about said service using my own personal account so I did so. The client left satisfied and happy, but this was ignored in favour of the fact that I supposedly shouldn’t have been using said personal account during work.

This feeling of constant surveillance and being pulled up on even the tiniest things was getting to be too much. I was starting to feel the tell-tale signs of stress and depression tugging at my brainstrings, so I knew it was time to get out before I had another nervous breakdown. I tried to bring an official grievance against the management team regarding their treatment of me and the team — specifically regarding the holiday incident — but was unsuccessful. The justification? That I was bitter I had been passed over for a promotion and was thus simply causing a fuss. This was utter nonsense, as I knew the person who did get the promotion (one of my two colleagues who were dismissed, as it happens) was infinitely more qualified for the position than me, and had said so at the time. Thoughts of promotion had not even crossed my mind since I had tried for that position.

That was the last straw. I penned a very lengthy resignation letter and handed it in to our ineffectual wet-lettuce of an overall manager as I left one day. The following day, no staff members saw a single manager outside of the office. At the end of that day, I was summoned to the office and my notice was accepted, but rather than working it — something which I had said I was more than happy to do in my letter as I knew clients appreciated my services, knowledge and manner — I was told to leave and not come back. I was forced to say goodbye to my friends “under guard”, as it were, and was specifically directed not to say goodbye to those who were around (not directly engaged with) clients and potential clients. I was escorted from the premises, and it was made very clear that I would not be welcome back. It was the final humiliation in a long line of belittlement, chipping away at self-esteem and insecure exertion of power.

I just hung around the city for a few hours. I remember sitting on a park bench and crying, then going home and crying some more. I was devastated. A job which I had once described as the most positive, supportive environment I had ever worked in had become a toxic, mean and deeply unpleasant place to spend time, and I had been hastily ushered out of the door before I had a chance to say a proper farewell, presumably out of fear that I would sow the seeds of discontent among the staff. They were already there, though; they didn’t need any encouragement from me. In fact, a number of colleagues came to me after the fact noting how much they respected me for standing up to the bullying of management, and wishing they had the balls to do the same. It made me feel a bit better, but I was still crushed inside.

I don’t normally hold grudges and am a very forgiving sort of person. But I have never forgiven those few people who took an amazing job that I adored and poisoned it beyond all recognition, leaving it a withered husk of its former self. I still remember that last day vividly, and it still upsets me to think about. I can’t remember ever feeling so belittled and humiliated, or so frustrated at the fact that so little justice would be done to the people who had made me — and others — feel this way.

If what it takes to get ahead in business is to be a bully who tramples on the self-confidence of others to compensate for their own insecurities, then I’m quite happy toiling as I do in relative obscurity for an employer I like and respect a great deal. I am eternally grateful to the awesome people I have worked with and for ever since the awful times described above.

May you never have to suffer a similar fate.

#oneaday, Day 3: My Life with Des

The concept of Des as displayed in my comic is, of course, nonsense and would be genuinely terrifying if it were actually true. But for anyone who has suffered with depression, anxiety or similar symptoms, your own personal black cloud of despair is very much a real thing, even if you can’t see him or make him cups of tea in order to make him go away. (Some people may argue that last point, but I don’t really drink tea.)

Thinking about it, though, “Des”, or “The Black Cloud of Despair” to give him his full name, has been with me pretty much for as long as I remember, right from a young age. In this post, I’m going to explore my relationship with “him” and perhaps work some things out as a result. This probably isn’t going to be easy to write (or read) but it’s cathartic or something. So here we go.

Des sometimes came with me to primary school. I had disproportionately-large ears when I was a kid, or at least a haircut which made them appear that way, and I was relentlessly bullied throughout most of primary school for them, even by people who were (sometimes) my friends. I recall spending many lunchtimes at school either in tears, getting beaten up by the school bullies or getting absolutely furious at one of the dinner ladies. I can’t even remember why I got so angry with her now, but I have vivid memories of kicking a bin over on more than one occasion. Looking back on it, all these things that were happening just attracted Des to me like flies to shit. The relentless teasing and bullying made me feel bad about myself, and I felt wronged, that life was somehow unfair, even at that early age. Des whispered in my ear that I was never going to be one of the “cool” kids, that I’d never be part of the “élite cliques”, and I believed him. I stopped trying to be “cool” and settled for the (ultimately more useful) choice of “doing well”.

So a questionable start there.

Des joined me at secondary school, too. On my first day at secondary school, the small group of us who had been together in the same class for all of primary school were now scattered around different tutor groups with a bunch of strangers. Strangers whom we were obviously expected to interact with.

Des whispered in my ear again. “You don’t know what to do, do you?” he said, a mocking tone in his voice. “You really have no idea.”

I didn’t. I actually turned to my friend sitting behind me and said “I can’t remember how to make friends!” and he just laughed me off. But I genuinely couldn’t. And to this day, it’s never a conscious process. It just sort of happens, with some people more than others. Those people that I instantly “click” with? Those are the people I know are going to be true friends, the ones who will never disappear from my life, even if distance or time separates us.

The bullying wasn’t quite so bad throughout secondary school, and I at least had a group of friends that were less fond of turning their backs on me at regular intervals, so I was able to stand my ground a bit more. But Des was still there, and I totally lacked the confidence to do any normal teenage things like ask girls out because he’d always be there, muttering that there’s no way they’d ever want me. I went out with two girls throughout my high school life: one of them cheated on me in front of me at the school prom (classy, but she’s now married to the guy so fair play to them, I guess) and the other got together with me on a school trip to a local recording of Songs of Praise (I know, right), promptly disappeared for a week and then decided that it wasn’t working. Well, great.

Sixth form was better. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that sixth form was my favourite time to be alive. Des left me alone throughout this time, and I got on with my life. I did the things I enjoyed to the best of my ability and have some of the fondest memories with my friends of all time during that period. It seemed like things were finally taking a change for the better, and as the time to go to university drew nearer, it seemed like my whole life was ahead of me and that I could finally look forward to what was to come instead of resenting the past.

And sure enough, university was pretty great. Barring one small incident at the very start of my time there where I met someone whom I was absolutely sure within a matter of minutes was the “right person” for me who then got together with someone else because I was too hesitant to speak up (that and she liked him more, I guess), Des mostly left me alone throughout university, and I again enjoyed good times with great people.

Since then, though, he’s been back. Occasionally he goes away for a while, but he always comes back. During my work in teaching, he was ever-present, enveloping me, telling me over and over that I couldn’t do it, that I was going to get found out, that I was useless, that the abuse and insults the kids threw around were personal, that the fact I couldn’t control a class was symptomatic of my failure as a human being.

I jacked it in after suffering what amounted to a complete emotional breakdown in the middle of one day. I had to leave early that day, and I never returned, having been signed off sick.

I wanted to hide, and I did. I felt like I hadn’t had any real friends at that job, and the few people who did show some concern I pushed away, partly on the advice of a professional body and partly because I couldn’t face them. Through this time, my wife stood by me, even though she was also going through difficult times at work and trying to figure out what she wanted to do with her life, too. I appreciated that. If I’d been through that time by myself I’m not entirely sure I’d be here writing this right now. Codependence isn’t helpful in the long run, but it is certainly a means of surviving a situation while it’s happening. The other person can see when Des is moving in, and can swat him away. But you have to learn to swat him away yourself sometime.

I eventually moved back to Southampton when I got what appeared to be my dream job. It was a retail job, but not. I was getting to use my teaching and communication skills on a daily basis, play with gadgets and enthuse about them—and above all, I was damn good at it. When I was selling stuff, I frequently topped the “charts” for the day, and held the record for “most shit sold in a day” for the longest time—possibly still do. When I was teaching people how to use their computers, customers frequently requested me specifically because they thought I was good at what I did.

For a long time, it seemed as if Des was gone for good. But things changed, as they tend to. A shifting focus in our working environment left some of us feeling a little uncomfortable that we weren’t performing quite the same roles we’d been hired to do. Although many of us were technically salesmen, the thing we’d loved about the job was that it wasn’t a “high-pressure, hard sell” task. We just talked to people enthusiastically about the products, and this genuine enthusiasm helped people come to their conclusions far more than any amount of rabbiting on about warranties and membership programmes.

No longer, though. Des started to creep in, though in this case, he actually offered some good advice. “This isn’t right,” he said. “You shouldn’t be doing this. This isn’t what you’re here for.”

I voiced my concerns reasonably—something that had always been part of the culture of the workplace in question—and found myself on the receiving end of what can only be described as out-and-out bullying. This eventually left me with no option but to resign from the job I once loved so much. Not only that, but the circumstances of my departure clearly stymied my chances at later returning to the company in a different region. I had thought I had left bullying behind a long time ago, but it wasn’t to be. I still have a copy of my lengthy resignation letter, which plenty of other people agreed with wholeheartedly.

I moved back into teaching—a move which I talked about a few days ago—and regretted it. Des stopped being helpful and started telling me that I was no good again, a feeling that was further backed up by OfSTED inspectors with clipboards telling me that I was no good.

So I left. Shortly afterwards, I found myself with no job, no money, no wife and no-one but Des for company on many days. On those days, there wasn’t much I could do. Des would surround me, bombard me with thoughts and feelings of what might have been, what could have been, regrets and the like. He frequently laid me low, unable to function for the vast majority of a day. He made me shout and scream to no-one, to break things, to lash out at empty space and myself because there was no-one else to lash out to. He made me question whether it was even worth carrying on trying, because I felt like I’d been “trying” for so hard and never getting there.

And when I had to leave that place I’d called home, he came with me, taunting me, pointing at what had happened as somehow a failure on my part.

And perhaps I have failed at certain things in the past. But failing at something is a sign to do one of two things: do better, or do something else instead. And that’s what I’ve been doing since then. It hasn’t yet found me a full-time job, it hasn’t yet got me any money, it hasn’t yet got me back into my own place.

But it has helped to define me, to understand myself and my limits. Des has made me into the person I am today and put me in the situation I am currently in. When a concept or a feeling is with you for so long, it can’t help being part of who you are. It’s how you deal with it that makes the difference. Instead of listening to Des’s taunts and just nodding along, believing every one, I should punch him in the face, tell him to stop being such an asshole and then prove him wrong.

In short, I should see him as my personal trainer, not the school bully. It’s difficult to redefine the way you look at something. But I don’t really have an option any more.

Here’s to the hard work ahead, and it hopefully paying off.