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.