You may consider this a book review. I consider it a cultural commentary long overdue. Most of our readers are quite familiar about the bully at school and how he or she invades another person’s space, seeks to instill fear, and makes every effort to control his victim.

“Abusers have victims.” write Drs. Gary and Ruth Namie in their book, The Bully at Work, “Battered spouses and children deserve to have the terms abuse and victim reserved for them because they suffer physical violence unlike (most) Targets of bullying.”

The abuse of power is the domain of the workplace bully.

The “rah rah” boys and girls clubs who endorse corporate competition “are quick to denigrate victims as deserving their fate.” The authors admonish this as wrong. “Bullied Targets no more like the torment they endure than rape victims are likely to invite the rapist. The anti-bullying movement is not asking for pity from the morally bankrupt.”

Here’s the point of this article: I’ve come to understand that our workplaces are filled with people who possess sadistic personality dysfunctions that lead them to behave like bullies toward selected targets. It creates a hostile work environment.

Workplace bullies threaten the emotional health and safety, physical health and safety, and the personal financial well being of the target.

Dr. Namie and Dr. Namie developed a list of six questions to determine if you are suffering from the attention of a workplace bully:

1.) Your co-worker or supervisor seems irritated or angry with you at least two times a week, although you always try your best to do quality work on time.
2.) You often feel confused because s/he responds to your work efforts with criticism even when you have tried your hardest to do things “her/his” way.
3.) You are upset with your working relationships. Your attempts at communication are constantly misunderstood and degraded.
4.) You constantly wonder (on some level) “What’s wrong with me? No matter how hard I try to please her, I always feel that I have done something wrong.”
5.) He rarely includes you in his plans for work although he expects you to fuly understand what he wants you to do.
6.) She is either angry or “doesn’t know what you are talking about” when you try to discuss work issues with her.

The doctors denote that if you “agree with two or more of these statements, you are probably bullied at work.”

What if you answer “yes” to all six?

Their work explains what many have found impossible to explain when confronted with the daily torment of a workplace bully.

Our culture is infamous for “blaming the victim.” It is also infamous for misogyny. Misogyny is the root of homophobia.

Can a black person discriminate against a black person? Can a gay person discriminate against a gay person? Can a woman discriminate against a woman?

Yes to all of these and any other class of people you can think of. We have long understood the affects of discrimination and how members of the discriminated class of people succumb to the pressure of that same discrimination. Self-loathing; negative thoughts and feelings for their own class of people; vote for the powerful class while voting against their own class; stereo-typing themselves.

If a boss is bullying you, how are you supposed to defend yourself from what others think?

From my grandfather: Never argue with a Jackass in public. No one can tell the difference.

More likely, most of us make every effort to avoid confrontation of any kind.

And when the bullying gets to such a level that it feels abusive, how can we explain why our co-workers stand by and let it happen, blame us, or worse, back up your bully at work?

The betrayal of co-workers creates pain and hurt that surpasses the pain and hurt we endure from our workplace bully.

“Work shouldn’t hurt,” say the authors.

Here is a brief list of the damage that can be done to a target when bullying at work is ignored by the company:

Emotional-Psychological Health Damage
Ranging from poor concentration, to fatigue, stress, insecurity, substance abuse, and even violence against self or others.

Physical Health Damage
More colds, pain during menstruation, skin disorders, hair loss, weight swings, hypertension, to heart palpitations, heart attack, or even a weakened heart.

Damage to Social Relations
Co-worker isolation, co-worker resentment, not being believed by loved ones, being blamed for the rocky relationship, betrayal by co-workers, abandonment by friends outside of work.

Economic-Financial Damage
Your doctor recommends halted work hours owing to job stress, paid time off accounts begin to be used, sick leave exhausted, switch to short-term disability, employer encourages unpaid leave, employee forced to choose between termination or workers’ compensation, income cut, personal savings drained, formally terminated in a way so employer can deny unemployment compensation…and all that can grow from such trauma.

Is it time to join another grass roots movement?

Recognition of work place bullies has become prevalent.

A recent case involved a bright, creative, socially engaging, positive, and well-educated young woman who took a temporary job through our largest state university in Kentucky intending to secure full time employment. The purpose was to not only provide a living for herself and her family, but to also help reduce the cost of her son’s college education. The university extended the benefit of reduced tuition to full time, regular employees.
It was a part of her financial plan!

Long story short, this young woman wound up working for a workplace bully. To understand the motive of the workplace bully, the short answer is that a bully wants to cover up inadequacies and incompetence of her own and ultimately scapegoat her target. At the bottom of the relationship is a desire to act out sadistic fantasies regarding power and control. The long answer is the in the book. (I found it at my library.)

Her bully, rather than have her placed elsewhere in the temporary system, moved to have her fired and banned from the entire university system!

Why?

Because her target went to network with a muckity-muck at the university without first seeking the bully’s permission. This target had been told her job might very well be eliminated.

The target was told she was being fired for breaking a rule; she wasn’t allowed to even set an appointment with that muckity-muck without first getting permission from her bully. A rule that she’d never been shown. A rule that had never been mentioned.

Fair? Hmmm. The whole persona of a bully requires a wholesale policy of unfairness. If you have ever been set up to fail they you know what it means to be in a no-win situation with someone who has all the power.

But why did the bully pick her in the first place?

The most common reason a bully selects a target, the authors say, is because the target is well liked.

Fairness, listening, getting involved. If a bully’s boss has any of these qualities, the bully cannot thrive. If a bully’s boss does call for an unbiased investigation, the bully is almost always exposed as incompetent, under-qualified, guilty of overkill, or covering up an actual tort, such as misappropriations. It is only then that the bully can be given the help she needs to stop destroying the productivity of her targets.

If the bully’s behavior rises to a cost that outstrips the value the bully adds to the business, then, and only then, will a company actually discipline “one of their own.”

For a bully, having an individual target is more fun and challenging to his imagination than being lost in a new, exciting, hit television program. It’s fun. It’s entertaining. And all those co-workers who stood by while the first target was being torn apart become part of the available “pool” of targets…and they know it. After a target has been fired, watch them line up to be “buddy, buddy” with the bully.

But bullies are expert at “managing up.” They spin the facts, they take truth and twist it into lies, they count on manipulating the differences between male and female managers, they manipulate by using any topic to their advantage. When all else fails, they claim they are sick or attempt to scapegoat someone or something else altogether.

I’ve witnessed a female bully, for example, manipulate a male manager very easily by misrepresenting the facts, stirring up the male manager about the target being insubordinate, etc. (Read: Gender Traps by Judith Briles) The male manager then backs the bully up about firing the target.

Only later, the male manager sees the truth. That he was lied to. The truth was twisted. The facts were distorted by the female bully. But now, he has dirt all over himself.

It takes an impeccable character to step forward and admit that he was duped, manipulated, fooled, or tricked into being complicit in tormenting and so seriously hurting an innocent target.

It takes a very secure, confidant, and highly principled person to admit he made a mistake and to, as Randy Pausch instructs, “make it right.”

Even worse, other women stand by and allow it to happen.

Once a target has been sacrificed to the great Ego Gods, they fulfill their silent pact in the workplace: we shall never admit to this nor speak of this again.

Targets are never complicit in building a dysfunctional relationship with a bully. It is the bully who abuses his or her power. The targets are selected by the bully to bear the brunt of their bully attentions. Women are almost always targets.

What is alarming is that a very high percentage of workplace bullies are women!

It is easier said than done to stand up to a workplace bully. Especially if are you deep into a bully/target relationship. You often find yourself trapped. Unable to go to HR since they back up the bully, unable to widen the circle because your friends and co-workers don’t want to become the bully’s next target, unable to seek assistance from your family because they just may very well succumb to “blame the victim” what can you do?

The authors estimate that 1 in 5 workers are targets on the job.

And what if this is your third or fourth job where a bully has selected you for his or her target? What should you learn if you seem to constantly be chosen as a target at each successive place of employment?

Former targets say, in hind sight, stand up quick, soon, and often to any threat of hostility or unfairness. Journal the behaviors that are outright unfair. Create witnesses early while still new on the job and you benefit from the kindness extended to the “newbies.”

Later, you may need that journal to work your way through an 8 step process to topple your bully. That is, if you even want to bother. Often, the most cost effective and healthiest step is to cut your losses and keep looking for a healthy work environment.

Workplace bullying is a silent epidemic and a national scandal.

There is one thing that we can do if we witness a bully bullying her target. Step up!!! Practice saying things calmly but assertively. “Was that necessary to be so harsh?” “Do you really think you are going to inspire her best work if you yell at her?” “That wasn’t fair! Come one. This isn’t high school anymore! Give the girl a fighting chance! You don’t want people to think you a bully…do you?” Tell HR. Discuss it with the big boss. Mix it up. Figure out a way. The only way to stop a bully is when the whole “gang of kids” turns on the bully and uses the power of the group to make it stop.

If you don’t get out from under a bully, that bully can take more than your lunch money.

A workplace bully can land you in debt, bankruptcy, court, jail, and unable to support your financial plan to send kids to college, buy a home, get out of debt, or even retire.

“Attention must be paid.” Linda Loman (Willie Loman’s wife in Death of a Salesman)