The Recession and the Bully
Posted: July 14, 2010 at 2:43 am
I did something this week that I’ve never done before in my entire working life; with no alternative employment to go to, I resigned in the middle of a recession! You’re probably thinking that I’ve made a very stupid mistake and one that I’ll regret as I start to count my jobless days, although I’m not officially unemployed until next Monday!
Let me explain my reasons, a little under six months ago, I joined a large law firm where I was employed as a team manager, responsible for a large number of administrative support staff; most of whom are quite young and in their first employment – effectively being none the wiser as to the treatment they should and, more to the point, should not be subjected to in the workplace.
The department I worked in was run by one of the female partners of the law firm, you probably wonder why I’ve made the point of indicating gender here; well, I have observed over the years that many women, once appointed to the rank of ‘manager’, feel that they have to wield the big power stick in order to establish their authority, equally, there are those who become intoxicated by their own (imagined) power, and there are those who because of their professional status, see themselves elevated to a much higher ground and therefore being perfectly entitled to bully and ridicule employees publicly and privately, either as a tactic to wear the individual down so that they eventually leave, or just for the hell of it because the individual is young and inexperienced and doesn’t realise that they may have a case if they took advice and escalated their complaints and issues to the relevant authority.
Suffice to say that, as a female manager, I fall into neither category, and never have done, even during my early learning days as a Green and inexperienced manager; I have always treated staff and colleagues alike, with respect and dignity. Let’s face it, you get far more out of people if they’re treated as individuals and with common courtesy and, dare I mention it again, RESPECT!
I’ll get to the point now; the reason I resigned was because I could no longer tolerate the attitude and the bullying being meted out to the staff and, in many instances, when she felt like testing me, I was also subjected to the same unacceptable behaviours, so much so, that although I addressed the issue with my line management and HR, I was informed that there was little that could be done because the bully was a partner in the firm.
The department run by this particular partner has the highest turnover of employees and has never been able to retain a team manager, and true to form, this week saw the department, yet again, without a team manager for its administrative staff, because I had made the unprecedented decision to resign without a job to go to!
Things became extremely difficult for me as a result of having to suffer unreasonable behaviour, shouting and demanding emails with incoherent instructions, which I was meant to try to make sense of and then disseminate to the staff, increasingly having to take staff into a meeting room to console (lots of tears and distress) them because they’d been subjected to yet another ridiculing by the partner concerned. In the end it became too much for me, I felt that she was actually pushing me to see just how far she could go, case of constructive dismissal? Yes! I definitely believe that’s why I’m sat here writing this and not behind my desk at work, where I would be if it wasn’t for the Bullying employer.
Are we now in an era whereby employees are forced to put their mental, emotional and physical well being at risk because they’re frightened that they’ll lose their jobs? Not a victim of the current recession, more a victim of the new found threats and power that the recession appears to have equipped many employers with; we should ask whether employees have to tolerate bullying and constant threats such as, “well you know what you can do if you don’t like it, there are thousands out there waiting to take your place!”
There should be no place in any organisation, no matter how large or small; no employer or manager, irrespective of professional status, or otherwise, who believes that bullying and fear management is something they can get away with in the belief that this sort of behaviour and treatment of employees is acceptable, and therefore exempt and escaping any exposure as to what is forbidden in the workplace.
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