People bully each other at work? As adults?

Nobody, and I won’t work somewhere that puts up with that shit.

I’ve had bad bosses and coworkers before. When I was young and easily replaceable I put up with it until I realized that the jobs were just as replaceable as I was. “Oh hey, I can make the same money almost anywhere, so why deal with these assholes?”

Now I’m specialized in a high demand field. Corporate plays stupid games among the executives but they know better than to mess with us - you can find an MBA under any rock but people with my skill set are the core of the business and we’re hard to find. My team is professional and helps each other out. Any of us could quit and likely get better pay elsewhere, so we make sure to weed out the troublemakers.

Them: “The API requests I’m making aren’t working.”

Me: “Ah. That behavior means your request has such-and-such header wrong.”

Them: “Can you help me figure out why the server is acting incorrectly?”

Me: “Well, the server isn’t doing anything incorrect here. But sure. Let’s jump on a Zoom and work out what’s wrong.”

Them: “I’ll let you know when I have time.”

A couple of days later.

Them: “Can you request that the server admins fix the incorrect server behavior?”

Me: “Well, as I said, there isn’t anything wrong with the server. Here. Here’s an API request that works properly and doesn’t exhibit the issues you’ve been having.”

Them: “This error happens on every request I make. I think the server is acting incorrectly.”

Me: “If this was a problem on the server, we’d be flooded with support requests. But when I use the client tool which works via the API, everything works perfectly, see? Can you give me an example API request that’s been giving you issues?”

Them: “I can’t work on it right now.”

Me: Goes and gets requests from the server logs. “Ah. Ok. I see the issue. See this header here? The way you’re using this header isn’t correct. There’s extra stuff in the header that shouldn’t be there. That’s probably what’s causing your issue.”

Them: “Maybe.”

That’s as far as the conversation has progressed so far. We’ll see how it progresses next week.

This individual has been pestering other folks on my team. Always comes across as putting blame on whoever they’re talking to and not taking “the problem is X; fix that and if it’s still an issue, we can talk further” for an answer. Really has a way of bringing out the defensiveness in folks.

lol he fuckin died

He was the ONE person I though would give my best friend a hard time there (because she’s trans) and he kicked the bucket a WEEK before she started. I don’t believe in signs but if I did that would’ve been one.

All his decades of drinking, snorting coke, dropping acid, and shooting up while simultaneously trying to get others fired through framing them for substance abuse caught up to him terminally. Triple whammy of throat, stomach, and intestinal cancer. It’s not Karma, but holy fucking shit does it FEEL like Karma.

🎶🦀🎵

I had a very toxic, manipulative, and lying boss. Would literally gaslight people. She criticized my valid overtime to my supervisor and when my supervisor told me, I said “Can you come with me to her office right now? I’m going to confront her.” My supervisor was nervous but followed me to our boss’ office. This was just the last straw for me in a long series of events.

Our department’s office was being remodeled and we were temporarily in a space where there were a ton of other teams from homeless and school-based departments that heard me confront her.

I probably came close to aggressive, but I mostly stayed in an assertive tone/cadence. But it was clear that I was pissed… Every time she made one of her unreasonable criticisms I called her out on it. When she said we were going to agree to disagree, I told her: “No we’re not; because you are wrong.”

She knew that her criticisms were unreasonable and just to abuse her limited power that sadly still went to her head. She would gaslight our team about policy/workload changes that didn’t actually come from above, and increased our workload unreasonably to make her look good. She literally told a team member of mine who was suicidal (we were all struggling immensely being over-worked in the collapsing healthcare system here in the US) “It sounds like you’re standing on a ledge and you need to decide to stay or leap.” This is leadership in one of the largest mental health organization in the US… She also told this same team member: “You’re not depressed; you’re just lazy.”…

She only got worse over the years until I quit in February this year after long-covid started kicking my ass and I couldn’t handle the workload/lifestyle anymore. Despite the fact that she only got worse over time, she never treated me that way to my face again.

She’d lie and talk shit about me behind my back, but she never talked down to me or anything like that to my face again. I think I scared her. She’d never had anyone confront her and call her out on her bullshit, not to mention with an office full of like 20+ people to hear her humiliation.

On the walk back to my supervisor’s office to finish our monthly ‘supervision’ meeting, my supervisor said “I can’t believe you talked to her like that. I wish I could stand up to them like that… but I’m too afraid to lose my job.”

That right there is where I argue that my actions were probably against my own best interests, but it did work out well for me. She would no longer micromanage and harass me like everyone else she oversaw. It’s usually worked out for the better, but I’ve got a bad habit of sticking to my guns when I know I’m right and not being afraid of confrontation.

I can’t think of a time in my life that directly confronting and taking on a bully hasn’t had a positive outcome for me. Whether it be verbally or physically, it has always made the circumstances better for me. Don’t know if it’s fear or respect. Most bullies are very insecure tho.

Definitely not recommending that sort of confrontation in a work setting tho. I think I probably would have been fired in most circumstances, but I think she knew I’d do my damnedest to uncover her bullshit on my way out.

You tell your manager. Why the hell would you put up with this shit as an adult? Stand up for yourself.

»I« am probably bullying myself at work the most. I feel like a walking lie. Just … fake, like, that person that you see there, it’s not even really »me«. I cannot stop the pretend 🤦 conditioned to feel that the mean attitude of people from my past and their opinions on me is my identity …

For some reason I can’t accept and allow myself. If I force myself to act like everyone else, I get incredibly anxious and panic attacks arise in me. Thus I just keep myself at a distance from them.

Sometimes I’ll try to socialize and be a part of the group. It feels so utterly awkward though.

Maybe I can try and accept that maybe for the others the feelings I experience is not how they think about me and, perhaps, grow a little bit further out of my internalized shame. Hmm…

I’ve never really been bullied, neither in school, university or work. When I realized that I thought that perhaps I was the bully if nobody bullied me. But I can’t think of having bullied anyone either, at least not intentionally.

The last time I was bullied, was by my own boss, back in 2007-2009. Truth is I didn’t deal with it, and eventually they fired me. Next job basically taught me that it was possible to enjoy your boss & coworkers.

If you’re going through it now, best advice is to find people to talk to. Partner at home, work friends, anyone you trust. If it’s to the point of harassment, you tell management. If they blow you off, look for employment elsewhere.

I work alone mostly and I’m unionized, so I’ve reached a point in my career that anyone who even remotely bullies me gets a swift “go fuck your mother”. Whether that be a client, boss or supervisor.

Eh, to be honest, I flipped and became the bully to the guy who was bullying me over a work Foosball tournament.

He didn’t like that I was his randomly assigned teammate for the tournament, and threw a fit over it. Tried to show up to the game and say I refused to play so that he could just play himself. Then, when I was alerted to play, he just stopped playing halfway through and stood there. When I asked him if he was serious, he gave me this smirk/smile, and refused to continue playing.

Anyway, it’s been like 3 weeks now, and he spent a couple weeks at his desk not socializing, but now he’s back to it and hasn’t apologized for his behavior to anyone, including me. Everyone seems keen to just let him back into the fold, but fuck that, I’m not letting him off the hook. I at the very least want an apology before he’s okay in my book again.

Other than that, we don’t have a bully issue at work, everyone but this Manchin is chill af.

Uh… nobody. There was one person once who stalked me and tried to sabotage me, but they’re gone and I’m not. It started with her getting hired and trying to pawn off all the worn on me while taking credit for it, trying to make it look like I would leave early, and talked all sorts of shit about me to my boss at the time (who also no longer works here).

I documented everything they did, excelled at my job, make friends with everyone, and built up my reputation: I got promoted and they became unemployed after becoming a pariah when people caught on to what was actually happening.

Document everything, nail it when it comes to your responsibilities, and try to maintain a good relationship with everyone, but at the end of the day if the above doesn’t work it’s not just a problem with your bully, it’s a problem with your workplace in general and it’s time to find something better: Polish up that resume and find a place that treats you right!

Life is too short to allow yourself to be abused for money.