Patience: A Lesson In Joy: "Workplace Bullying: New York Bill Targets Abusive Bosses"

"Workplace Bullying: New York Bill Targets Abusive Bosses"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20100721/us_time/08599200535800

Some quotes from the article:

Worker abuse is a widespread problem - in a 2007 Zogby poll, 37% of American adults said they had been bullied at work - and most of it is perfectly legal. Workers who are abused based on their membership in a protected class - race, nationality or religion, among others - can sue under civil rights laws. But the law generally does not protect against plain old viciousness.

There are reasons workplace bullying may be getting worse now, including the bad economy. In good times, abused workers can simply walk out on a job if they are being mistreated. But with unemployment at around 9.5%, and five job seekers for every available job, many employees feel they have no choice but to stay put.

Not surprisingly, many employers oppose the bill. They argue that it would lead to frivolous lawsuits and put them at risk for nothing more than running a tight ship and expecting a lot from their workers. But supporters of the law point out that it is crafted to cover only the most offensive and deliberate abuse. The bill requires that wrongful conduct be done with "malice," and in most cases that it has to be repeated. It also provides affirmative defenses for companies that investigate promptly and address the problem in good faith.

This is the problem with living in a litigious society - lawsuits beget lawsuits. By creating laws to deal with our problems, we loose sight on how to do this ourselves. In an ideal world, an abusive boss could be confronted, then reported to HR or a Big Boss. But that doesn't happen anymore. HR is often concerned with making problems go away, and often it's easier to fire the "little guy making noise" then the "boss who somehow gets his way all the time." Additionally, much of this abuse is behind closed doors, and harder for HR or Big Boss to verify, meaning the higher level employee has the "experience" factor, which can create lawsuits in and of itself if abusive claims can't be verified.

A fear of lawsuits and need to resolve the problem quickly not only means that people no longer to the right thing, but laws are now necessary to prevent something that shouldn't be an issue to begin with. I understand the need to protect the "little guy," but I wish we didn't need bills and lawsuits to do it. It's a shame that not enough people do the right thing.

I have a personal experience with this myself. I had an abusive boss. What she said and what she meant were two different things. She would have "weeks from hell" where nothing I did was right, regardless of doing it EXACTLY as she requested, and I was under constant threat of termination. In one particular instance, I my job was threatened and privledges revoked because I had not scheduled an intern orientation for four hours, but two. When I told her that I had the email where she confirmed the date and time frame of the orientation, she told me I should have known better, and scheduled it for four hours anyways. During the last four weeks of my pregnancy, we were creating a final report. She reviewed drafts of it at least twice a week, making small editing changes along the way. The day before it was due, she completely restructured it, changed the goals and purpose of the report, leaving me to piece together new chapters, paragraphs, and appendices with the original document. Then threatening my job because it wasn't done by the deadline the following day.

There were several instances where she outright lied to me to make herself look better. She told me tales of how she fought with HR to keep me because there were layoffs and they wanted to let me go, since I was the most recently hired in the department. She told me how other departments were territorial and how political they were, so I was not to interact with them or it could get me fired. I was told to send her emails with the lies she requested so that she could use them as further proof that she needed money or employees or other resources. She told me that doctors and residents wouldn't talk to me because I only had a Bachelor's degree.

Some of it was simply ignorance. At the first floor meeting in our brand new building, she announced to everyone that in case of a fire, the doors to the stairways would lock us on the floor and we had to stay in certain "rescue areas" for the fire department to save us. She would make changes to documents on the network, save the changes to her desktop, and chastize me for not having the most recent copy.

When my new boss (NB) became a new layer of management between Research & the CEO, the IT guy told her to talk with another employee whose daughter had worked in the research department for two weeks before quitting because she couldn't take it anymore. After talking to this man about his daughter, NB immediately removed me from under my old boss' (OB) supervision. What NB found out about OB and her managment style appalled her.

But to me, what was most appalling is that clearly, the man whose daughter had worked for OB knew how I was being treated - and never brought it up to the CEO (OB's direct boss). Not only that, but he had told IT guy about it, who also said nothing. After OB resigned, so many people came up to me to sympathize what I had to endure under her. They told me their tales of bizarre stories of difficult encounters - and these were people who did not have daily interaction with her. They all said they knew how hard it had to have been for me.

As a brand new employee, working for my first real organization that wasn't considered customer service, I had a lot working against me:

I was a newly hired employee in an economic downturn.
With all the political propaganda OB was feeding me, I didn't know who I could trust.
Having no experience in this type of work, I thought maybe I was just ignorant when OB asked me to do things I didn't understand.
4 days before my first day of work, I found out I was pregnant. I needed this job - and the health benefits.
Being OB's assistant, the distrust and disgust that others had of her rubbed off on me by association.
I had no one else in the department to discuss these issues with so that we could take them to HR together.

Biting my tongue, keeping to myself, and doing what I was told, regardless of what I thought was my only recourse. I couldn't stand up for myself or trust anyone - I needed the job too badly to risk it.

If only someone had stepped up and said - "Hey, you aren't being treated fairly. Let's go to HR." or "You know, that's not company policy. You get more privledges than that." Maybe, instead of everyone knowing what a horrible boss I had and doing nothing besides saying "Glad I'm not you," someone could have had helped the naive, fresh-out-of-college new girl.

But, in spite of all this, I am still grateful for OB. She hired me - of 10 other applicants (I know, my first job was to send them rejection emails). She was looking for a health science major and picked a math and stats major. I don't know why she chose me, but after dealing with her for over a year, she resigned.

Now, I have a job I love. I am self directed and efficient. I have found my coworkers to be lovely people, not organizationally political. I look forward to going to work and it's rewarding to be recognized for the work I contribute. I've gotten two raises. NB has encouraged my professional development and doesn't believe in micomanaging.

If it weren't for OB, I wouldn't be here today. God works in mysterious ways.

Patience: A Lesson In Joy

"Workplace Bullying: New York Bill Targets Abusive Bosses"

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