Only once in my life was I ever bullied, when I was five years old. Walking a few blocks to kindergarten, a much bigger boy down the street made threatening comments and gestures. My father explained that I could avoid this by taking a different route. I was overjoyed at this clever avoidance technique.
Many people associate bullying with childhood, with young, weak, vulnerable kids at school being subject to nasty comments, humiliating demands and physical abuse. Sometimes the bullying is by an entire group. Bullying can cause lasting emotional damage.
What about adults? Surely they have mature capacities to resist the sort of harassment that occurs at schools and neighbourhoods?
I started learning about adult bullying at work by talking with whistleblowers, those employees who speak out about corruption, abuse and hazards to the public. For example, an office worker alerts the boss to a discrepancy in the accounts, little knowing that it’s fraud and the boss is implicated. Before long, the boss makes this poor worker’s life difficult. This might be by shouting face-to-face. Or it might be criticisms at meetings in front of co-workers. Or being assigned the worst jobs, or given impossible assignments, or none at all. Sometimes it’s being given the cold shoulder, not being informed of meetings and never being greeted by co-workers. The variations are great, but the common pattern is that working life becomes hell.
Whistleblowers speak out in the public interest, and it is a huge injustice that they are targeted with reprisals, including the sorts of actions that are commonly called bullying or mobbing, which is when a whole group joins in the attack. But whistleblowers are not the only targets. Anyone is potentially a victim. Sometimes it is because they are a member of an ethnic minority. Some are seen as vulnerable and hence easy targets. Some are especially competent and seen as a competitive threat. And some just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time: a manager is pissed off about something else and takes it out on the nearest convenient person.
Bullying is most often by someone higher in rank against a subordinate, but there are exceptions, especially with mobbing. Occasionally a group of employees will act together against a boss, for example a boss who is a woman, a member of a minority group and just someone seen as a threat to the usual order of things.
Attuned to the problem, I started reading about bullying at work. In the 1990s, this issue burst onto the scene, with books and then websites filled with stories and advice. Bullying at work has been going on for as long as people have worked together, but it took a long time before it was named and seen as a social problem.
After reading quite a few books about bullying at work, I wrote a review of them. When it came to advice about what to do, there was one depressing refrain: either put up with it or leave your job. Complaining hardly ever fixed the problem and often made it worse. Depressingly, leaving often meant co-workers would be the next victims. A boss with a pattern of harassing subordinates would pick one target, drive them out of the workplace, and then choose someone else to harass.
When it comes to bullying, things haven’t changed all that much since the 1990s. In some parts of the world, bullying has been criminalised, but the obstacles facing anyone trying to use laws are enormous: financial costs are exorbitant, emotional costs are intensified, and seldom is there a positive outcome. In many workplaces, there are now policies that workers can use, but some of them are more for show than practical use.
Well, it’s not all doom and gloom, because some things have changed. There is much greater awareness of the problem, and there is more written about it, and online you can find lots of information. But how can you tell what’s most useful?
All I can say is that Liz Spencer’s book is a worthy and useful addition to the writing on the subject. Out of the untold thousands of bullied workers, she is one of the very few to use the experience as the foundation for writing a clear-headed, informative treatment designed to help others. This is a systematic treatment by someone who knows the topic from the inside and outside. Liz has combed research for insights and presented what she’s learned in clear prose, organised logically. The focus is workplaces in Australia, with wider relevance.
Several things are worthy of special mention. Liz is a lawyer, a legal academic, and she brings a lawyer’s careful thinking to bear, especially in the chapter on legal responses. Secondly, Liz went through submissions to an Australian public inquiry into bullying, and intersperses quotes from submissions with her text, at appropriate places. Thirdly, she uses quotes from her personal diary in the same way. These quotes don’t give details about the who and what of her experiences, but rather portray her feelings and general observations.
You can learn a lot from Liz’s text about bullying. You can also learn a lot from one thing she did: keep a diary. If you’re ever under threat of any kind at a workplace, or anywhere else for that matter, keep a daily record of what’s happening and how you feel about it. Use Liz’s diary entries as a model for how to do this. Good luck.