Mean Girls
Thanks to awareness-raising documentaries
and heartbreaking media coverage of teens pushed over the edge by
cyber-taunting, there’s a new sensitivity to the damage harassment inflicts on
children and young adults. But some people never outgrow the impulse to torment
or humiliate others and not only does adult bullying tend to fly under the
radar, it may even be on the upswing because of the rough economy says Gary
Namie, Ph.D., cofounder of the VBI and coauthor of The Bully-Free Workplace. He
points out that more than a quarter of WBI survey respondents said their
offices had gotten more hostile as the country slipped into a recession.
“Stress brings out the worst in everyone,” explains Namie.
Still, experts are divided as to why some
bosses resort to tyrannical tactics. Some research, such as a 2009
Psychological Science study, suggests that insecurity drives certain
supervisors to turn on their subordinates. But other findings indicate the
opposite: that an overinflated sense of self-worth is to blame.
“While
males tend to be equal opportunists, women pick on other women 80 percent of
the time,” says Loraleigh Keashly
Like the Queen Bees of high school who mock
another girl’s clothes or snub her in the lunchroom, grown up females typically
go after one of their own. “While males tend to be equal opportunists, women
pick on other women 80 percent of the time,” says Loraleigh Keashly, Ph.D..
director of the master’s in dispute resolution program at Wayne State University.
Their victims are often 20 and 30 sornethings who are still fresh in their
careers.
In that respect, workplace bullies have a
lot in common with abusive spouses, seek out people who appear vulnerable and
try to control and dominate them,” says Namie, Another similarity: Both types
of perpetrators can harm your health and be difficult to escape.
Collateral Damage
Anyone spending a significant amount of
time in a hostile environment is going to feel somewhat stressed out. But
nearly half of bullied workers go on to develop serious anxiety and depression;
20 to 30 percent end up with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. As is
the case with teen bullying, some even commit suicide.
Emotional angst, in turn, affects physical
health. When you’re continually under the gun, your lxxiv pumps out fight or flight
hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, causing blood pressure, heart rate, and
blood sugar to skyrocket. That ups your risk of heart problems and diabetes.
“Adults who are harassed at work arc also more prone to migraines, stomach
upset, and body aches,” says Kathleen Rospenda, Ph.D., associate professor of
psychology at the University of Illinois in Chicago.
April, 45, found herself sleepless and
depressed two years ago after a new CEO was hired at the Philadelphia hank
where she worked. Ile chipped away at her self-confidence by undermining her
and taking great pleasure in tearing apart her ideas in front of others. Once
he even announced that a child could do her job better than she could. “I ate
constantly to dull the pain and anxiety and gained 30 pounds.” says April. “It
was one of the lowest periods of my life.”
Fighting Back
April quit her job after six months of this
torture, but many employees end up staving for months or years in an abusive
situation because of a shaky job market. Even if you want to salvage your
position, it can be difficult to get help.
Filing a complaint with human resources may
seem like a logical first step, but it often backfires, says David Yamada,
director of the New Workplace Institute at Suffolk University Law School in
Boston. “HR is loyal to top management,” he says. “They don’t get involved
unless there’s a clear legal reason to do so.” And as long as your boss isn’t
sexually harassing or mistreating you because of your age, race, gender, sexual
orientation, or disability; she’s generally within her legal rights to make
snide comments, needlessly make you redo projects, and crush your self-esteem.
Talking to your boss’ boss may not get you
too far either. Employers who are made aware of such situations often ignore
the complaint, according to the WBI. When they do intervene, the situation may
worsen for example, the bully could become punitive when con fronted.
Talking
to your boss’ boss may not get you too far either.
Stacie discovered this when she finally
appealed to her company’s owner after more than a year of relentless torment
only to find out that he was very aware of the problem. “Apparently people have
been quitting for years because of this woman’s antics,” says Stacie. But
because she generates revenue, she is allowed to keep her job.
And don’t plan on your colleagues stepping
up: A 2008 WBI survey found that almost half of coworkers who witness
inappropriate ac distance themselves from targets. “Bystanders often don’t know
what to do,” says Keashly. Having your back, they worry; will put them next in
line for trouble.
If you do want to take our case a step
further and try a legal maneuver, usually the only hope for recourse is proving
that discrimination (say, based on race or gender) played a role in your
mistreatment as it does in almost a quarter of bullying cases, says Yamada. He
suggests saving incriminating emails, keeping detailed notes about
transgressions, and talking to an employment lawyer.
Those strategies paid off for Lee Love. She
was in her 20s and working for a telecom company in Fort Wirth, TX, when her
boss started constantly badgering her. “I’m from Jamaica, and he’d refer to me
as ‘Ms. Foreigner,” says Lee, who has self-published a novel, Twitch Twitch,
based on her experience. “Often when I’d walk by him, he’d say ‘beep beep’ like
a bus was hacking up, and slap me on the behind,” The final straw was when he
insisted that Lee and another black employee take a lie detector test after
some money went missing. Lee sued for discrimination, her supervisor got fired,
and the company paid her to settle the case.
