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What Should You Do if You’re Getting Bullied in the Workplace?

Bullying isn’t limited to the playground. The same culture of fear and domination by bullies can be found in too many workplaces. Bullying at work can take obvious forms such as shouting at colleagues, hurling insults and outright sabotaging their work. It can take more subtle forms like talking behind someone’s back, starting false rumours, engaging in reputation demolition, and making consistently degrading, demeaning or insulting comments. What should you do if you’re getting bullied in the workplace?

Set Emotional Boundaries

Setting emotional boundaries is something you can do to protect yourself. You can acknowledge that the person is a bully and then set emotional boundaries that protect you from the worst of the aftermath. Don’t engage in drama or get caught up in the drama created by others. Don’t get caught up in someone else’s bad behaviour. Cultivate allies at work so you can find support when dealing with difficult situations. Maintain a degree of emotional distance when the bully is yelling or acting out, recognising that it is them, not you. If they say things that are out of line, ask them to justify what they said.

Gather Evidence

If you’re dealing with a consistent pattern of bullying behaviour, collect evidence. Take notes of what they did that was considered offensive or insulting. Gather emails or other records that are evidence of the behaviour you’re seeking to address. Then talk to Human Resources or that person’s boss about the issue. Where applicable, talk to your trade union. If you have evidence and facts on your side, it doesn’t come across as tattling.

Start Your Own Business

If you can’t handle a toxic workplace, one of the best choices you can make is considering starting your own business, especially one that lets you be your own boss without having to invest much capital. Why would you consider starting a business? There’s no need to have interviews with dozens of firms hoping to get a job and explaining why you left. People will know why you left – you started your own business.

Working as a landscape gardener, for example, has a number of advantages. You don’t need formal qualifications. This job is one that lets you get to work quickly, especially during the warmer months. It could tide you over until you find a new job, supplement your part-time income, or become a full-time job in and of itself. You just need a number of tools, some of which you may find in your shed or garage. Don’t forget the personal protective equipment. You’ll also want to get the legal side sorted out and secure insurance.

You may need to rent or buy heavy equipment such as mowers; this is crucial to working efficiently when dealing with large areas. Power tools like thermal leaf blowers featured on souffleurthermique.fr make the work faster and easier. If you have tools like these, you could finish the work in a third to half the time, allowing you or your crew to double or triple the billable work they finish each day.

There are a number of ways to deal with bullying, and you can take it to the next level of management if necessary. However, sometimes the only option is to leave and turn over a new leaf in life.

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Why I Got Bullied in School For Being a Geek

We have all experienced first hand the old adage that kids can be cruel. Sure, we all have varying degrees of this experience. Some kids get to live this out and look back, presumably, as adults with a sense of how lucky they were to be on that side of it.

Now, given that teenagers and kids love to pick on one another, they clearly need a steady stream of things to make fun of. As a result, anything that makes you different marks you out as a target. For me, it was my CPAP machine and my love of Arduinos that they latched on to.

CPAP

Anyone who has suffered from sleep apnea can attest to how unpleasant it is. It might not be a life-threatening condition, but it can be a scary experience to wake up feeling short of breath. It also makes getting a good night’s sleep more difficult. For those of us who prefer to share our beds, it can also make things difficult for our partners.

A constant positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine consists of a face mask and a ‘pump’. The unit itself resembles a digital radio and blends in with my furniture. The machine has been life changing! If you suffer with sleep apnea and want to try a CPAP machine, check out the best guide of the best models.

High school students being bullied.

Arduino

If you haven’t heard of the Arduino, you have probably at least heard of the concept. Heard of the Raspberry Pi? Well the Arduino is the same concept. It is a circuit board which has a number of basic peripheral ports, such as USB, HDMI etc. which allow other devices to be connected to it. The board is programmed using the C programming language. You can read more about the Arduino over at digitizd.com.

This kind of circuit board set-up is the computer equivalent of Lego. Programmers can build out these circuit boards, even combine different types, and attach whatever they like to them. There really is no limit to what you can do with these things!

Why I Was Bullied

Of course, kids being cruel to one another is, for the most part, a positive part of their development. Believe it or not, all of those social pressures that teenagers pile upon themselves are effective at preparing them to deal with more serious issues later in life.

Which is to say that, I get it. I get that kids are mean to one another and that being on the receiving end of it is not necessarily a great trauma. However, bullying can be very serious, violent, even life threatening. If you or someone you know is being bullied then you should reach out for help.

I think that my hobbies and my medical condition made me different, there was nothing about these things specifically that they wanted to make fun of. At the time I felt very self conscious about it. As an adult, I look back on it and I realize that there is a predictability to their behavior. As a child it felt like they were being cruel and capricious, but in fact they were merely acting out the most basic desire of all: to belong to a group.

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My Awkward Youth And Its Consequence

I think it’s pretty safe to say that I was a dorky kid in high school. Apart from my love, I loved discussing them. Now in my early twenties all that seems ok, but way back when, in Ohio where I grew up, in my high school, those things were a perfect combination to get all the intention I didn’t want to attract.  I wasn’t sure why this angered my bullies, but it did.

Maybe they felt threatened, maybe they had issues of their own, maybe it had more to do with my overall demeanor, whatever it was I was their target and my presence was not to be tolerated. A place I used to love coming to pretty much every day, now became something I dreaded, feared and felt anxious about.  It reached a point where I had to go around the back way to go inside. Looking over my shoulder for the “Rob’s Mob,” as they used to call themselves (weirdly enough no one was named Rob) became a natural reflex, one I perfected in high school.

Eventually, even the internet wasn’t a refuge anymore. I used to play a lot of online games, but even there they found me, told me horrible things. They even hounded my facebook profile, left obscene comments. All this, of course, made me retreat into myself, even more, retreat further into my books. You really couldn’t tell anyone all this was happening, because if you were a snitch thing would get so much worse.

The only person I could confide in was my best friend, Mark. He was a quiet kid who had a lisp which I used to play WoW with.  He was their target too, which only made us closer friends. The thing is in Hudson where I grew up, everyone kinda knew everyone else, and the biggest bullies in school were the popular kids.

When you grow up in a town that small sports matter and “Rob’s Mob” was entirely made of jokes, so the teachers either turned a blind eye or just simply didn’t care. Whatever it was if left us to deal with things ourselves which, now in retrospect wasn’t a bad thing. When you’re dealing with bullies, it either makes you weak, or strong as hell.

 

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Accepting Who I Am Made Me Stronger

Being the subject of ridicule, and a target for bullies makes you insecure, it makes you question yourself on a daily basis. Why am I like this? How can I change? How can I make them stop? First thing I did was realize one very important thing; it wasn’t me it was them.

This may sound like some worn out cliché, maybe something your mom or dad might say which would make you sigh so loud every window in your house might shake, but let me tell you something, it’s true. Sometimes clichés are clichés for a reason, and this is so true here, and when I figured it out, it was a biggest revelation for me as any I ever had.

After this thing just got a little easier, I stopped avoiding them; I stood up for myself. You wanna make fun of my “onion seller” freshly grown mustache, bring it on! Suddenly all those jabs, all the times they made me feel worthless, all the time they made me retreat into my darkest thoughts seemed irrelevant. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t my fault.

At first, this only made them angrier, of course, made them meaner. If you think my life was hard before, they made sure it was ten times more so now. I learned to surround myself with more supportive people. It used to be just Mark and me, but soon a ton of us started hanging out together. Confident now, more than ever, I was gonna make it through high school alive, and I went on, with a new sense of confidence, to college.

Eventually, they just stopped, and started simply ignoring me, as they did anyone who wasn’t up there on the “social ladder.” You might think I hate them, that every day I plot my revenge on them like a weird cartoon villain (yes I still rock a mustache, and it’s glorious), but no. Not me. All I feel is a sense of gratitude, despite everything, even when I would stare at the ceiling wondering why I still thank them! Without them, I wouldn’t find out what real friendship is, and how to look for one.

 

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Bullying As An Epidemic Less Talked About

Bullying is a real problem, countless young teens wake up in the morning and are afraid to go to school. This is an issue that affects millions of people, not just the ones that are getting bullied, their families even those who bully others, with lasting effects going long into adulthood.

One in five U.S. students say that they have been a victim of bullying in school, many are being bullied online as well. Almost 33% of all students who reported that they had been harassed in some way were bullied at least twice or three times a month during the school year. People reported this happening in the hallway or stairwell at their school, inside the classroom, or in the cafeteria, with less of it happening outside the school grounds.

However, according to some latest studies conducted say that the rates of bulling might be on the decline. There has been a real effort in the past decade on raising awareness, and thanks to that and a lot of viral videos popping up of people standing up to their bullies, people are more and more aware of this problem and have stopped treating this issue lightly. The days of brushing this issue off, and of teachers doing nothing to combat this epidemic might soon be over.

Although I think that being bullied might build the character, I would never want anyone to go through with what I did. As various studies show that the adverse effects are pretty real, from a greater risk of mental illness to a negative self-perception to headaches and stomach aches. How can you tell if someone is going to be a subject of bullies? The thing is, you can’t.

No one knows what makes some people targets. You can be a social person liked by a lot of people, funny and personable, or you could be a marginalized and withdrawn person, sometimes none of these things matter. You could even be a bully yourself.  There is no magic formula on how to be, and how to avoid it.  But you know what, it doesn’t have to be this way. There are ways we can minimize this epidemic.

 

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Deal with your bullies in your way

My way of dealing with bullies was simple, I waited them out, and I figured out, that I wasn’t the thing they hated. I was threatening to them not because of what or who I was; it was because I was there. After realizing that, I opened up a little and made some amazing friends, most of whom I talk to this day.

This is not something that can work for everyone. As we are all different individuals, so does the solution to this issue vary person to person. There are however some universally helpful things that are worth doing.  Don’t just be a bystander standing idle, doing nothing. If you and the people around you act when someone is bullied, it makes a difference. It helps when we stigmatize this kind of behavior when we condemn people who act with a lack of respect to their peers. The whole school needs to be involved, the entire community. Not just the students, but families, teachers, administrators, bus drivers, nurses, cafeteria and office staff, we all need to chip in and create an atmosphere of mutual respect.

Another huge part is communication. I felt at times like I couldn’t say anything to anyone, too embarrassed, too ashamed to speak up. But if we are encouraged to talk about our problems, then we will be encouraged to be who we are, and we will realize that it wasn’t our fault. And trust me that is huge! Because you can’t solve any of your problems if you just tuck them away in your mind somewhere, and speak to no one. And I know it’s not easy, but the first step always has to come from within.

It helps if you have someone to talk to, it helped when I was in high school it helps now.  I can’t say for sure that all these things might help you, I can’t say that with a 100% certainty, I don’t think anyone can really.  One this that won’t help however is not reaching out, is believing that the absolute worst of yourself is true.  Remember that you are not alone, you aren’t the only person who’s going through this.