Calling a Bully a Bully

Female Narrator: Bullying is very expensive for the bottom line of any organization. Workers leave and workers commit sabotage when they're bullied and workers become ill and they miss work and they drive up health care cost.

Male Speaker 1: It's a garbage.

Female Narrator: We define bullying as repeated health harming mistreatment toward one or more targets by one or more perpetuators that is designed to undermine the normal flow of productive work.

Male Speaker 2: And those others guy are just a bunch of whimps.

Male Speaker 3: Sir, I wouldn't underestimate the competition, I mean their track record does seem fairly strong.

Male Speaker 4: Did I ask your opinion, huh?

Female Narrator: This is not a personality conflict, it is not a -- they didn't invite me to lunch and my feelings are hurt type of conflict. It is a collection of repeated health harming mistreatment that will make you ill.

Male Speaker 5: We may have had a snag with the sea breeze presentation.

Male Speaker 6: I got to call you back. You know you guys are a bunch of morons. Do I have to do everything around here, huh? Go figure it out. I don't even wanna hear about it. Just go. Go.

Female Narrator: Rank and file workers are most affected by work place bullying. The perpetuators are largely or seventy-five percent of them are bosses, but that's not always the case. There are many people who bully up to their boss or bully across to their co-workers. So, rank and file workers are not above being the bullies themselves.

The typical target of workplace bullying is a person who has been out performing several other people and in particular the bully or bullies who are afraid of being shown up or who want to take the credit that should belong to the target.

Female Speaker 1: God, I hope you don't mess this up.

Female Speaker 2: You mean, you hope we don't mess this up.

Female Speaker 1: No, I mean you. You put the stupid project together, but it'll totally bomb.

Male Speaker 7: Great work Lesley assumed spelling. We got the client.

Female Speaker 3: Yes, fantastic. All my hard work paid off.

Female Narrator: Believe it or not harassment is presently legal throughout the United State so long as you're not harassing a person at work because he or she is a member of a protected class or in anyway covered by discrimination laws. Most people believe that this is a problem that should be taken first and directly to HR -- that's the normal course of action. HR doesn't usually have the tools to deal with this. They'll accept the problem and say they are there to serve the employee. They are there to serve management and to protect the policies and practices of the company and there's not likely a policy in place that would address this.

If a person find himself being bullied, the first thing to do is to admit it to yourself to name it, recognized it.

Female Speaker 4: I'm being abused. I'm being abused.

Female Narrator: The second thing is to seek respect and that would be to take time off if you can. Certainly visit a doctor to get legal documentation of stress related manifestations of that workplace bullying if you have any. You may wanna check resources, legal resources and resources on the internet and talk to other people who may have dealt with the same problem. And then the third thing that you need to do is to expose the bully.

Female Speaker 5: You are a bully...

Male Speaker 8: Whoa, hey.

Female Speaker 5: And I've had enough.

Female Narrator: You have very little to lose except your health by not coming forward and saying I am being targeted and this is very abusive.

The silver lining is that people are talking about it. Media is discussing it, interviews are happening, articles written, bloggers blogging, lawyers are presenting workshops. They're discussing workplace bullying. They're warning employers that this is coming because consciousness is being raised. People are catching on, work shouldn't hurt.