Surviving A Boss Who Bullies

What happens when you are bullied at work; and you try respond in all the right ways and it doesn’t work. This is One-On-One Communications in the Digital Age.

This is Episode 7 of Wanting Ice Water, a limited series on issues facing all of us at work, at home, in life.

Hopefully my podast will help give you courage to deal with bullies. Just please know your are not alone. Work is difficult. Life can be very difficult. Somehow, it helps when we talk about it and look at ways others deal with the nightmare of Bullies At Work – Part 2

I’m Gloria Moraga, please subscribe to my podcast and my YouTube Channel. Thank you for listening and watching and please share.

I want you know, that I’m working on a short audio book on this subject. I’m going to talk about my experiences and the experiences of other women and men I know who were bullied  at work and what they did about it, how they survived, and how long it takes to recover.

Yes. I said survive. And recover. Bullying stays with you. Even after I quit a job I loved I still hurt. I didn’t want to quit. I felt I didn’t have a choice. I could not stay. I couldn’t take it anymore. I felt like I failed.

They stole my career from me. Stripped me of my dignity. And they made me feel so scared.

I love working. I didn’t want to NOT work. I’m not that person.

Only now, two years later, I am just begin feeling well enough mentally about that job to write about it and talk about it.

I’m not alone. Another woman, I’ll call her Laura-Not-Her-Real Name, who worked in the same office told me it took her two almost three years to recover. When she said this, I was shocked.

I thought, I’ll recover much faster. No. I haven’t. I still struggle with how they treated me and that they got away with it. I struggle with depression. I’m an older woman who wants to work. But that’s another podcast. I am  writing a series about women are semi-retired, who still have much to offer, who still want to work but can’t connect and get a job. I’m going to call it, “I’m not Finished!”

Laura Not-Her-Real-Name left the office long before I did. She had choices. She is brilliant and beautiful and much younger then I. When she began her new job she said she felt  like the Morgan Freeman character in “Shawshank Redemption”. Shawshank was a short story written by Stephen King that was made into a great film. Ya gotta see it. But be forewarned it’s brutal. In the scene, the Freeman character is released from prison and has a new job at a grocery store. At one point he raises his hand and asks his boss permission to use the rest room.

Yup. When you leave the place where were bullied, you expect the be beaten down everyday. You expect every boss to treat you like dirt. When they don’t you hold your breath, waiting for the beating to begin.

The bullying destroys your sense of self-worth. You feel like you  deserve the verbal abuse.

Another good friend of mind, Paula, was bullied at harassed at her job as a public information officer. Paula is a gifted PIO. And she was hounded and pushed out of her job. They didn’t fire her, she was demoted.

Like me, she didn’t want to quit. She loved her job, was great doing the job and she didn’t want THEM…THE BULLIES…TO WIN.

Here is what she would do. She would work hard all day, doing more than was asked of her or required, she was first to arrive and he last to leave.

Even though she had a close family, a devoted husband and two teenage boys, she would go home, fall onto the top of her bed, not even pulling the covers over her in her work clothes, a suit. That’s how she slept.

She would get up the next morning and go to work in the same suit. She said she was just desperate, upset, sad, depressed and afraid of losing her job.

I want to say. This is what they do to us. But honestly, the right sentence is THIS IS WHAT WE LET THEM DO TO US!

Why do we left them do it? Why do we give them this power over us?

I’ll answer for myself. FEAR. Fear of failure. I didn’t want to be unemployed. What would I do. Become homeless. When I see homeless people, I always think, that could be me.

I’m terrified of that. When my bully began, this was my situation at home. After a 32 year marriage I was divorced, (he took me to the financial cleaners) I was putting my daughter through her last two years of college and her baby, my grandbaby, Aiden was 1 year old. And my 78-year-old father was living with me.

So, to recap, I am a divorced woman traveling faster then a moving train into age 60, a 21year old college student, a 1 year old darling boy, and a grumpy  grandpa all living in my house. Ya! I could NOT afford to become a homeless person.

I was in upper management, my bully demoted me, replaced me with the wife of one of his friends, did not go through the hiring process, which was required; and began pouring on a series of assignments I could not possibly complete.

Surprise. I did it. Fear. Fear made me do it.

I’ve written all of them down. I’ve documented everything. Every night when I would get home from work, no ma

My podcast is about surviving. How to survive and thrive. Even though you feel like you are in hell at work. And :there’s people in hell who want ice water.”

Here is my advice on surviving a bully. And recovering. Confront the bully. Document what he or she has done. If nothing happen or changes. You have to leave.

The confrontation is important because we can’t let them get away with it.

Here is my confession. I did not confront my bully. Its not because I  was afraid. I had many confrontations with him early in our boss-employee relationship. I always lost and they resulted in more work and no tools to do my job. Toward the end, after 5 years of bullying, I shut down  because others were speaking up and they were  bullied even more. Laura-Not-Her-Real Name spoke up, she was knocked down. He even taunted her at a work party, was drunk and splashed wine on her dress.  Alan spoke up, he was fired / his contract was not renewed. Paula apoke up she as demoted and given tiny closet in the basement to work in.

So after 5 years. I shut up and quit. First time in 40 years of work.

Once you leave, get professional help or if you don’t want to to that talk to someone you love about the hurt, the pain. Please talk about how you feel. I am a big fan of Alcohols Anaymous and Al A Non. Find a group and talk about it. Make it real. It is real.

Just  knowing you are not alone, helps you begin healing.

I’m still a mess. You should see my closet. My closet is a medaphor for my life. Because my closet is where all my work clothes live. But I’m getting better. You will too. Know it.

I’m working on my bully audio book, looking for some experts to interview and see if friends will talk on tape or video. Stay tuned. Hang in there.

There people in Hell who who want ice water, Let’s have a drink!

I’m Gloria Moraga, please subscribe and share.