How to Deal with Bullies in the Workforce -Part 2

For the most part, my way of dealing with workplace bullies was to do basically nothing. Silence, indeed, was my most worst enemy but I was not exactly sleeping, too. Secretly, I was writing down things on small pieces of paper, things that my then supervisor and manager was doing to make my life miserable.
For the most part, these damaging things were observable: other employees were getting better desks and treatment and my requests to deal with workplace issues were laughed at and ignored.
My dog days took the form of going to work with a huge cloud over my shoulder. Even despite clearly unprofessional treatment at the hands of Hitler's relatives (I imagined), I took it all in, never wanted to throw in the towel over what I deemed were a normal part of one's working world.
In fact, for years I went through one bad boss after another, mostly women managers who saw fit to treat my life as though I were a paid slave, only there to make their lives better. All these wierd, unstable bosses were, for the most part, large, younger and clearly competent employees. But even if there were more unattractive than I was, why did they seem to take it out on myself, I wondered? Why did they continue to ask me my age during social occasions, when it didn't really matter, dither, if I was more older, more attractive than she?
All these age-related questions are, in fact, a form of abuse that younger women often use to make themselves feel better than others. Who really cares if they are just celebrating their 21th birthday in Las Vegas? Are they going to be twenty-one for the rest of their lives?
Interestingly enough, I recall that my days of workplace abuse was mostly spent in underpaid, high stressful jobs dominated by young, immature, barely educated young women. Add that, nonunion jobs.
When that day came when the abuser decided to fire me, it came as somewhat of a surprise. Other fired employees walked out silently, but this I could take no more. I howled out at my abusers, cursed them with the word, "lawsuit," and slammed the door quite loudly as I exited the cold and sterile-looking call-centre floor.
A few months later, I did just that. I retained a pro-bono lawyer and settled with myself receiving both extra money and a reference letter. I was saved by the law.

When Witches Invade the Work Place

Being in the world of work is tough. If you think about it, it is often like being in a school yard where employees and employers are either your friend, a bully or just a pain in the butt.
I've worked among some of the worst bully employers ever. One rather large woman had the audacity to scream at me at one point in one of my bad job years. When this happened, I took to walking out rather abruptly and explaining my behaviour to the bosses the next day. In that same, mundane job, a younger woman with eyes that were both hawkish and full of stress, proceeded to harass me over one thing or another. I rolled my eyes during one of her tirades and tried to block her out.
In these years of low esteem which hovered over me like a bad movie, I listened to their constant harping, while silently hoping for some thing to happen that would take these women witches to justice.
Thankfully, the job which involved tracking packages, gave me an opportunity to meet some truly wonderful people in the United States. I would deal with my American coworkers on a business and personal way and in some cases did end up meeting some of them in person. It was the best and worst of times, in the words of Dickens.
But at the same time, the workplace was becoming intolerable. I've seem other women also getting the bad treatment. Yes, they were being bullied, too. I tried to band together with another bullied woman but that only made me feel more and more alone. It was just a case of us against them. But despite all the psychological shoving, I took it in stoically, silently thinking to myself that the witches -the women who made my life horrible -may be powerful, but they were ugly both physically and morally. True, I seemed to have more friends of either gender, but that didn't make my life any easier.
One day to my pleasant surprise, the bullied woman who was in her forties, just lost it. She slammed the door on the big, ugly woman-boss and stormed out of the office, officially quitting.
Wow! I took the abuse for a few more months before I decided to quit one day in style by sending them a fax expressing my official intention to leave.
The big great news came to me one day when I heard that the woman who was both the boss and an unofficial Witch of the West was ousted from the job herself -suspected of being a fraudster.
Ah! I love karma.