Facing a confrontation tomorrow

cloudatlas

Tell me how wrote: »

I'll ignore my ten years experience of people management in changing and challenging environments in which roles and responsibility frequently required specific attention so.

Unless you were one of the people on the call, you have no idea about the tone that was used.

At this point you seem intent in your position being proven to be the right one. I don't care what is right, I'm just giving my opinion based on experience rather than an opinion formed with a friend involving information shared on an anonymous website from someone who really, through no fault of their own, would find it very hard to be entirely objective.

You are giving very dangerous advice if you think it is as simple as the OP only having to say they are bullied and that it will play out in their favour. I hope they consider this in detail before making a decision to do so.

The dangerous advice is to encourage someone to ruin their mental and by extension physical health by advising them to attempt to pander to a group of bullies who have already let the O.P. know their intention. Based on my years of EXPERIENCE I've seen people have mental breakdowns because of poor management, the type that ignores warning signs, down plays incidents and allows hostile work environments to thrive. People don't leave bad jobs they leave bad managers.

Dav010

Three pages of posts, with all kinds of “advice” based on conjecture. Three days later either nothing happened or the op has forgot about the thread. But carry on, give it another day and he will have a cast iron case for bullying/UD, but will have to wait until release from psychiatric care to file a claim.

I know it’s not a requirement, but it certainly helps a thread when the op updates on the reason for starting the thread.

kathleen37

I too wouldn't mention bullying - at the moment.

It is possible to change these situations, and I absolutely agree that they need to be dealt with immediate, rather than letting things escalate.

I once went into a job, as a contractor, at a place I'd previously worked at (non contract) for years. The woman I was working for hated me on sight. Really. Any crappy little thing she could do to make life difficult for me, she did it/said it. But you know what? Turns out she was terrified of my presence, thinking I was being brought in to become her replacement (I wasn't) To get the situation sorted, it took me letting her know, very smiley, I was in no way taking any rubbish, I was there to do a job, and I hoped we could both be professional and get on with it. We didn't need to be friends but it couldn't be doing her mental health any good the amount of hostility she was showing me. Did we become friends? No. But we did manage to work together, even go out to lunch together.

Having said all that, I'm an old bird that has years of work/management/contracting experience. I can imagine this situation is pretty awful for someone without that. It was certainly no picnic for me.

The point being, if you can try and have the wider view, try see things how others may be seeing them, that may give you the resource to try and sort this yourself. If that doesn't work then either look for something else (unless you're getting paid huge, or there are benefits you can't bear to lose) as life is too short. If you do want to stay, then take to HR. You will need to document everything, every rubbish exchange, who was present, etc. But I have to say, my experience is that more than not, not much good will come of that route.

I hope the OP comes back to update. I wish them well. Work stress is rubbish.

Errashareesh

So what if the OP is TL;DR - it's very thorough and informative which is surely fair (bet they'd be chastised for not going into detail).

OP, please look elsewhere. That is an awful place. Don't bother with HR or management (the system is not set up for you to be helped when you're just there short term). Just do what you can to get out.

This is not good for your mental wellbeing. They are dreadful (you are not in the wrong, no matter how much they gaslight you). I was in a similar situation too and went back to my old workplace. May be seen as a step backwards but the relief and benefits to my mental wellbeing were worth every bit. No more sleepless nights, no more utter dread of the mornings, no more walking on eggshells, or second guessing myself, or feeling my self esteem being chipped away.

There is an increase in pharma work for obvious reasons - get searching!

beauf

The people as described are broken and there is no way of fixing that.

Regardless of the rights and wrongs of it. Even if you "win" this battle, you will never want to stay there. best you'll achieve is make it tolerable. Whats the point of that.

cantdecide

Soooo.... many months later.

The day I was going to approach my boss to basically tell him I'd had enough, he literally told me 'hey, this person called in sick and you need to cover them in their dept elsewhere'. I'll never forget the relief, even though I was concerned what had been said by the other two to cause this. I wasn't really needed over there.

I was actually left in this new dept for a couple of weeks and my colleagues there were nothing but great to me and immediately, my learning began. There was a bit of an unexpected poop-storm elsewhere in the company under our department so I was moved over there to help out. That would have been last September and I've been there since. Once again, I landed wonderful colleagues that have treated me like an equal and things have gotten better and better. This week, I'm covering a 30yr veteran for their week off, well in my stride. The boss things the sun shines. His boss is praising me up and down for my contribution and my whole work life is peace, love and happiness. I've had a couple of raises - I'm earning more than I ever have before. Everything is going great.

In hindsight, I reckon it was very simple - the other two bozos just wanted to be left alone to do things the way they always have. They initially played along with the plan to expand the team and so played the game. No one replaced me on that team after I left. The conclusion for me is that sometimes, it simply is the other people. I've done nothing different in this job compared to any other ones. I do the same things and get wildly different results depending on the environment. Go figure.

So what would I advise my past self - be luckier. I've had a bad run with these sorts of eejits in several jobs. I've always helped new people in any job wherever I was but I've realised that this is actually not as common a thing as you'd hope. If you're reading this and in similar position, my advise is simply do the brave thing and move, even if it means temporarily moving away from your goals. Some people are just a*seholes and often they have dominion in their little worlds that even their seniors can't interfere with. Vote with your feet. Don't shorten your life. Get out and start a new chapter.