Robin Hood

For the last few years, the Tories have re-negotiated employment rights to the employer’s advantage claiming that doing so would benefit the economy. It was the EU in the main which prevented them going too far, along with some of the stronger unions.

The Tories version of give and take is also worth noting. They gave us The Equality Act 2010, which means that we can’t be bullied at work or harassed and discriminated against on protected grounds of gender, race or disability etc. But then they made it prohibitively expensive to take an Equality Act 2010 case to tribunal or court with court fees running to thousands.

With the EU out of the picture following #Brexit, workers rights and employment law will be looked at again by the Tory right wing.  I’m worried about the forthcoming employment agenda.

We need the strongest Labour government in opposition now. We need the strongest trade unions. I’ve got a lot of respect for Jeremy Corbyn, but this is too big a job for him. We need, um...

 

Robin Hood?

The Go-To Guy

The hibernation I mentioned in my last blog lasted a little longer than anticipated,and I’m sorry for that, but at least the result of it is that I have a new novel coming out in October. The hard work paid off!

But let’s not waste any time in being back at Bullied by the Boss with all things bullying, harassment and employment related.

Ordinarily, I have never allowed adverts on my blog. Over time, people have told me I’m crazy: “Monetise!” they shout. But I don’t want my readers to be distracted by adverts for coats, deodorants and soft drinks when they’re looking for solidarity and support.

I’ve also been approached many times over the years to blog about companies that promote related services. As a rule, I always politely decline.

But recently I got thinking about advertising. There can be great value in personal recommendations. I set myself to working out who would I turn to if workplace bullying were, God forbid, to happen to me again. If I found myself bullied at work and my life again reduced to a daily misery of unhappiness and humiliation, who would I call?

I realised that during my break from blogging the landscape of employment law has been changing fast. It’s all about mediation now. Like litigation, mediation is confidential but it’s quicker and less expensive. With mediation, one bonus is that keeping your job can be an option.

There are a growing number of mediators out there but if mediation fails you don’t want to be hunting around for a lawyer who can progress things further. So my personal recommendation would be a trained mediator who is also an experienced lawyer.

But who in particular would I use?

There is a lawyer about whom I have heard nothing but good things and great results for those having all sorts of trouble at work. And what has prompted this blog is that I’ve just heard he is also now an accredited employment and workplace mediator.

Chris Mayers in Cardiff has seen it all from both Claimant and Defendant side. He’s fearless, but also patient and understanding. If I were to run into a workplace problem again, he’s the guy I would call.  

He’s your go-to guy!

The Magic Pill

Along the way, I’ve given lots of advice on how to cope with workplace bullying and how to move on, but I’ve never been able to prescribe a magic pill: that elusive panacea that can put all things right.

I resigned myself to the sad fact that there were some unpleasant truths targets of workplace bullying have to learn to live with. 

Over the last year, there has been a significant challenge to this mindset and, as a result, I find myself unusually sentimental. A former boss and partner in a law firm has done something completely unexpected. I’ve talked of this boss previously in blog posts. After giving it some thought, he offered to try and put things right for me. At first, I suspected it would only be a month or two before he changed his mind or made his excuses and disappeared. 

On the contrary, he only grew more determined. While it’s fantastic that the legal issues have been successfully resolved, my sentiment stems from how touched I am by his commitment and how vehemently he argued on my behalf. I didn’t realise how much I needed that. I didn’t realise how much emotional baggage I was quietly still dragging around with me. The workplace bullying I went through and the initial attempt to take action was a grim period, but one that is firmly in the past and I can even say, largely thanks to him, that everything worked out in the end. I’m able to say I’m over it.

So this week, I thought it would be good to remind ourselves of the good bosses out there – and they are out there – the bosses who support staff who are seriously ill or going through a time of personal upheaval. These are bosses who know that hard times can be temporary and gratitude is often long lasting. It’s easy to forget these great bosses are out there when you’re working for someone who is a sadistic so-and-so. It’s so easy to think: ‘better the devil you know’. 

I didn’t ever say I had the answer to workplace bullying but, take it from me, a great boss is the antidote. Make it your mission to go and find one!

Very best wishes

BBTB

Control

Since I have been helped by an amazing lawyer, wrongs are still being righted and I found myself having a fresh look at the piles of evidence I collected.

 

Then, yesterday, I watched an insightful BBC Panorama programme on domestic violence. The clear message of the documentary was that domestic violence is about control.

You’ll probably know that I have always been in full agreement with the Workplace Bullying Institute that domestic violence and workplace bullying are first cousins. 

The idea that control is the agenda of the workplace bully was something I had already identified from a key piece of evidence I hold. 

When I, yet again, handed in my notice in November 2009, Howard had a meeting with me and later emailed the practice manager to let her know what he’d said. I was fortunate enough to get hold of a copy of this sensational email. Apart from the fact that there is no mention of all the ridiculous things they later alleged in their Defence, Howard’s language is as telling as the content of the email itself. He says to the practice manager:

“I can only control what happens in the workplace”.

Later, he asks for my mobile number. He says: “knowing how her mind works” a personal call is in order. (The practice manager gives him my telephone number and says she thinks I’m probably just oversensitive because I’m overtired).

You don’t have to be a psychologist to recognise that Howard’s language is that of someone who believes he is in full control. He was to a large extent. A few days later he had my desk moved three or four feet directly in front of his and the company allowed him to commence one to one ‘training’ in a private meeting room. Needless to say, these meetings were low on training and high on threatening language and abuse.

However, in that initial meeting with him, I recorded in my diary that Howard said the fact that I had given up going to the gym and writing had left me adrift. I wrote: “He said that he was not only my boss, but he was also my friend – and he understood that I was a vulnerable, unconfident person who was lonely.” 

The truth was, however, that I hadn’t given up writing or the gym. I simply told him I had after he bombarded me with emails trying to put me off both. I had stopped writing fiction, for example, but I was hard at work writing my blog. For a quiet life, I gave Howard the illusion of control. Later, I learned how essential this was.

For your psychological good, you must not allow your bully to take full control, but you must not let them know the degree to which you are resisting. That’s workplace bullying for you. Just as with domestic violence, it’s best to let them think they have control while you plan your final escape.

All Writing is Autobiographical

A couple of weeks ago, a lawyer accused me of being a creative writer, implying that Bullied by the Boss may be a work of fiction. 

A coincidence: the bullying started in 2008 after I managed to get a work of fiction published. I can only conclude that Howard, my boss, thought I was getting above myself. 

What I didn’t record online was what Howard initially said about my writing. He said it was easy for me to write a contemporary story and that anybody could. He said that metaphor was a ‘con’ and would send me prosy paragraphs to show that he could write better. He would read paragraphs from my novel to colleagues using comedy voices and encourage them to laugh. He would scour the internet for interviews I had done in the press and mimic them for colleagues. He made jokes about buying copies from Amazon as he alleged the book was cheaper than toilet paper.

If I got upset, I was publicly berated for taking myself too seriously. If I tried to laugh along, he made it clear that I was inviting his insidious behaviour. Seeing that nobody objected to his belittling my small literary success, he enthusiastically moved on to everything else he didn’t like about me. And there was a lot.

For a fledgling novelist, it took me years to recover my creative writing confidence.

I told myself that if I ever did write another novel, then it would be a historical novel so that nobody could again accuse of me of being lazy. I have almost finished this new novel and, until recently, I believed I had achieved what I set out to. It’s a novel from a male perspective and set in a time before I was born.

However, when I started thinking about the theme of my novel, I realised it’s about a character who becomes obsessed with revealing the truth behind distorted media coverage. In the case of my own life, of course, it’s not about the media, but it is about the bullying I went through and the lawyers who lied and distorted evidence to cover it up. So, somewhat unsurprisingly, I have written a novel about distortion and obsession.

And this makes sense. Those with real experience of writing often say that all writing is autobiographical to one degree or another.

Perhaps we can forgive what happens to us, but to forget we have to have some acknowledgement of what we went through by the people who put us through it. In the meantime, I suspect that there may be a number of future novels on the horizon where I find my preoccupation with truth coming to the fore.

Creative Writing

In last week’s blog, I mentioned there is a solicitor out there trying to cast doubt on my credibility. I know that it’s hard for some solicitors to believe that everything I blogged about actually happened in a law firm. They compare it to their own business and say: ‘Bullying could never happen to that extent. You must have been exaggerating or brought it on yourself’. 

Sadly, it really did happen and I did nothing to deserve it.
 

The gentleman in question is a partner in a HR Department and a specialist at defending employers against employment claims, so do I expect him to have much empathy for a bullied member of legal support staff? No, of course not.

With an implied insult that I almost found funny, he has drawn attention to the fact that I am a ‘creative writer’. The implication being, of course, that I have a vivid imagination and that this might impinge on my ability to know truth from fiction. 

Petty insults aside, I have been fortunate this week to run into an old friend from my original firm from hell. She walked out years after me and has all the inside gossip. What she told me left me reeling. It’s a list of horror stories involving inappropriate behaviour in terms of bullying, partners treating staff as though it’s a dating agency and, as they did in my day, no one ever hands in their notice. You simply get to the point where you walk out – whether you have another job to go to or not.

The good news is that she’s putting me in touch with my old colleagues. It'll look more like a  support group than a creative writing circle. As I said on Twitter earlier this week, I’ve been running my anti-bullying campaign since 2009. 

That’s not creativity - that's passion.

A New Chapter

Two years ago, a well respected lawyer read my Bullied by the Boss book and blog and decided there was some action that could still be taken to right a few wrongs. 

The opponents in the new claim attacked my lawyer, alleging he was subjecting me to unnecessary trauma. I should be left to put it behind me, they said. 

I didn’t realise there was still action that could be taken. I had resigned myself to the fact that publishing the book was the only means of addressing many unsatisfactory aspects of what I’d gone through from start to finish or, more accurately, start to present.

It was his offer to help that made me realise how unfinished it all was. You don’t so much put bullying like that behind you as bury it deep in your subconscious and try not to think of it again. I tried not to dwell on anxieties about my appearance or worries that I was a terrible writer. I endeavoured not to be scared of the drummed-in-by-my-bully idea that men perceived me as vulnerable and an easy target for abuse. I attempted to bury the fact that I’d been lied about in the Court documents and accused of a number of awful and ridiculous things I’d not done. And, lastly, I tried not to think about the fact that my last set of lawyers hadn’t taken any of this as seriously as they might have. 

There was a lot to bury. 

It was the new offer of legal help that actually made me feel better: really better. Someone in the legal profession agreed with me. Few people have had to endure the extent of bullying I had to, and there’s often no knowing what’s going to make someone feel better in the long term. Perhaps it’s the writer in me that means I was never going to completely settle down with so many unresolved subplots in this tale of workplace horror.

My lawyer, it seems, thinks I deserve a better ending to the story and as things start to progress, psychologically speaking, this is huge for me.

I’ll keep you updated as to the next chapter.

Best wishes

BBTB X