Bullying In The Workplace? Just Grow Up

In a perfect world, every adult would act like one. You would never walk into the office wondering which co-worker is loading up a jab with your name on it. The reality is different. For a lot of people, work ranks among the most unpleasant places they spend their time. So how long can someone stay productive and steady before the pressure of being targeted finally cracks them? It varies. The breaking point is personal, and nobody else gets to set it for you.

A hostile office changes how you see people. Spend enough time as the target and you can start carrying negative feelings toward almost everyone around you, along with a few of the symptoms that look like depression. Give it several months and the mood shifts into something heavier: anger, bitterness, a low gray sadness, and the sense that nothing you do will fix it.

What does it actually feel like? Anger comes first, usually because you cannot respond the way you want to. Then bitterness, the slow conviction that it is you against everyone. That bitterness fogs your judgment until even your allies start looking like opponents. Sadness follows, because humans are wired to belong to a group and being frozen out hurts. And hopelessness, because part of you decides you simply have to absorb the mistreatment to keep your paycheck coming.

Wherever you land, there will probably be a person or a little clique trying to drain the joy out of your day. Protect your income first, by whatever means you reasonably can. There are also moments when standing alone and letting your conduct speak is the better move. The real question is how to carry those emotions without drawing fire onto yourself. React badly to foolish behavior and your supervisor starts filing you under the problem rather than the person being targeted.

You would assume people outgrow this by a certain age. No such rule exists. And if you belong to a minority, the treatment can get sharper. Some co-workers will quietly decide you were only hired because of affirmative action. Others will assume you were never qualified for the role in the first place. Those assumptions sit underneath a lot of the needling. The answer is to prove them wrong, even if the nagging question of why you are there never fully disappears. When you find yourself inside that kind of environment, treat it as a test.

Here is the honest measure of it: if you cannot handle difficult co-workers professionally in one office, you will not suddenly handle them better in the next. I spent years in professional settings learning to stay proactive and to stop letting small irritations bleed into my work. Your emotions are yours to govern. Pause before you answer. The response to a comment or a setup is always a choice, and it belongs to you. Some co-workers will say things specifically to bait a bad reaction out of you. My advice is to answer with intelligence, respect, and professionalism, especially on the days you would rather do the opposite.

Often the strongest reply is no reply. Walk away. Silence can make an unprofessional co-worker hesitate before coming at you with more negativity. Misery wants company. People let their private troubles spill into how they treat everyone at the office, and sometimes the way a colleague copes with their own unhappiness is to try to hand some of it to you. That is bullying, stripped down to its plainest form.

One pattern I kept noticing across professional organizations: too many hens and not enough roosters. Too many women in the room, not enough men. As a woman it pains me to say it about my own, but women can turn catty, partly out of a sense of competing with one another, and partly over the attention of the handful of men around. It can feel like grade school again, though a fair amount of it traces back to biology. Women who work easily with men without flirting tend to make other women nervous. There is a widespread assumption that a man will only listen if a woman sounds needy or a little helpless.

So how do I get through a day surrounded by this? I put on music that lifts me, I read my Bible, and I keep my behavior professional no matter what. Stay steady long enough and the people trying to rattle you start looking like the problem. You will not. - Heather Browning, MBA, BA