I’ve never really been bullied, neither in school, university or work. When I realized that I thought that perhaps I was the bully if nobody bullied me. But I can’t think of having bullied anyone either, at least not intentionally.

Eh, to be honest, I flipped and became the bully to the guy who was bullying me over a work Foosball tournament.

He didn’t like that I was his randomly assigned teammate for the tournament, and threw a fit over it. Tried to show up to the game and say I refused to play so that he could just play himself. Then, when I was alerted to play, he just stopped playing halfway through and stood there. When I asked him if he was serious, he gave me this smirk/smile, and refused to continue playing.

Anyway, it’s been like 3 weeks now, and he spent a couple weeks at his desk not socializing, but now he’s back to it and hasn’t apologized for his behavior to anyone, including me. Everyone seems keen to just let him back into the fold, but fuck that, I’m not letting him off the hook. I at the very least want an apology before he’s okay in my book again.

Other than that, we don’t have a bully issue at work, everyone but this Manchin is chill af.

Nobody, and I won’t work somewhere that puts up with that shit.

I’ve had bad bosses and coworkers before. When I was young and easily replaceable I put up with it until I realized that the jobs were just as replaceable as I was. “Oh hey, I can make the same money almost anywhere, so why deal with these assholes?”

Now I’m specialized in a high demand field. Corporate plays stupid games among the executives but they know better than to mess with us - you can find an MBA under any rock but people with my skill set are the core of the business and we’re hard to find. My team is professional and helps each other out. Any of us could quit and likely get better pay elsewhere, so we make sure to weed out the troublemakers.

»I« am probably bullying myself at work the most. I feel like a walking lie. Just … fake, like, that person that you see there, it’s not even really »me«. I cannot stop the pretend 🤦 conditioned to feel that the mean attitude of people from my past and their opinions on me is my identity …

I’ll try to accept that maybe for the others the feelings I experience is not how they think about me and, perhaps, grow a little bit further out of my internalized shame. Hmm…

Uh… nobody. There was one person once who stalked me and tried to sabotage me, but they’re gone and I’m not. It started with her getting hired and trying to pawn off all the worn on me while taking credit for it, trying to make it look like I would leave early, and talked all sorts of shit about me to my boss at the time (who also no longer works here).

I documented everything they did, excelled at my job, make friends with everyone, and built up my reputation: I got promoted and they became unemployed after becoming a pariah when people caught on to what was actually happening.

Document everything, nail it when it comes to your responsibilities, and try to maintain a good relationship with everyone, but at the end of the day if the above doesn’t work it’s not just a problem with your bully, it’s a problem with your workplace in general and it’s time to find something better: Polish up that resume and find a place that treats you right!

Life is too short to allow yourself to be abused for money.