Surviving a Toxic Work Environment

[Snarky Oracle!]

I never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence. I suspect the amount of workplace scheming is significantly lower than some like to believe. People are just dealing with their own stresses and problems; some handle it very badly.

Well, that's a mature sentiment. And it should be true. But you're really missing part of the fun.

By separating out any personal element, workplace issues are easier to compartmentalize.

Ant that's probably the best way to handle it internally.

 

[Crimson]

But you're really missing part of the fun.

Well, bitching about things is a reasonable outlet but it's not a solution. Anyone who thinks the solution to a problem is changing other people's behavior is setting themselves up for abject misery. You can only change how you respond to said behavior, or remove yourself from the scenario.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Well, bitching about things is a reasonable outlet but it's not a solution. Anyone who thinks the solution to a problem is changing other people's behavior is setting themselves up for abject misery. You can only change how you respond to said behavior, or remove yourself from the scenario.

Yes, and that's impossible to argue against. As I said, that's a mature sentiment. But it's really hard for people to be that healthy in their response 24/7, even though it's undeniably incumbent upon them to do so.

 

[Crimson]

But it's really hard for people to be that healthy in their response 24/7, even though it's undeniably incumbent upon them to do so.

I'm not some Zen master who has a perfectly reasoned response to every encounter: I get as aggrieved as the next guy. But knowing that the only person who can straighten that shit out in my head is myself is empowering and, ultimately, a relief.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

I'm not some Zen master who has a perfectly reasoned response to every encounter: I get as aggrieved as the next guy. But knowing that the only person who can straighten that shit out in my head is myself is empowering and, ultimately, a relief.

But that's the first step in attaining Zen masterhood. I'm afraid that I fail and fail often.

 

[Crimson]

Coming soon: Crimson's Tellytalk workshop, Zen and the Art of Dealing with Workplace A-holes.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Coming soon: Crimson's Tellytalk workshop, Zen and the Art of Dealing with Workplace A-holes.


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Funny. I always picture you with Jane Russell hair.

 

[Avery Merry Christmas]

Maybe it's just my age showing, but it irritates me to no end when I see people online constantly advocating for people to quit/change jobs. Sometimes it's totally justified, obviously, but after such issues keep popping up at multiple locations, these job-hoppers might want to self-examine and find out if THEY are bringing the issues along from place to place. Someone with a reputation as a job-hopper will likely never be considered for a role with any real responsibility, since the boss cannot gamble on someone who might walk out at any moment.

 

[Crimson]

Maybe it's just my age showing, but it irritates me to no end when I see people online constantly advocating for people to quit/change jobs.

It may vary from industry, but as someone who works at a major tech company, those folks who stay in one role too long are looked at askew; the general vibe is that they are lacking in motivation and easy to take for granted. Those who advance the fastest are those who strategically bounce around at probably a rate of every two years.

I was in my previous role for 5 years and I people thought I had dust on me.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

When I tried to escape from a job I'd had for several years due to ghastly on site politics, my evil but clever overlords went to great lengths to prevent me from getting another job. They wanted to keep me there so they could destroy me there.

I didn't want to throw in the towel and let them win. But given what was done to me, how it was done and whom was involved, I frankly wasn't sure what to do about it that would work.

And given personal issues I was dealing with outside the office, and to avoid yet another scheme to get me fired (or arrested) I deided to leave without another job lined up.

But they're all dead now, so it's fine.

The legal department protected me -- probably to prevent lawsuits against the agency as opposed to sympathy for me, but they realized I was being targeted. Eventually, the healthiest thing I could do was just walk and allow the cowchips to fall where they may.

But that's not easy for many people to do. I was lucky in that I had other resources which permitted me to make the jump, albeit under duress.

 

[Avery Merry Christmas]

You had Dr. Hoffman wave her magic medallion and hypnotize them? Well played, sir.

It may vary from industry, but as someone who works at a major tech company, those folks who stay in one role too long are looked at askew; the general vibe is that they are lacking in motivation and easy to take for granted.

I think Queen Elizabeth II is the only person I know who stayed in the same job longer than I have without asking for a promotion. I look around and see the crap others put up with where I work---especially the assistant managers and higher, since there is metaphorical fecal matter coming at them from above and below---and decide to stay right where I am. If it gets too ridiculous I would quit entirely before trying to move into a higher position for that reason. The fish rots from the head down.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

You had Dr. Hoffman wave her magic medallion and hypnotize them? Well played, sir.

Not hardly. In fact, quite reverse.

 

[Luke_Krebbs_Ewing]

I work in a toxic work environment.

I'm openly gay and the factory staff where I work take great delight in being as rude as possible to my face. Oh nothing blatantly homophobic, just general rudeness.

They talk about me behind my back and make homophobic gestures but they won't say anything directly to me. They just try to belittle me, so in turn I give as good as I get which doesn't go down too well. I stand and laugh at them as that's what the LGBTQ helpline told me to do amongst other things so as not to impact on my mental health. They can't have it both ways.

I'm a Security guard and a few of my so called colleagues even do it too. They think I'm not wise to them but I am. I pretend to be friendly and civil with them but I wouldn't trust any of them an inch.

What the saving grace for me is that I'm in a union. The Factory Managers wanted to pull me in for an investigative meeting a few years ago so I'm guessing complaints were made against me for standing up for myself and my line manager told me that it wasn't looking good for me. I asked him why but he wouldn't elaborate, I wouldn't trust him either, so I whipped out my union card and told him that if they want to do an investigation they would have to do it through my union. I inquired a few days later about the meeting and apparently it was dropped! Mention a union to people and certain types of people will run a mile!

I do like my job, I just don't like the homophobic bigoted people I have to work with.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

I recall, further years back, at one office job we had a new supervisor hired (replacing our reasonable, much beloved supervisor who retired).

It was a relatively smallish office, with one office manager and only one other supervisor. Then, the office manager retired and the new supervisor was assigned the office manager position, too. So she'd come in brand new and, in no time, she became the sole authority in the building.

She was a black female who was overweight (in a way that made her look perpetually pregnant, even to the point customers would come in and routinely ask her when the baby was due -- and she would chuckle that, "I know I'm fat, but I do not look pregnant..." feigning a good nature which didn't exist, and revealing a lack of awareness that she did, indeed, look pregnant).

She also had bulbous eyes that warned you that she might be a problem.

After she'd only been there a couple of weeks, when many of us were lunching in the breakroom, she relayed a story from when she was a supervisor at another location, and an underling was supposedly misbehaving or performing inadequately, and the supe said of herself, "I do not want to be responsible for anybody's unemployment....."

And a cold chill went up anybody's objective spine.

Pretty soon, with her essential autonomy over the office, some of the record readers (frequent visitors to our office but not permanently in place in the office and therefore not under her jurisdiction) who were there for quality control/inventory purposes, began telling some of us that whenever this new supervisor-turned-queen-of-the-office received a record file cited with an error on it (from these record readers) she would always bring that record to the readers and dispute the error -- but only if the employee who'd made the error was female. But whenever they cited a case file as "correct", she would come to the record-readers and attempt to get them to cite a bogus "error" on the case file, but only if the employee whose case it was was male.

These two record-readers, both of whom were female, quickly saw the evil supe's twisted pattern: the male employees (and there weren't that many of us) were always "wrong" (even on case files the record-readers cited as "correct") and the female employees were always "right" (even when their case files had valid errors cited by the record-readers).

Then one day, she did what certain pathological females do when they want a harmless male employee removed from the work site when he seems too independent-minded for her tastes, too heteronormative, perhaps a little vulnerable (and perhaps a little too sexually attractive) -- she accused him of physically attacking her... The regional manager was called, a tiny lesbian woman who looked like Little Orphan Annie, who showed-up and indignantly escorted him to the door by the elbow (despite the fact he was 6'2" and supposedly violent and could easily have overcome her if he'd wanted to).

A couple of our office mates overheard the original fracas from an adjacent office, and it was clear to them that the evil supe's version of events was untrue and that she'd started the verbal conflict with the male employee with the agenda to get rid of him. Which too easily worked. (His work quality was just fine, by the way, and he never attacked her -- or even threatened to. And the idea that he did, given his personality, was blatantly ridiculous).

It became evident pretty quickly that the male employees' jobs were endangered and that this evil supe was willing to push it as far as she pleased. So the guys started to leave as soon as they could. I also left for another office job (which morphed into its own hell hole soon enough).

Once all the men were gone, the evil supe then started in on the white women (presumably her second least-favored demographic) and managed to push the few who were there out as well.

So now the evil supervisor/office-manager was left with an office of all-black women. Still in touch with a couple of people who worked there, I made the prediction that "now she's going to go after the black women who are actually nice..." And, before long, that was precisely what she started doing, well on the way to creating this queendom of mean-spirited women who were black, the nice black women pushed out.

It wasn't hard to anticipate.

What, I wondered, would happen next?... With an office full of bitchy black women, who would her new target? The bitchy black women she didn't happen to be friends with? Ones who looked too good? Ones whose tastes in gospel music didn't align with her own?

Eventually, I lost touch with anybody there, usually because they'd left, but I never found what happened long-term. But the real question was why the upper management allowed this to happen --- but it was a fringe office, one the brass didn't really have their eyes on, so nobody cared or perhaps even knew.

I assume she's long-dead now, but I'm not sure.

On my next job (which started out well) there were other issues: a large cabal of gay & lesbian employees, both on the floor and in middle management, became the key proactive problem... I realized soon there was a platonic marriage-in-hell that existed between the more grasping middle-aged women (whether they were straight or not) and sneering male queens -- they did each others' bidding (but mostly hers).

it was fascinating. And entirely unpleasant. One of my female co-workers quietly observed to me one day something I had already thought: "we need more straight males here." And she was quite right. With a pronounced deficit of heterosexual males on site, whatever hormonal balance that brings, something as a result ran rampant -- and it wasn't good. (And most of the straight -- or at least heteronormative -- guys had already gotten the hell outta Dodge or had been fired. And the non-queeny gay guys weren't safe either, because they didn't "fit" and knew it).

The patterns I saw repeatedly were the less-attractive secretaries trying to get the cute young secretaries fired (especially if she was nice). And the grasping middle-aged women conspiring to get the quiet, middle-aged men (ones who seemed solitary and kind of vulnerable, and whose relationship status was perhaps "single") removed from the office (especially if he had no particular status that protected him). And the male queens acting as buzzing worker bees, swarming around any evil agenda that was active at the moment.

And, no, I have no bias towards or against female bosses -- I've had a ton of women as my immediate supervisors over the years, and only a couple of them were ever a problem. Almost all of them liked me and I liked almost all of them.

Eventually, an evil lumbering lesbian woman manipulated herself into becoming the office manager there. I had known a couple of her co-workers from years back in another agency and, as a new employee, she'd quickly developed a reputation as "America's first female serial killer" in that office (as they joked about her behind her back) as this pathological woman, then in her twenties, seemed to have endless conspiracies against certain customers (who didn't seem to deserve it), and against certain co-workers (who also didn't seem to deserve it) -- and she would verbalize these plots, cackling like a witch as she did so.

But time refined her guile. And she eventually moved to another agency, kept her eternally-evil agenda under wraps, and had eventually risen to that top. Her former co-workers from twenty years back were aghast, asking: "what the hell is wrong with so-and-so agency that that pathological woman has actually become the director??" And it was a valid question. But in fact her ascension seemed effortless and even pre-destined.

Once in place as the top dog, it became clear she had a shit list -- one which only seemed to include nice, usually low-key employees who minded their own business and did their jobs (presumably, because she saw them as "weak" or was uncomfortable with the moral contrast their very physical existence created in her own mind -- or, likely, both). Some of those she targeted were stunned, once they realized that they were on that shit list, that she was even aware that they worked there!

Meanwhile, whenever any employee went under valid federal investigation, they were always from her little nasty gang of buddies, exquisitely pathological in their own right. And so she would get on the phone and lie and lie and lie to get them out of trouble -- usually successfully. And the feds rarely had a clue about what she was up to and why because, after all, what are the chances statistically, that the few employees the feds were investigating (and sometimes demanded be fired) were all from her little group of pals??

But they all were. Vultures of a feather, I guess... And once the dust settled, she'd promote them... But sometimes she would push it a bit far. One of her closest (and, therefore, most evil) comrades (and a supervisor in her own right) had a son who was going through a divorce. Ever motivated, she called up her soon-to-be-ex daughter-in-law and said that if the younger woman didn't behave in the divorce as her mother-in-law demanded, she would access her daughter-in-law's relatives' accounts and sabotage their monthly allotments. (I won't go into what entitlement this was for). In order to do that and access the benefits screens -- let alone alter it -- one had to use a slew of secret codes, and go through a labyrinth of mazes, because on our end, we rarely if ever needed to go there, and the feds could track it from a remote location.... Well, the daughter-in-law reported the threat to the federal fraud division, and they were able to easily detect that this off-limits benefits screen (and her relatives' accounts) had indeed been accessed by her mother-in-law, using all the secret codes required, and done from her work computer.

Instantly, the feds called the evil director of the local chapter of the agency and said "fire her!" of the long-term employee. But undeterred as always, the evil director lied to get her bud out of trouble, telling the feds that someone had "framed" her, someone on the job with a motive against her, who had allegedly found her secret codes and then used her work computer to do it... Ridiculous and convoluted though the bogus explanation was, the feds backed off, again unaware of the social relationship between the evil director and the evil employee/supe who'd committed the crime exactly as accused. And the feds kept one eye askance at the evil director for a while because her explanation never accounted for why the daughter-in-law's report to the fraud department, relaying her mother-in-law's threat, was exactly in line with what the feds turned up in their brief and easy investigation... So the evil director got her wicked friends out of firings and even potential prosecutions. And then promoted them upwards.

So there's a movie in this kind of thing -- but the truth (which is always stranger than fiction because fiction is never able to capture the magnitude of the perversities of human ego) would always come off as 'over-the-top'.

Anyway, at one point, the evil supervisor who'd illegally accessed these super-secret benefit screens and had been saved from firing, or even being arrested, tried to get me fired by sabotaging my work and then claiming I tried "to choke" her. It never happened. And it seemed unlikely that her creepy, frail, nicotine-riddled and spindly limbs could have successfully fended off my muscle-bound assaulting physique, but apparently she did. Jesus being on her side and all... Fortunately, the legal department (as I mentioned in an earlier post) figured out she was lying and the absurd assault story had been manufactured. But things like this just kept happening.

So she got "caught" on several fronts, but she still had the evil director in her camp (who herself had a record number of employee complaints to the umbrella department above us, which was notable because we hadn't been under that department for very long --- but nothing was ever done about her). So she was just fine, and, like I said, got bumped up after a while.

(Curiously, a "psychic" even told me in advance that she'd get caught, saying "this woman is so stupid!" -- well, perhaps stupid but efficiently Machiavellian enough -- the psychic getting future timeframes right about when my luck would run out there, and also told me I was in the wrong geographic location... LOL!)

After I left that job in disgust, and intent on removing myself as a target, I eventually learned that it had been "established" gossip there that I had downloaded so much po rn (of the worst kind) that it had crashed the system nationally. (At the time, we didn't even have Internet access, only email!) Everyone had heard the story -- except for me; even friends never mentioned it because they either assumed it was ridiculous (they knew I was being targeted, of course) or perhaps were afraid it might be "true" and just didn't want to bring such unpleasantness up... I was later told that when people had asked why I was still working there, if I had committed such a vile moral, professional or legal offense, the explanation was given that I had been fired, "but worked out something with the agency to come back." Which makes no sense at all, but apparently it didn't have to.

If I had done such a thing, one assumes I would have been fired, prosecuted or, at the very least, someone would have had a conversation with me about it. But no, no one did. Not for several years, until one of my retired supervisor pals told me about it, stunned that I'd never even gotten wind of the story... God only knows what's in my personnel file.

But gay folks in particular seem to like to dish the baby-raper stories. (Even PrimeTimeGuy from the old soapchat called me a "pedo" on his comedic blog).

Lots of crazy stuff like that went on... and you wonder that, given all the work that had to be done there, how does anyone have the time for this kind of endless foolishness? But they do -- it's compulsive with some of them, and sometimes their work is even competent!

What's that Chinese proverb about sitting and waiting by the river long enough, the dead body of your enemy will come floating down passed you...?

Well, they're almost all dead now. But it's all always so stupid and unnecessary.

Hellfire and damnation. They're drawn to it like moths!

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

 

[Biggie's B.I.G Manger Mash-up]

For almost 4 years I was in such a working environment. I quickly realized that there was no win to be had, no point in me trying to find common ground and it was evident that the people in question were not worth my efforts.

What worked for me was withdrawing from their everything, I actually stopped talking to some and communicating via emails. Did my job, and no more. Refused to do any thing else to help in anyway, didn't take instructions from anyone not in my reporting structure.

They soon figured out that might as well be left alone.

 

[Avery Merry Christmas]

Everyone talks about how you have to speak up for yourself when you're being mistreated, to 'fight for what's right,' etc.

But there comes a point where you realize you aren't fighting....you're just getting beaten up.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

One of my former friends had a husband in management in another government agency, and he said his fellow bosses would challenge and pressure each other to find ways to get underling employees (sometimes long-term ones) fired, in order to recreationally ruin those employees lives, those bosses accusing each other of being "chicken" for not doing so.

It sounds unhealthy.

 

[Jolly Jimmy Tinsel Todd]

One of my former friends had a husband in management in another government agency, and he said his fellow bosses would challenge and pressure each other to find ways to get underling employees (sometimes long-term ones) fired, in order to recreationally ruin those employees lives, those bosses accusing each other of being "chicken" for not doing so.

It sounds unhealthy.

How evil! It sounds like the movie "In the Company of Men." Cruelty for the sake of cruelty