I have a female bully who will not leave me alone

Ada wrote:Except that if other people see that kind of behaviour, one of two things may happen. One, they may try to compete or join in because "this is a bullying workplace." Or they may report YOU and put you in the wrong.

I'm not saying it can never work. But it can backfire too.

ScienceAndCake wrote:My experience of this situation is thus; either gather evidence and then present it to the company. That could include filming, documenting of phone calls, recording of phone calls etc, and use this to get her fired. If it's a remotely successful company they will take such a claim very seriously, if there's evidence you can practically guarantee she can kiss her job goodbye.

The other alternative is to become more aggressive yourself. Believe it or not, bullying is a normal behaviour for practically all primates, especially among people of lesser intelligence. I've literally never started a new job where somebody didn't try to bully me. I'm a nice person by nature, so hopefully my experience of how I dealt with it will be applicable to you, as I suspect you're also nice.

The method is simple: pretend that you're a bully yourself

When I started my previous job I had a co-worker who was extremely insecure about the fact I started working there. I was about 5 years his junior but I had been brought in at his level, and from the get-go he began making snide comments, and gradually progressing it, making it obvious that he was working towards bullying. There's a drive in people like this, a primitive urge that makes them behave like aggressive idiots, but it is this primitive urge that acts as their weakness - in general they also respond with extreme fear to a sign that they might have picked on somebody who is an even bigger bully than they are. Bullies always start slow (sometimes even as your friend) to "test the water" to see if you're the type of person who is quick to anger. If you're not they push it and push it until they're bullying you outright and loving their power. But if they're suddenly confronted with evidence that you might be a highly aggressive person, their fears will kick in and they'll go running for the hills. Now the problem is that you're not an aggressive person, which means you have to put on an act. I think of it like playing a character - this character is somebody who begins to get furious at the first sign of offence. Your character begins to get fighty and aggressive as soon as they're challenged. Your character wouldn't pick on others, but has an insatiable urge to defend themselves if they're picked on. Your character is, perhaps, slightly unstable and likely to challenge the bully outright. I played that character and it worked a charm; after a few weeks of pretty intense bullying I began to send him angry emails and snap at him whenever he made a comment I knew was an attempt to belittle me, and eventually I stood up and told him to his face that if he had a problem with me he'd better say it. He was probably a foot taller than me (he was tall by anyone's standards), and yet he was terrified. He never did it again, and bizarrely he began to recognise me as the "head bully" and started looking to me for instructions on what to do socially. Bullies are like another species in this respect; they're slaves to their own aggressive urges but also to the aggressive urges of others.

I recommend adopting a fairly similar approach; show her a reality where you're not somebody who can be picked on. Show her a reality where you're a person whose mindset simply doesn't permit backing down, and her primitive urge to avoid aggressive alpha-bully at all costs.

ScienceAndCake wrote:

Ada wrote:Except that if other people see that kind of behaviour, one of two things may happen. One, they may try to compete or join in because "this is a bullying workplace." Or they may report YOU and put you in the wrong.

I'm not saying it can never work. But it can backfire too.

Right, this is why I provided an alternative. If you think it's the type of workplace where bullies are swiftly dealt with, then by all means gather some evidence and report your concerns to an impartial manager. How many workplaces are like this though, compared to say...the number of workplaces where everyone turns a blind eye whilst a bully does whatever the hell they want. I think we all know the answer.

Good people should always be prepared to take a bully on aggressively. On an aside, that bully I dealt with was bullying far more than just me, and he literally bullies nobody now; I've taken over as head bully but I've never victimised a person in my life, and everyone is more relaxed. There is genuine truth to the claim that many bullies are cowards, but people who make this claim don't back it up by taking them on. They are cowards, but this means nothing if they're allowed to bully with impunity. It's everyone's responsibility to take them on.