How To Deal With Office Bullies

The fashion industry is an environment in which you will meet all kind of people. Like in any industry. But few have the reputation to be as spiteful as fashion. When I started my career, it was something I haven’t given a thought because all I wanted was to work in a field I loved. I wish I knew at that time because the reality check was kind of brutal. This article is not meant to make you afraid but, I believe it is important to come fully prepared so that when you face an uncomfortable situation you know how to deal with it.

Navigating the professional world when you have to wake up and go to a place where one or two colleagues are on their worst behaviour with you is off-putting even if you love what you do. The rest of your team might be really nice but, one person can contribute to making you call it quit. That was my case when one day in the kitchen of a company I was working for, a colleague of mine told me I looked like a slut (in her own words) the first time I put a skirt at work. I was six months on the job, young and really didn’t know what to answer to this. I was taken aback and because I was speechless, this person felt she had power over me and kept on demeaning me. Despite a track record of similar behaviour with other colleagues, this person never had an issue with management. So I decided to make an issue out of it because I wanted to break this code of silence.

This was only an example of the type of situations I dealt with but I met other unpleasant people throughout my career and I can tell you that though it was tough, it was very formative. Hence why I came up with some advice for you.

When you are starting off your career speaking up isn’t always easy to do. Imagine when it is about a toxic co-worker! The matter of harassment at work – because a co-worker mistreating you is a form of harassment – is not much talked about in general. When it happens to you, talking about it to anyone comes extremely difficult, let alone in a working environment. Most of the time, office bullies are well-known by other employees but, most of the time there is also a code of silence around it. People will know as they had issues with the person, talked about it between each other but never brought it up to a manager or HR. You see, being the first one isn’t easy and on top of that, when you are new you don’t want to lose your job or be seen as a problematic person. Because this is how you will be perceived: problematic. People who often dare to say someone’s behaviour is wrong in the office are often considered an annoyance by the same people who were bullied before. It’s a vicious circle. People will tell you, it happened to them too but it won’t go much far.

Office bullies are often the people that enjoy seniority privilege and therefore have won the trust of the people in the company. They are often very chatty and smiling with their higher-ups and always make everything appear as if there were doing the greatest job ever to these people. So dealing with such people is tough. But that’s not the end. Their bad behaviour also influences people around them, meaning that some people will start behaving like them too.

When you are a new starter and have such a set-up, you will feel as if the entire world were against you and you will feel lonely. Extremely lonely. At first, you will think you are the only person to whom it happens, you will also feel nobody sees and most importantly it will be taxing emotionally.

Even if you decide to talk about it, it’s still taxing on you as you risk being ignored or catalogued as a troublemaker that makes stories up because seniority equals trust in some companies. To give you a clear example about it, in another job I had to hear my manager tell me I was exaggerating because the person that was mistreating me had been working with her for many years and she never behaved that way. So like I said be prepared. Grow a thicker skin because you will hear every type of excuse.

When you are dealing with a toxic co-worker, the first time you will feel undermined. You won’t understand why and you will ask yourself what did you do wrong. Thing is, you probably did nothing wrong so instead of dwelling on the wrong questions, ask yourself how this person harasses you.  Is it verbally? Is it through email? Do they call you by your name or call you thingy? Do they ask you to do their job? Are they above you? Write everything down and keep every email that person sends you. The reason I am telling you this is because despite their name, HR – let’s remember the H in HR stands for human after all – will only help you under certain circumstances. And these circumstances must have to do with the company, your job.  It’s not about going to them and saying ‘Hi I think A doesn’t like me, do something about it’, you have to be strategic. Everything you say should be proven and have to show that it makes it difficult to work smoothly thus not helping you achieve your objective well (mind you, you should never phrase it that way :D).

In the case I stated above, the person was silly enough to write emails with insults in them – so I kept all of them. Before doing anything major, I tried to talk it through but I was rejected. The person didn’t want a conversation. I could have gone to a manager or HR but I still wanted to sort it out myself. So I wrote the longest email of my life to this person with the various examples of insult she wrote me and told her that she could talk to her family and friends like that but not me because we were colleagues and as such I expected her to have the utmost respect for me like I did for her. I also told her I had no qualms about bringing it to court if she kept behaving the way she did. And guess what? She called me straight away over the phone to tell me she never meant to be mean to me. Ah really?

It took me three months to do so but I felt so great I did because the result was she totally stopped bullying me. Managers and HR weren’t involved in the process which was also less stressful to handle in a way. This experience taught me that confronting the person can change the way they perceive you. If you act afraid, you will be taken advantage of whereas if you say firmly to someone to stop they will realise they don’t have power over you.

The most difficult case is when a co-worker is lovely with everyone but you. It’s a tone, a behaviour, an attitude – in brief, all things subjective. How do you explain to your manager or HR someone is bothering you but you cannot prove it? With this kind of case, you should be really careful as you don’t want to make it appear as some high school feud. I have one particular example in which a colleague would talk down to me and say hello to everyone but me. In this situation, I didn’t have a way to defend myself until she told my manager I didn’t do my work properly without talking to me first. Well, let me tell you that complaint was her best mistake. Every piece of work I submitted was on the server of the company so I could go back and reference to each of them to prove I did my job well. But I didn’t stop there, it gave me the occasion to tell my manager this person behaved weirdly with me. Luckily enough, the manager I had asked around about this person and she found out she behaved the same way with someone else in the team. And the person she bullied also reported it to her manager.

I didn’t have any interaction with this person throughout the whole process and it was dealt by my manager who sat with her. And guess what? She stopped immediately after meeting my manager.

For this case, I was lucky enough to have a great manager who believed me and investigated. I was also lucky enough that someone before me got the courage to talk about it. Thanks to that the issue was also resolved for that person. This story taught me that:

– having back up of your work is key to dealing with an office bully

– having a great manager does wonders

– timing is key i.e waiting for that person to make a mistake will work in your favour