Serial bullies …Women who make life hell at work

Think bullying only happens in the playground? Nuh-uh. The workplace she-bully is alive, well and raising hell. By Sarah Marinos Sally*, 27, manages a women's clothing store in Melbourne — with military discipline. Her staff don't stay long. She screams at her all-female workforce, ridicules them and expects them to work through their lunch hour or stay late to attend meetings where she usually criticises their work. If Sally isn't criticising, she's giving a worker the silent treatment. She sweeps into the store and says hello to everyone but her victim. The victim is left out of shop gossip and Sally might even begin a vicious rumour about them.

"One of my previous staff members was such a lazy cow. I constantly had to tell her how to do her job. Eventually I took her out the back of the store and let her have it," says Sally.

"I said that if she wanted to succeed in life she had to be smarter. I also told her she was too fat. She was a size 16, for god's sake. I'm sure she put off customers when they came into the store. Who wants to be served by someone wearing a potato sack? I know what I said sounds harsh, but I was telling her for her own good."

Last year, Sally slapped a 17-year-old Saturday girl who dared to answer back when Sally accused her of taking five minutes extra for her lunch.

"I know she was five minutes late because every time staff leave the store they have to ask me first and I note down the time," says Sally. "I told her she'd have to stay back after work and she said no. I saw red. Her smug little 17-year-old know-it-all face pissed me right off, so I slapped her. She looked pretty shocked and left the following week.

"There was nobody around when I slapped her, so if she complained it would be my word against hers, and I've been with the company for eight years. Who are the bosses going to believe? Me, who runs one of the company's most profitable stores, or some 17-year-old airhead?"

Bullying: the hidden torment
Sadly, Sally's staff aren't the only victims. New research has found that 70 percent of Australians are being bullied in the workplace, or have been bullied in the past. And don't think it's just about the young male apprentice who gets his head flushed down the toilet. Bullying happens in all industries, at all levels and it's not an all-male affair. Women are just as likely as men to bully at work. Studies by Job Watch, an employment legal advisory service in Melbourne, has found the retail, health and hospitality industries are riddled with she-bullies like Sally. In the past year, the organisation received more than 1000 complaints of workplace bullying — two-thirds of the calls came from women victims aged between 25 and 34 — and many of those were victims of a she-bully.

"There are a lot of women suffering in silence at the hands of other women," says Zana Bytheway, executive director of Job Watch. "In some cases, bullying happens because people love the sense of power it gives them. It's about ego. In other cases, I think bullying happens because people are under so much pressure. They have to do more in less time and with less staff. Productivity, profits, pressure. It's a potent mix.

"We spend the bulk of our time at work and work plays a huge part in how we see ourselves and how we value ourselves. I've seen women give up their careers, develop stress and anxiety problems, lose their confidence, lose their relationship and even become suicidal because they are bullied by another woman at work. It's a very serious, sinister and under-estimated problem."

Amanda*, 35, is a senior manager in a small company in Adelaide. She's been in her current job for just over three years and has been bullied for most of that time by another senior manager, a woman 10 years older than her.

"She's always been volatile and aggressive, but when I won an award for my work, she spat at me and said 'That's outrageous'," recalls Amanda. "Then she began a whispering campaign. She suggested to my superiors and colleagues that I wasn't capable of doing my job. Behind my back she grabbed every opportunity to run me down. She deliberately failed to pass on information I needed to do my job so I looked like an idiot at meetings; I wouldn't have a clue what everyone was talking about.

Amanda would tremble whenever she received an e-mail or phone call from her she-bully. The bully played with her nerves by alternating between nice and nasty. Amanda drove to work never knowing what to expect next.

"It was like domestic violence. One day she screamed and told me how hopeless I was. The next day she talked to me in a cutesy voice and asked for my help," says Amanda. This year, Amanda saw a psychologist because the bullying pushed her to breaking point. "I thought I was going to crack. I was physically and emotionally exhausted.

"My psychologist helped me develop skills to cope with her. Now when she rages, I don't react. Because she doesn't get a reaction, it's not as much fun for her. I've also stood up for myself more. I've told her I'm aware of the things she says behind my back and I've told my bosses what's been going on. They haven't done anything to stop her, though, and I did think about leaving my job but why should I go? Then she wins."

So, what's the appeal?
New research has also found that there's not just one kind of workplace bully. According to Keryl Egan, a Sydney-based clinical psychologist, bullies fall into three main categories: accidental, destructive and serial. The accidental bully is aggressive, intelligent, confident and successful and expects a lot of the people working around them. They don't listen to others, always feel they're right and, when the pressure is on, they lose their temper — but have no idea how their behaviour hurts the people around them. In other words, their bullying is not premeditated. "The destructive bully is narcissistic. They see any competition or threat as a serious assault and they go into a rage," says Egan. "They feel entitled to positions of power." So they bully because they can.

However, the most worrying workplace bully is the serial, or psychopathic, bully — and it seems women are particularly effective at this kind of behaviour. They intentionally hurt colleagues and revel in the pain they cause. "The psychopathic bully is very good at showing one face to the boss and another face to the people below them," explains Egan. Her research says it can take two years for a psychopathic workplace bully to be exposed.

"They isolate their target so that person doesn't have a support network. They manipulate the victim's workload and working conditions and make unrealistic demands and unpredictable decisions. One minute they praise, and the next minute they criticise. They isolate or ignore their victim and the bullying is systematic and relentless. They have a complete lack of empathy."

Egan says most people become psychopathic bullies because of a damaged childhood. They've usually been bullied themselves by uncaring parents or been emotionally neglected. They're incapable of having compassion for anyone else because they didn't receive love and care themselves.

Sally says whenever she's been generous in life people have taken advantage of her. "Sometimes I feel bad when I see the girls at work in tears. I see how they look at me when I arrive at work — they're afraid — but if they're afraid of me, they're not going to take advantage of me. Being soft doesn't get you anywhere."
*Names have been changed.

msn 24 October, 2006