Is it possible to face silent work bullying?

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An example would be someone is messing with your things at work to make you look bad so you get the blame and you don't know who is doing it? All you know is someone keeps using your stuff and taking it and not bringing it back. Your boss thinks you are misplacing the items even though you know you didn't use them the day before or they were there when you left but were gone when you came in the next day?


I suspect this is what is happening to me. I don't know if I am being paranoid or not but I feel someone is messing with my things at work, I don't know if it's my boss doing it just to get rid of me or if it's someone else at work doing it so I get the blame. So last night before leaving, I decided to hide the stuff and I hope they won't get found but I will find out when I go into work.

I call it silent bullying since I don't know what is going on and don't know who is doing it. I wish I could install a camera in the closet and have it roll for 24hrs just to see who goes in but I bet that would keep that person out. But if it was hidden, then I would see who is doing it. I've thought about bringing a camera to work and taking videos of my cart and all the stuff that is on it before I go home but I am afraid my boss can claim how does he know that wasn't shot days ago and I am just saying it's from last night. So that idea is useless but I am thinking about doing it anyway to make sure I am not going crazy. Shame my boss isn't always there because I could show him it everyday before leaving work and then have him see the closet again when I go into work. Even though I am not at work in the mornings and early afternoons, I still get the blame. Yesterday my boss said he put the micro fiber cloths on my cart the day before but I never saw them and they weren't there when I got into work. I didn't use the cloths the day before so I know I didn't lose them. So someone must have taken them and I still get the blame when I am not even at work. Or maybe my boss is just saying he did so he can blame me. But I would hate to falsely accuse him of silent work bullying so I am not going to and complain about him to someone.

Modern digital cameras have a time stamp. You just need to make sure that your camera is set to the proper time zone & the correct calendar date. I'd at least take still shots of what's there, if not all out video. I'd shoot at the beginning of your shift & again & the end (if there's any changes for your inventory).

I think some sporting good stores have a motion sensor camera you strap to trees. It allows people to look at the pictures later and see what animals have come through. Or catch trespassers.

Maybe something like it could be strapped in place high up facing your work station.

Take a picture of the cart - along with something like the front page of that day's paper. Or the date and time on the screen of your phone.

Dust the items with some harmless substance that will allow you to track whoever has touched them, say, something fluorescent.

And, document each incident, each missing item. If your boss tries to get rid of you, having the incidents documented may help to protect you.

I lock up at the end of the day. My desk, file cabinet, tool caddy, et cetera all have locks that I installed, and I'm the only one with keys, except for one spare set in the Security office. Even my desktop requires two passwords to get in (BIOS & Network).

Can the OP lock up?

Yes, it's possible that such bullying is taking place. Some bullies like to mess with people's things, either to annoy them, make them look bad or cause them some kind of harm. They want to make the person feel bad without anyone knowing who it is who is picking on them them. It's pathetic, but it happens.

This has happened to me at work too. I had to start hiding or locking down certain items that I used at work because someone kept messing with them. For example, I had a stamp that I had to use to mark invoices in numeric order and it was really important that the numbers were in a correct, unbroken order. Someone kept messing with the stamp and changing the numbers, probably hoping that would mess up my work and get me into trouble and/or cause a lot of extra work for me, but thankfully I always checked the numbers before I used the stamp and was able to fix it before I used it. The first time this happened I thought someone had brought their kid with them to work and that the kid had been playing with the stamp, but when it happened repeatedly and the numbers kept getting changed in the opposite direction than they would if someone used the stamp, I realized that some adult was doing this on purpose, so I started hiding the stamp. I suspected one colleague, but since I had no proof I never reported them.

Later on I suspected that this same person had stolen the credit for most of my work and lied about my performance to my boss. When it was time for the company to lay off some employees I was among the first they let go, but I was also the first one they hired back (and promoted) because once I was gone the bosses realized exactly how much of the workload had been done by me (the others didn't even know how to do my job, let alone get the work done nearly as fast as I). I consider this silent bullying, because I did not even know it was going on until afterwards when it had already caused a lot of trouble.

Yep, it's also called passive-aggressive bullying. I had a senior project manager at my old workplace who I later discovered was preventing me from getting assigned the better projects, I was just put on mickey-mouse projects, because of her hostility towards me. Even though I had demonstrated capability through documented feedback of doing a great job on larger and more significant projects in the past. I couldn't really confront her, or complain to HR, because she could easily lie and say it was just a matter of timing and all that was available was the smaller projects, and I just happened to get stuck with them.

It sucks that these ignorant ass-wipes get away with this kind of deceitful behaviour!!