How can you identify or avoid adult bullies?

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Thats not to say all sweetness and light people are sociopathic bully's. Some are genuine sweeties.

As subgroups go, women and/or men will most likely be kinder to the opposite sex.

In-crowd pack leaders, their lackies and new initiates into group packs are most likely to bully, usually after the first cues are given, whether verbal or non verbal, by the ringmaster head bully (aspies nemesis).

I know where you're coming from....it's hard to see what's hitting you at the time because the social intelligence thing doesn't work quickly and intuitively for Aspies. So the only way of detecting it better is to study bullying - there are a lot of Websites campaigning against it, and they tend to have lots of examples. Workplace bullying has a legal definition in the UK which includes such things as frequent nit-picking.....if he were in the UK, your boss would be leaving himself wide open to litigation by openly admitting that he deliberately nit-picks in order to take workers down to "rock bottom."

Luckily you don't need to detect adult workplace bullying instantly, for most practical purposes. It's usually enough to keep fairly quiet and think hard about it later. When I was under attack from my management, I kept a careful record of everything they'd said or done that seemed out of line, along with whatever analysis seemed relevent. It took me many hours, and I resented having to spend my own time on job-related activities, but it made me feel a lot safer, especially once I'd got a few palpable "crimes" documented.

But basically it's pretty tough, because it's hard to know how far you can go in fighting back without risking your livelihood. I also think that the world of work is basically a cruel environment in which the employee's well-being is given a hearbreakingly low priority. And that boss of yours sounds like a complete a**hole to me. I'd be tempted to hound him with criticisms about his homespun, sociopathic style of management, and see if I could take him down to rock bottom (wouldn't it be sweet to tell him it was for his own benefit really?) but frankly I'd probably just slag him off to other people and try to set up a counter attack behind his back. I'm not good at giving a measured challenge, and if I start on somebody who angers me that much, I confuse reasonable challenge with abuse, and even if they deserve abuse, I have to stay mindful of the legal position.

On the other hand, I've had some success by contradicting them in an apparently friendly manner, e.g. I might say "naw, I can't see much merit in that way of doing things" or "well if you insist we can do it that way, but frankly I'd be doing you a disservice if I told you I thought it was going to work." Or as Sgt. Wilson used to say to Captain Mainwaring in "Dad's Army," "Oh sir, do you think that's wise?" The undermining effect on Mainwaring's authority was powerful but completely non-confrontational. You'll also find that bullies and other bossy people often try to get you to nod or otherwise sanction their ideas as they speak - they'll kind of look at you expectantly for that little nod of agreeement, and it can be quite satisfying to watch them getting uncomfortable as you continue to look blank or say "it's an interesting idea.....I'll give it some thought" - they usually want you to agree on the spot but they don't normally have the power to expect it.

Don't forget that it's not a sacking offense (at least in the UK) to voice opinions that aren't in keeping with those of the boss. If I had a boss who did what yours does, and I said "frankly I doubt that your rock-bottom strategy is likely to do anything but de-motivate people. You may think you're doing me a favour, but having to put up with criticism about every damned thing I do just doesn't cut it with me. You'd do well to temper your criticisms with an equal amount of praise - after all, it's pretty well known that reward achieves more than punishment," then all I'm doing is offering constructive advice. But whether or not it's wise to be so blunt depends on how powerful your boss happens to be.

Become aware of what causes what.

Spotting them is the hardest part. I can’t tell the difference between criticism because I’m messing up, somebody mad at me because I keep saying the wrong thing, or somebody who just enjoys tormenting other people. In my head, it’s all the same – “I did bad, so I have to fix it.”

It’s easy to make me double guess myself because I have a terrible memory. It’s not even that I don’t remember things. My memory is bad because the card-catalog in my head is illegible. So I remember two, three, four things at the same time and have to try to shuffle through to figure out which one is right. For example, name on Jovian moon. Well crap. Where does Callisto orbit, or Io, or Dione? Are they Jupiter or Saturn? Who wrote 1984, instantly in my head are all the 20th century dystopian authors, Orwell and Huxley, along with Heinlein, Saberhagen, Vonnegut, Dick – as well as apocalyptic authors like Schute, Brinkley and Stewart. It's not that my memory is bad, my memory suffers from the same inability to "filter out" the junk that my consciousness does. So I've tuned my intuition to catch the first idea. One of the first two ideas that pops in my head immediately after a question is right nearly all the time. I have to be quick enough to catch it before it is flooded out with the cascading pile of junk coming right behind it.

Plus, I also just naturally like people. I don’t like being around people, that’s different! But I’m so obsessively curious about everything, and individual people are interesting puzzles to learn about. So it’s just really hard to tell if somebody is being mean-spirited, or if I’m just not understanding and/or taking things the wrong way.

Another thing I notice is if someone is talking to you being all concerned and supportive about your issues and instead they go and tell it to others telling them what you said about this other person and your issues you had with him or her. That person is nothing but a back stabber. I don't think I would trust that person either if they are friends with this other person you had issues with. They can turn around and back stab you to their friend and be against you all of a sudden because they took their friend's side. But the problem is it's not always back stabbing but if the situation was very bad between you and this person and you were made out to be the bad guy and the person sided with that person, then I would call them back stabbers.

I hate it when people do this to me. Sometimes I think it's unintentional and the person just thought he or she was helping by telling this other person what I said about him or her just so he or she knows my side of the story and understand it better and then things are cool between us. Or they want to get two sides to the story so they ask this other person about it and it turns into a bigger mess for me. So I sometimes tell my online friends to not tell anyone this or that or tell this person this or that if I don't want it repeated.

Right now I am thinking someone who is talking to me on youtube is a spy regarding a situation what happened between me and this other person in 2004/2005 on MSN. I sure hope it isn't a spy. I also asked him to not repeat it to anyone nor to that person.

These days I am trusting online people less and less thinking they are out to get me or are trying to get something out of me and are pretending to be my friend or showing fake concern. So now I am being cynical about when I talk about things. I might just stop talking to this user telling him I think he might be a spy and he is friends with this other user or with this other person who is also friends with that user.

My boss and I shoot at the same gun club; he knows how good a shot I am . Actually he's just a cool guy in general, in fact when I interview anymore it's as much for me to check out who I might be working for as for them to evaluate me, I simply won't work for anyone I get a bad vibe from. I've also stayed scrupulously far away from the sort of corporate jobs where the culture seems to allow petty jerks to fester and grow, I prefer semi-freelance occupations were everything is much more low key in general.

It can be hard to tell whether someone is being truly sadistic, or whether they're just blinded by their arrogance/power. Either case is hard to deal with if it's a superior. I'm pretty good at sniffing out "jerks" right away, but the problem is there's different levels of "jerk". Some you can learn to deal with on their own terms while others are truly horrible people who need to be confronted on their douchebaggery or avoided altogether if in any way possible. Unfortunately, only hindsight is always 20/20.

I was also bullied at work, and I figured out very quickly how to avoid it in the future.

Buy a 'voice recorder', and when your 'boss' tries to bully you, simply place the voice recorder on the desk between you and say "I don't have a good memory. That being the case, I'm going to record this conversation so that I don't forget any important details."

You will be amazed at how quickly a 'work based bully' will realize that any future attempt to bully you would likely result in their being fired.

Also send copies of the "conversation" to HR and state that a further copy has been dispatched to your attorney for his records.

Good Luck!