Mobbing in the Workplace - a danger for us?

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If you feel it would be therapeutic, please feel welcome to tell your stories here, as I have done. I found it helpful to speak out for the first time and end the silence after keeping these atrocities to myself for 18 years, having never spoken of it before to anyone, not even my closet friends and family. I am so glad that the silence has now ended and I not carrying this alone anymore. It has been tremendously liberating.

So- can we have more stories?

Which makes me wonder why there aren't more case studies on mobbing-- my experience is that 90% of humanity uses logical thinking about 10% of the time, whilst the other 10% uses it 90% of the time. There seems to be no middle ground.

But yeah, all the experiences you speak of are basically what I went through and STILL go through.

pepe

I may try self hypnosis to improve my charm with the ladies...I simply love chatting them up and need something to parry the irrationalisms.

One night I was in the office alone - all the others had gone home, I was sitting in my own office staring out the window into the night. I wanted to go home but I couldn't summon the will nor energy to move. I was worn out, psychologically and emotionally.

This happened to me in the last conventional job I held, after which I was determined to become self employed even if it was only scrubbing toilets. Which it was.

I had always worked retail beforehand. In my final retail job, everything started out fine. I was a diligent worker who always kept my head down, didn't rock any boats, and actually got along with everyone. I was a person who was not a troublemaker. I smiled a lot. I laughed at everyone's jokes. I always made efforts to fit in albeit as the quieter one. I even made what I thought were friends -- the boss liked me, my immediate manager didn't and was a b***h, but her replacement liked me and even invited me to go shopping with her, friends-style.

I got along great with a guy I'll call Oswald (not his real name). He was kind of the main "great guy" whom everyone liked and got along with. We even had things in common in life and I thought I'd made a friend. I went out for drinks often after work with him and some others.

There was a girl in another department I'll call Dorie. She was best buddies with Oswald, they were particularly close and "had each others' back" kind of deal. Dorie wasn't an evil person but she was a loud, pushy b***h. She didn't mean any harm but she WAS obnoxious and swaggering. It rubbed me the wrong way but I just shut it all down inside as was my way back in those days. I pushed down A LOT of stuff back then. I don't f*****g do that now, I've suffered too much. People get both barrels with me now and damn the consequences, I've been through too much bullying.

Dorie took my "niceness," my smileyness, and my basically very MEEK personality to equate that I was also "not very bright." Stupid in fact. That used to happen to me a lot too, even though I actually have an IQ in the "high" category, was considered a gifted child, had precocious talents early on (although as I matured the talents only rose to "moderately good" among peers rather than "genius" anymore, hah.) I'm not stupid. But when I was younger I was TRYING SO f*****g HARD not to rock any boats or offend anyone that I just smiled all the time and responded in ways I thought would be socially appropriate, because when I was "myself" I was a clueless person with autism.

I am 53 now and only just got diagnosed coming up on one year ago this month. Back then all I knew was a lifetime of not being like "normal" people. So there I was being fed to the sharks in workplaces.

Which is what happened at this place. One day Dorie just pushed me one time too far with her explaining to me something work related and adding her usual condescending "Capiche? Capiche?" I got fed up and when Oswald aksed what was wrong -- and this is where I DID get "stupid" with my Aspie tendency to overlook connections and not realize it's the wrong time, place and person to say something to -- I told him of my grievances with Dorie.

BIG mistake. Not only did Oswald immediately and summarily turn against me for saying a word against his buddy, but he managed to poison the entire well of everyone I got along with at the place, including the boss who liked me.

Rapidly over the next few days, the place went from somewhere I had enough friendly people to tolerate the environment, to a place where every second person was giving me dirty looks and the cold shoulder. All because one or two well liked social kingpins got pissed off at me for daring to get upset at being treated like a piece of f*****g s**t, and confiding in someone I thought was my friend too. I trusted him and he launched a neutron bomb on me in that place.

Long story short, I wound up getting called into the office and being told to adjust MY attitude or leave. I got up and walked out and vowed never to be an employee in a conventional workplace with co-workers again. I had been a good, quiet, sweet, decent person and a f*****g hard worker, but the social well got toxic from one faux pas that even had a legitimate basis for complaint, and nobody saw it my way.

Also, like the woman in the article posted above, I feel I was scapegoated and singled out for being different in nationality.

Not only did I have spectrum-related weirdnesses I was trying to keep down but always sneak out, and I made spectrum related mistakes both work-related but especially socially-related, but in addition I too was the "odd one out" nationality wise, like the woman in the article.

It must have felt easy for them to distance themselves from me when push came to shove as I was "not one of them" anyway. They turned on me very much in a mob. I did nothing more than confide dismay over Dorie. I didn't have a meltdown. I didn't yell at anyone. I wasn't horrible. But they all turned against me and made my life hell there, and I hung on for a few weeks before it became unbearable.

I have avoided jobs like that since. I made up flyers with little phone number tabs to tear off, posted them all over town, and started cleaning houses, and I've done that for 23 years now. I only have to deal with clients and don't have to deal with co-worker small politics and social hierarchies and backstabbing. I can never and will never go back to a normal workplace environment again.

I think human being are scum, when I really get down to it.

I'm sick of the condescending, the sniping both overt and covert, the snide holier than thou attitudes when someone copes better than they see I do, I'm sick of all of it. I think people are sh!ts. Friends turn on friends instead of working out what's wrong, being compassionate, or seeing through to the pain. People ostracize. My family mobbed me too, scapegoated me. I have no faith left in humanity, even the "Nice" people turn out to be high-horse scum,always loving the opportunity to feel "better" than someone else, holier than thou, "WE'RE okay, but wow she's not!" See ya wouldn't wanna be ya. I don't see the point in cow towing anymore to people of that ilk.

Ever notice how these things are almost always related to suppression of truth? This is why we are targeted, simply because we are truthful.

Which makes me wonder why there aren't more case studies on mobbing-- my experience is that 90% of humanity uses logical thinking about 10% of the time, whilst the other 10% uses it 90% of the time. There seems to be no middle ground.

I would say something very similar, but in place of "logical thinking" I would differentiate between conscious and subconscious thought as representing the primary intelligence of each group.

Basically:

For 90% of humanity, their primary intelligence is controlled subconsciously. (system/identity)

For 10% of humanity, their primary intelligence is controlled by conscious thought. (individual/self)

I really appreciate you sharing your story B19.



This sounds so eerily similar to the way my coworker described herself recently. I don't even know what to call what is happening in my job. It's not mobbing. I have experienced mobbing in other jobs. This is different. It just feels like psychological abuse.

My worst mobbing experience happened online, about 12 years ago. It was in relation to something kind of like whistleblowing. The people who instigated it were out to discredit my friend's research. I can't talk about it. I don't even like to think about it anymore.

Ever notice how these things are almost always related to suppression of truth? This is why we are targeted, simply because we are truthful.

The question for me now is, how do I deal with the long-term effects of going through these things? It really is like psychological murder.

Some comforting graphics: 10 things to remember when things go wrong:

http://thespiritscience.net/2015/08/30/ ... -go-wrong/

I would say something very similar, but in place of "logical thinking" I would differentiate between conscious and subconscious thought as representing the primary intelligence of each group.

Basically:

For 90% of humanity, their primary intelligence is controlled subconsciously. (system/identity)

For 10% of humanity, their primary intelligence is controlled by conscious thought. (individual/self)