The Bully Next Door

Posted by: Cathy Arnst on March 25

My big break as a journalist came when I got a job as a junior reporter with Reuters News Service in New York. The Big Time! The Big Apple! The Show! I couldn’t be more green, or scared. I was on the financial desk, where the pace was fast and furious, and many of the staffers were slightly crazy. OK, many of them were actually mad as hatters. One of the maddest was my editor, a heavy drinker with a fierce temper, especially when he had been drinking, which was often (fellow Reuterites from those days will know exactly who I mean). Whenever I made a mistake—and in the beginning I made many, many mistakes—he would stand over me in the open newsroom and scream at me, impugning my intelligence and professional skills in language I’ve rarely heard since. I had nightmares about those tirades for years afterwards. Needless to say, I never made the same mistake twice.

I thought of that editor while reading an article in today’s New York Times, When The Bully Sits In the Next Cubicle. I expected to read of similar towers of rage, but it seems most workplace bullies are more subtle.

An eye roll, a glare, a dismissive snort — these are the tactics of the workplace bully. They don’t sound like much, but that’s why they are so insidious. How do you complain to human resources that your boss is picking on you?…Unlike the playground bully, who often resorts to physical threats, the work bully sets out on a course of constant but subtle harassment. It may start with a belittling comment at a staff meeting. Later it becomes gossip to co-workers and forgetting to invite someone to an important work event. If the bully is a supervisor, victims may be stripped of critical duties, then accused of not doing their job.

That certainly sounds familiar, am I right? The Times story cites a Zogby survey from last year that found that 37% of Americans say they have experienced bullying on the job. The problem is so common that there is even a Workplace Bullying Institute established to lobby state legislatures for anti-bullying laws that would place such behavior in the same category as racial and sexual harrassment.

Office bullying has gotten bad enough to propel onto the best-seller list a book with the frank title The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't. It's by Bob Sutton, co-director of the Center for Work, Technology and Organization at Stanford University. His website is well-worth visiting, just for the "15 things I believe" (my favorite is No. 8). Also check out his entries at The Huffington Post.

Sutton's argument is that bullies are bad for business, and I agree, although I think it is part of a larger problem. Companies that tolerate bullies either don't care about morale or are blind to the problem. There are likely lots of issues besides bullies. But his thesis did make me wonder if sometimes any one of us can act like a jerk at the office (not to mention at home). If you want to know how bad your own behavior might be, take Sutton's Asshole Rating Self Exam (ARSE, of course).

There's a part of me that thinks bullies have been a part of life from time immemorial and we'd be better off ignoring them or fighting back, rather than trying to legislate them out of existence. I'm basically of the school that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. After all, I ended up liking my crazy Reuters boss. He was a great editor, and when he wasn't mad he was pretty funny. I eventually earned his respect, and he became one of my biggest supporters.

Then again, earlier this week the Times ran a story heartbreakingly titled A Boy the Bullies Like to Beat Up, Repeatedly. It's about a 16-year-old in Arkansas who has been unceasingly harassed by a group of boys for the past four years, and the school has done little about it. His parents have finally resorted to suing the boys responsible. Boys like that, and the mean girls that are their counterparts, may one day grow up to make someone's cubicle life equally miserable. Maybe it's time to stop the madness and make it clear that bullying is simply not acceptable any more. Any thoughts on how?

Update: The Times is running some thoughtful letters to the editor in response to the story about the boy in Arkansas that is the object of so much bullying, and it reminds me again that bullying should be stopped, not tolerated. And that if any of us suspects our child of being a bully, we owe it to the world to take action, and make the world just a little bit nicer.

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