Part 4 - Bullying, discrimination and harassment - the initial complaint

Dignity and respect in the workplace is a WHS right

I’m really struggling but I push on with sharing the initial complaint:

18. A year and a half into this new restructure, I continued to suffer from stress, fatigue and impaired cognitive functioning due to workplace difficulties. The manager continued to undermine and criticise me unfairly during weekly meetings on Fridays. 

19. Here is an example of what happened in one of those dreaded weekly meetings. The manager called me “self-absorbed”, again, which she had repeated over the course of many months. I was given no valid reason for why she kept saying this. I was miserable and severely exhausted and overworked, expecting to be things beyond my job description and what was unethical intrusion in the personal matters of my team. 

In this meeting, my frustration reached the upper limits. I replied “no I’m not”. But she continued to repeat this term, while I became a broken record right back with “no, I’m not.” I reached the point of using my firm teacher trained voice, raised in the way teachers do to manage a classroom of primary school kids, and I said, yet again, “no, I’m not.” As soon as she provoked me to this point, and I found myself having to raise my voice, the manager switched on that martyr complex, with the victim voice, “don’t yell at me.” I was not yelling. But I was pushed in such horrendous emotional torture, I finally said, “That’s it! Take the job back! Management isn’t for everyone. It’s not worth the money!” She now responded in the faux empathy tone, words to the effect of, “You really didn’t like this role, did you?” Gaslighting! The job was fine. Dealing with her emotionally abusive behaviour was not fine. I was stunned with this psychological manipulation. Her conduct in this meeting really distressed me. 

I felt unsupported and demoralised. I attempted healthy boundaries to protect myself, and now I was accused of being “self-absorbed”. I supported staff as much as I could, but it was in the best interest of staff to take the time off when they needed to seek professional support, if that’s what was meant by such a derogatory label (however I had no say in granting leave to my team when they needed it - predictably, the manager denied she was a micromanager when I raised this, the day before I finally snapped). What the manager was doing was not care. It was an intrusion and a violation of boundaries. It was harassment. Personal information that may be divulged was then at risk of being used in gossip and malicious rumours. It was bullying, discrimination and harassment. It was a serious breach of staff privacy. That was not going to become my way of “managing”. But I paid the price for being ethical. 

I wanted to acknowledge, support and encourage staff. I was tired of listening to complaints that would only be avoided if I could read the manager’s mind. When I was pushed so much that I stepped down, a manager on another campus commented to my manager that the reason why I must have done so is because of unmanageable staff on my team. She was correct regarding the individual bullying me up, but what this campus manager speculated, was not the real reason I stepped down. Predictably, though, I was accused of having spoken to this truly lovely manager, by my manager. No, I hadn’t. People had their own experiences, frustrations and traumas. The unmanageable and poor conduct was not only toward me. However, it did raise an important question. Who did I have, in the end, to confidentially vent my frustrations and concerns, when this manager chose never to let me speak? Who was ethical, when gossip, any tidbit, would circulate, with embellishments of more false rumours? This exacerbated the toxic environment. It was a great cause of the PSYCHOSOCIAL HAZARDS NEVER MANAGED. People’s lives and personal traumas are not entertainment. Gossip is bullying. It’s emotional abuse.

20. An Expression Of Interest (‘EOI’) to be seconded to my SLC position was emailed to all Senior Librarians, but nobody applied for my role. I wonder why.

21. This is traumatic for me to share, but I must, given my own personal experience and the serious misconduct, ongoing emotional abuse and gaslighting from the manager. A student attempted self-harm in our building. The first aid officers in our unit were called, and once the incident was identified as an emergency, the ambulance was called. They had notified the manager, as was the protocol. How could she expect me to know, like a mind reader, what happened? The first report that was communicated was a fall in the stairway, with perhaps a physical injury. The information was fragmented. We had never experienced an incident like this before. 

The trauma for me was being excluded, by this manager, from the debrief. That was an important part of the process, to understand exactly what happened, how the first aid officers felt, as one was from my team, and to reflect and think about what we needed to put in place to improve the response, what worked etc. I was excluded from all of this and yet I was expected to just know what happened and how the staff felt. I can’t begin to describe how this manager made me feel. However, when I asked her why I wasn’t part of the debrief, the predictable defensive abrupt response silenced me. She had already distressed me. How dare she, when I was NOT directly informed. WAS SHE COMPLETELY OBLIVIOUS TO THE FACT THAT I HAD PERSONALLY EXPERIENCED A SUICIDE IN MY FAMILY AND THAT SUICIDE PREVENTION WAS A CAUSE DEAR TO MY HEART? 

I had a lack of information, resources and support and I’m supposed to be brilliant at management from the first day. I was set up to fail. It was important for me to attend the debrief to understand what had occurred, and how the incident was managed. I was shaken up by the defensive and abrupt attitude, again, along with a failure to provide me with a reason why I had been excluded. Impossible not only to communicate with such personality types, but to work with them. IMPOSSIBLE. But I had to tolerate it, despite the serious toll it had taken on my health, because the organisational culture had deteriorated, a lot. 

22. Here is another example of being expected to be a mind reader, and yet again, having my authority undermined and criticised unfairly. Marketing had organsied a photo shoot. I had previous frustrations with this unit. I’d given feedback at the previous photo shoot regarding how disorganised the project was, causing inconvenience to staff and students. Those frustrations were directed at our unit. I diplomatically corresponded with students who felt “hilariously frustrated”, to quote one description I’ve never forgotten, at the constant emails from marketing, correcting errors in dates and times of certain photo shoots. It didn’t seem as though my feedback had been taken into account. 

The new photo shoot, was, again, disorganised. When the marketing team showed up, it wasn’t at the agreed time. The SL they had been communicating with wasn’t there and I didn’t know what had been arranged. Had they communicated with me, I would have directed them to the collaborative floor and not the independent quiet study floor, where they went that early morning, without my knowledge. One student on that level sent an email to the service desk, complaining that they were trying to study and annoyed at the sudden noise and flashing of lights and cameras. From my point of view, credit to the student for this evidence in writing. I thought this was a good thing. After handling the situation, I sent all correspondence to the manager, who arrived later, evidence that was useful to send on to marketing. But according to her, I should have spoken with the marketing team (actually she expected me to chase after them out the door as they were leaving, let’s talk seriously unprofessional expectations and ridiculous criticisms). I thought I handled the situation well considering I did try numerous times to communicate with marketing in the past. I was humiliated and demeaned anyway, because it wasn’t this manager’s “way”. But there was no point in raising this privately given the pattern of defensive retaliation that added to my stress. I had been repeatedly humiliated over trivial issues like this.

23. Close to the end of  2018, I met with the manager, yet again. Sadly, the newly appointed executive, whom this manager directly reported to, was not fit to do the inherent requirements of her job. They teamed up together. These meetings felt creepy to me. This is too traumatic to relive, but I must write something about it, in a separate post. It is bullying, discrimination and harassment at its worst. Or so I thought, until senior executives joined in the sadistic persecution. Zero tolerance as per policies and what’s conveyed to the community or WHS reckless and wilful misconduct to cause harm? 

24. That same month, I needed to take a day of leave to care for a family member. One day carer’s leave turned into another distressing nightmare. My priority and duty of care was to myself and my family’s health and wellbeing. That’s also in policies like WHS, Discrimination and Harassment, and work-life balance. I had the same leave entitlements these perpetrators of discrimination and harassment did, and I was not going to put my family’s wellbeing and health at risk. Several of us had to tolerate this serious misconduct, even at such times. I notified that manager that I needed to take a day of carer’s leave. ONE DAY.

The insensitive attitude went into full swing again. This blog is focused on the serious misconduct and breaches of multiple laws, including privacy, from managers, executives and senior executives within an organisation, with a mission that includes a “commitment to the dignity of the human person.” I was distressed by the pressure to return to the workplace, even for that afternoon, while I had a duty of care to my family.

I would also be reminded about my obligation to the university. This was not only unethical, but a serious lack of duty of care, risking the safety and wellbeing not only of her staff, but their families too. I was extremely angry. I had to speak with a doctor and there was no set time for this. That manager wanted “updates”. It’s privacy violation and harassment! 

I was expected to race to one of those creepy meetings with her new recruit in malicious gossip and privacy violations (see point 23) that afternoon, putting my health and safety at risk too. A meeting that could be postponed. Meetings that should not have been happening at all. I wouldn’t have been in a good state either. The intrusion and relentless harassment, causing another day of distress, was also felt by my family. Then I’d be labeled as “ill” by this manager. Can the reader identify the gaslighting pattern? 

25. Late January 2019, as soon as the manager returned after annual leave, the criticism began. As I said, it was relentless. I had arranged a meeting to update the manager on work-related projects and tasks. I couldn’t speak about these items because the manager dived into vague criticism straight away. The manager was the one who requested that I delegate a task to an assistant that was not part of my team, but had requested to assist with projects as part of her learning. I was thrilled with this. 

Yet again, I left this meeting emotionally exhausted and demoralised. From the moment she got back to work in a new year! She never explained to me what her vague criticism of “content creation” meant. That was subject to interpretation. Typing a sentence on a blank Word document is content creation! I told her that this project was simple and it involved using a program (ie. Word) that the assistant was already familiar with and used. She was a high achieving university graduate for goodness sake’s. 

26. Early February 2019, a second EOI was emailed to SLs, for a secondment to my SLC position. Again, nobody applied. Readers, would you apply, if you had personally experienced this treatment or were witnessing this behaviour? 

27. In February 2019, now two years into the restructure, I was medicated for high blood pressure and cholesterol. The dose for high blood pressure would be further increased later. But the senior executives in HR and WHS were employed cause a risk of heart attack or stroke, rather than actually conduct a risk assessment, comply with policies and WHS regulations. They don’t even attempt to manage psychosocial hazards. They became the biggest cause of this hazard. 

Writing this post has been traumatic and I still haven’t finished. Final part to come.

Xu, T., Magnusson Hanson, L.L., Lange, T., Starkopf, L., Westerlund, H., Madsen, I.E.H, et. al. (2019). ‘Workplace bullying and workplace violence as risk factors for cardiovascular disease: a multi-cohort study.’ European Heart Journal. 40(14). 1124–1134. Online : https://doi.org/10.1093/eurheartj/ehy683