It is a fundamental law that even the best offices must have one insufferable bully. Mine is a fifty-eight-year-old woman who dislikes most other women, especially those younger than her. She is fine with me as she thinks of me being this meek, little thing who will roll over. And at first, she is right! But as I get healthier and wiser, I stop putting up with her game. She, therefore, trades her methods of gaslighting and manipulation for some very old-school methods of bullying and harassing: intimidation and blackmail.

Currently, I am refusing to be alone with her and have made it abundantly clear that it has to do with the fact she threatened to fire me over something that was not my fault to try and blackmail me into (again) doing her job for her. It backfired as I already had a resolution, so I immediately sent both the issue and the solution to the owner with a comprehensive, “How did this happen in the first place?”

Basically, I have made it known to her (and to the company’s owner) that we will never be alone with the door closed again nor will I pick up her calls. If she needs something from me that is work-related, she can send an email or mention it in the morning meetings with everyone else present.

Today, though, she sees that I am alone in my office and decides to try once more to offer me “friendship” and “comradery” — aka gaslighting and love-bombing. She starts it by making her presence known by loudly locking and unlocking the main door several times and banging on it in between.

Bully: “Yooooo-hoooo. Anyone here?”

Me: *Sigh* “Hello.”

Bully: “Why are you sitting in the dark?”

I shrug and continue working. The easiest way to get her to leave is to ignore her and not engage. Any form of engagement will result in her thinking she has a free pass to continue.

Bully: “I have been meaning to talk to you about something. It is work-related.”

Me: “Okay. Let’s bring it up in the morning meeting in an hour. I am busy right now.”

Bully: “I—” 

She pauses and looks over my shoulder at something. The parking lot is in that direction, so I know why she turns white as a sheet.

Bully: “Is— Is [Owner] here?”

I look around the dimly lit office, knowing she knows what his car looks like.

Me: “Well, obviously, no.”

Bully: “I got to go.”

She TORE it out the door to go upstairs where her office was located. Turns out, she’d thought [Owner] was already here and in his office, and therefore, she thought she could corner me while he wasn’t paying attention. She’d seen [Owner] pulling into the parking lot through my window and panicked.

She never did bring up what her “work-related” issue was in the morning meeting. It was probably another grand speech about how “us gals” got to stick together against “those boys” (and other women). Barf.

My mother is a Vice President for Human Resources of a company that employs over 5,000 employees. She has seen it all in her thirty-plus years of service. In comparison, I am a twenty-six-year-old female engineer straight out of college and at my first job — a startup, no less.

It is not a stretch to say I am not the least professional person in the office and sometimes, depending on who is employed, I am certainly the MOST mature person in the office. However, I also have the added benefit of being able to run things by my mom. She is wonderful as she is the first person to tell me when I am being irrational, out-of-line, or unprofessional. My bosses, on the other hand, are in their late fifties and mid-sixties, respectively, and there is no Human Resources to run things by for them.

The Vice President of Sales And Marketing is a real treat — abusive, domineering, cruel, vindictive, and unethical. She is the true package and everything you should aspire to be… if you aspire to be a Vito Corleone wanna-be of small businesses, that is. It is safe to say that I really dislike her. I cannot say anything nice about her, professionally or personally. There is just nothing decent about her as a person.

After four and a half years of abuse, I finally decide to file an official complaint about her. This thing is a glorious twelve-page document with examples of her expecting me to embezzle from the company for her (and as a result, her stealing from me), buying a personal laptop with company funds, threatening to withhold paychecks, sexual harassment claims, violating ADA laws, and even direct quotes of her disparaging the owner’s wife. It is a masterpiece.

After I write it up, I have my mother check the language.

Mom: “So… I love about 95% of it.”

Me: “Let me guess what the 5% is. I knew you would have an issue with that bit.”

Mom: “I know she is ‘a bad manager, poor salesperson, unprofessional coworker, unethical employee, and an overall all-around horrible person,’ but you cannot say, ‘overall all-around horrible person’. In court, it comes off as inflammatory and like you are trying to escalate rather than deescalate the situation and find a solution.”

Me: “Do you have any recommendations?”

Mom: *Pauses* “Well… no. It is pretty on the nose, actually. I cannot think of a better, more truthful way to describe her.”

We went with “really not a nice person,” instead. At least the document speaks for itself.

Growing up, I was often subjected to violent backlash for not picking my words carefully or if an adult in my life did not understand what I was saying. It was rarely physical, and it wasn’t my parents or my maternal grandparents who abused me. It was just that my dad’s side of the family did not know how to talk to children, and very bright children at that. And I was extremely bright.

As a result, I learned to pick my words carefully. I also did not argue when they tried to blame me for what their spawn did. It didn’t do any good, anyway. Fools are very fortunate that I suffer them lightly.

I go to a doctor’s office whose staffing is a mess. It doesn’t matter when they schedule me, and it doesn’t matter how accomodating I am; they will call to reschedule and then blame me for picking “whatever time works best”.

The Friday before a Monday appointment, they call to reschedule. I miss the call because I am in a meeting but call them back immediately. I am sent to voicemail, so I tell them I am happy to change the time and to call me back.

Monday rolls in and I haven’t received a call, so I call back in the early morning… and later that morning… and in the afternoon. My appointment is at 4:30 pm, so I decide to show up and see what happens. I arrive at 3:15 pm, one of the suggested times.

Me: “Hi. My name is [Full Name]. My appointment was at 4:30 pm. I got a call Friday to reschedule. I tried multiple times to call back but I haven’t heard anything.”

Receptionist: *Nonchalantly* “Yeah, the recruiters aren’t in, and I have been here the entire time. In the future, if you want a 4:30 pm slot, you are going to have to schedule it for Wednesdays.”

I had to bite my tongue hard for once in my life. At least they took me.

I work in a call center for a pretty big grocery chain. While my department is online shopping, we occasionally get a call from an in-store-related issue. A lady calls in.

Caller: *In an uproar* “I was in one of your stores and you are selling endangered animals!”

Me: *Confused* “Can I get the name of the product?”

She goes on and on about endangered wildlife and how could we do this to the environment and she’ll never shop with us again because of this. As a huge believer in wildlife conservation, I’m getting more and more confused. The most I can think of is a kind of seafood.

Finally, I get the name of the product in question.

Caller: “Pork lion!”

I even have her spell it out since she said she is still in the store, and she is “staring right at the sign.”

Caller: “L-O-I-N, lion!”

As soon as I told her that the product in question was not “lion” but “loin,” she quickly hung up.

I work at a small hotel. The hotel has a pool that is fenced in and the two gates to it are locked when it closes at 10:00 pm. The fence and gates are about six feet tall. I am working the audit shift and get a call at around 1:00 am from a room.

Guest: “There is a lot of noise coming from the pool area.”

I walk from the lobby building to the pool area and see four people — two men and two women — in the pool. I stand just outside the pool area.

Me: “The pool is closed and you need to leave.”

Pool Guests: “We had no idea that it wasn’t open.”

I reiterate that they need to leave the pool. They try to stall, claiming that they need some time to grab their stuff. They also ask me to unlock the gates. I am still not sure why, but I decide to be petty.

Me: “If you can get in with the gates locked, then you can get out with them locked. You have ten minutes to vacate the pool, and if you don’t, then I will be calling the police.”

I walk back to the lobby building and check to make sure everything is still okay there and do a few minor tasks. About fifteen minutes later, I walk back to the pool area, and they are still there, in the pool, making no attempts to leave.

Me: “I will be calling the police now.”

They ignore me and make no moves toward leaving. I call the police and go back to the lobby building. Two minutes later, an officer arrives and confirms what is going on with me before heading to the pool area.

About six minutes later, he returns to the lobby.

Officer: “The pool is now empty, but I went to their two rooms and informed them that if they are caught in the pool or cause any other issues for you, I’ll be back to arrest them. The couple in the first room apologized and promised they’d behave. The second room was a different story.”

Me: “How so?”

Officer: “This man in the second room stood dripping wet at the door and insisted that they had never been in the pool and they were wet because they had just taken a shower. I asked if he always showered with his clothes on and he said he forgot to take them off. Then I told the man that I’d followed his wet footprints to his room. Then he told me the footprints belonged to someone else! I told him to just go to sleep and stay out of trouble.”

I documented all of that in our logbook and made notes in their folios. The rest of the night was blissfully quiet.