Bullies thrive because, although they don’t applaud it, those around them don’t deter it, at least not effectively. Telling a bully that what he’s doing is wrong isn’t always going to cut it. Bullies bully because they enjoy watching their victim squirm and cower in fear. It makes them feel powerful and important. Their feeling of empowerment always increases when the person they’re bullying does not fight back (either verbally or physically) and does not complain to higher authority even when given the chance. They bank on the fact that their victim will fear reprisals upon reporting the bully to authorities and, yes, that is exactly what a victim is thinking.
Parents of bullies were recently fined tens of thousands by authorities thereby holding the parents responsible for their child’s unacceptable actions at school. This approach might seem a tad unusual but it’s one of the best that I have ever come across. Most parents will ignore the bullying for one of two reasons. Either they mistake it for just playground play or they’ve tried to tackle their child but have been unsuccessful.
Bullying at school can cause not just mental trauma but in some cases egregious bodily harm, sometimes to the point where the victim loses his life. Now people might think that bullying stops when you leave school. For many that’s the truth but for some it’s anything but. It can happen in a shop by another customer or on public transport by another passenger. Of course, it may not be violent (although it can be); it’s usually verbal (insults, name calling, etc.) It’s hard to control public bullying unless a bystander or Good Samaritan steps in to stop it and there are many videos on social media showing how these bullies are being stopped.
But it’s hard to stop a bully at work. Often the bully might be your boss or a co-worker. Both continue their bullying tactic because no one has stopped them even if it’s acknowledged that he or she is a bully. But sometimes their bullying is often so subtle that their bullying goes over people’s heads and no one ever notices it and, more importantly, doesn’t even class it as bullying. It could be something as simple as making someone’s life at work as complicated as possible. Typical examples include calling them after office hours, asking them to report every detail of a project no matter how absurdly small it is, not including them in important emails, giving them unattainable deadlines and targets or calling them when they’re on their annual leave. It’s hard to handle something like this when it’s your boss, in case you get terminated for standing up to them or you report them to HR. It’s just as hard to report a co-worker because, at the end of the day, you don’t know whose ear they have; it could be your own boss who knows about it but is ignoring it for reasons only he and the bully know about.
But sometimes bullies at work can be nasty, stupid and reckless. Teasing a new teen in a workshop is one thing. They might make jabs about his hair or his love life but imagine doing the unthinkable. One incident involved a teen who needed to get work experience. So he joined a workshop but what did his grown men co-workers do? Apparently, as a prank, they pinned him down and pumped air using a high pressure jet into his body. He fought for his life in hospital until he passed. The men are now facing prison time. I was horrified to read this. I've been bullied at school and, up until the age of around 14, school was a bit of a nightmare for me. The girls were racist and made their feelings very clear to me.
But a weird thing happened around 15 years ago. One of my main bullies contacted me through the old Friends Reunited Site asking to connect. She had become a nurse. I was flabbergasted at her job given that she hoped I’d burn myself in a chemistry class. Do bullies change? I don’t know but this one clearly had?
