Surviving A Workplace Bully

This blog post is a mixture of a rant and a way of getting it out of me. Storytime on a Monday evening.

On a snowy April morning, I was nervous about my interview. It went well and I was offered the job on the spot. It was an optician's. However, I noticed that Manager R*'s  behaviour changed immediately. He spoke to me in a harsher way. I didn't know what to think of that.

As the weeks and months went by, he started to be antagonistic towards me and blame me for other people's mistakes. I couldn't defend myself because I needed the job.

There was a day when all the frame stock needed to be counted. A certain co-worker was doing that job. He came all the way upstairs, stood on a stool and shouted down at me that I'm upstairs and not helping that co-worker, while they're struggling to get that job done.
I couldn't say anything, tried not to cry and feel like a kid.

I'm sure other things happened, but I can't remember them.

I made mistakes as a newby trying to learn the job. Here is another incident. I was prescreening a px before she went to have her eye test and I showed the results to the optometrist. She saw it and frowned. Then she showed it to him. She said that the decimal point looked like a 1. He turned around on the spot and said,

"You're fired."

The optometrist was shocked. I was rooted to the spot. Then I turned around, pouted at him and returned to my job.

There was a time when I was quite new and I'd made a mistake, can't remember what. I ran upstairs to the loos to cry in a stall, when I passed by the store's overall manager and let the door bang shut behind me instead of holding it open for him.

Later on, I managed to stop crying and went back to work to find that manager talking to Manager R *. Manager R* later on told me that he talked to him about me and my customer care; how bad it was because I let the door shut in his face. Manager R* said that I would be reviewed in 3 months to see if they would keep me on.

That really pissed me off. I think I probably cried in the prescreening area, in the dark. 😂

OK, this is sounding depressing.  😂

Have you come across a workplace bully? Let me know. I'd love to hear your experiences.

*I really needed that support and didn't get it. That experience was awful in more ways than I can describe. It still feels traumatising in a way. That ringtone for the phone back then sends me straight back there. I'm going to name him here and put this behind me. Manager R * is Richard.

I don't expect him to apologise any time soon. 

Wonder Woman
XXX