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Chances are,
when you hear the word “bully,” a certain image comes to
mind.
Perhaps you
remember your own or a classmate’s encounter with a
bigger kid who ruled with a meaty fist, taking smaller
kids’ lunch money or beating up kids after school. But
many of us women remember other school bullies, too. You
know the ones: The “queen bees” may have been few, but
they double-majored in popularity and snide putdowns of
those not in the "in" crowd, and they did their best to
manipulate situations behind the scenes and socially
isolate their targets. They were immortalized in such
popular films as Heathers and Mean Girls.
But high
school was a long time ago. That kind of behavior was
shed at graduation. Right?
Not according
to the U.S. Workplace Bullying Survey. In September
2007, Zogby International interviewed a sample of more
than 7,000 adults and found that 37 percent of workers in the
United States (54 million people) have experienced
bullying on the job, in a wide variety of workplaces.
Those affected, when witnesses are included, make up 49
percent (71.5 million), basically half the employees in
the United States.
So what is
workplace bullying? It’s not simple incivility or
rudeness, according to Gary and Ruth Namie, authors of
The Bully at Work: What
You Can Do to Stop the Hurt and Reclaim Your Dignity on
the Job. Here’s their definition:
“Bullying at
work is the repeated, malicious verbal mistreatment of a
Target (the recipient) by a harassing bully (the
perpetrator) that is driven by a bully’s desire to
control the Target. That control is typically a mixture
of cruel acts of deliberate humiliation or interference
and the withholding of resources and support preventing
the Target from succeeding at work. . . . Remarkably the
organization’s resources are predictably marshaled in
support of the bully instead of the wronged Target. . .
. Unchecked [this] quickly escalates into a hostile,
poisoned workplace where everyone suffers.” (The Bully
at Work, pp. 3-4)
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