Her Coworker Accused Her Of Bullying, But She Knew Exactly How To Protect Her Job

Ashley Ashbee

5 months ago

Pexels/Reddit

Some people throw accusations around to try to get back at a colleague they don’t like. High school stuff.

See how this person made sure this one wouldn’t get away with it.

Boss accused me of bullying so I requested punishment

Years ago I worked in a semi-public sector job as part of a successful team helping make life easy for local businesses. Our team boss took a good job in the private sector and a new boss was recruited from a decent organization similar to ours in a different part of the country. She worked compressed hours Monday-Thursday and was off on Fridays.

A month or two in, and although the new boss was quite particular about things being done her way and had upset a couple of my colleagues by criticizing their work, I’d had no problems with her.

But peace was a thing of the past.

We had a team meeting where the boss said that our performance wasn’t good enough (we were arguably the best in the country) and that she wanted to be more involved in what and how we did everything to ensure better quality and so we should copy her to every client email so she could comment as needed before we sent another reply.

Although this seemed inefficient, nobody argued and I just asked her if I should wait until Monday for her to comment on any client emails received on a Friday. I can’t remember exactly what she said, but at the end of the meeting she asked me to stay behind.

Then she told me in a heated tone that my question was “bullying behaviour,” that it was “unprofessional” to ask the question in front of the team, and said that my actions were the sort of thing that HR would see as grounds for dismissal and that I should be “very careful” in future.

So she got to work protecting her career and reputation.

I told her I understood and we returned to our desks where I wrote up every single detail of the entire meeting and interaction and sent it to the Head of HR with the explanation that as bullying was very serious and may not be reported by the victim, I felt duty-bound to report myself.

I also laid it on pretty thick about being appalled by my unprofessional behaviour and the fact that my career was likely at risk and I clearly had a desperate need for training and discipline to fix my dangerous ways. I also copied in my union rep.

Within a day me, my union rep, and my boss were with the Head of HR who, being a ‘by-the-book’ professional, could find no indication of bullying or justification for my fears of being an unprofessional bully in need of re-education. I was asked to leave the meeting.

My union rep stayed in and I don’t know what was said but within 6 weeks my boss was gone and that same week my (weak and ineffective but likeable) big boss called me in to thank me as he had wanted to get rid of her but hadn’t known how.

Here is what people are saying.

Yes. She sounds insufferable.