ABOUT-ABC

Hi,
My name is ABC, which stands for AntiBullyingCrusador. It is my mission to educate people in the United States about “work place bullying and mobbing.” I live in the United States where the phenomena of “work place bullying and mobbing” is little known, which is surprising, since it affects 70% of working Americans at some time in their career.

I consider myself to be an Internet Anti-bullying activist. I go by the alias “ABC” for short, or “AntiBullyingCrusador”. I know the correct spelling is “crusader” but I spell it “crusador” to indicate that it’s a name, as opposed to a thing.

There are several types of workplace bullies. The most common type of bully is a “serial bully”, which I have the most personal experience with. A “serial workplace bully boss” is when a manager repeatedly begins a campaign of emotional abuse against a subordinate until that “target” is eliminated from the work group. Then, the bully chooses another target within two weeks. This type of bully focuses their bullying efforts on one target at a time. The abuse begins slowly, surprisingly, often after a period of time in which the bully actually seems to favor the subordinate over others in the work group. The abuse consists of things such as trivial faultfinding, allegations of errors, and complaints about character flaws or appearance. The bully delivers these emotional assaults out of view of others, subtlety or in ways that most people would not take offense to if delivered in a joking way.

Targets often become depressed, anxious, hypervigilant and/or experience PTSD. Some targets never recover from their emotional injuries. There is an 80% chance that once chosen as a target, that the target will be forced out of their job within two years. There is little legal recourse and it is often impossible for targets to get others to believe the abuse is actually occurring in the first place.

Bullies then point out to coworkers the emotional changes in the target brought out by the emotional abuse. This is an “emotional injury.” Together with twisted stories and half-truths about the target by the bully, coworkers tend to back away from the target and sometimes unwittingly participate in the abuse. This is called “mobbing.”

Bullies are compelled to behave this way because of physical or emotional mental disorders. Some bullies have personality disorders, which are abnormal physical differences in their brains when compared to a normal brain. These physical abnormalities rob them of their empathy and their ability to think in ways that most of us do. Other bullies had harsh childhoods leaving them with feelings of inadequacy and shame. A subordinate’s good work performance will gain the attention of a bully who has fears that their own inadequacies will become more evident to others by the bases of comparison.

Knowing about workplace bullying and mobbing is knowing that the expense related to the time and effort bullies, their mob, and their targets spend on the activities of workplace bullying and mobbing, together with the expense of replacing good employees who were forced out of their jobs, is likely the largest, hidden expense in business today.

I didn’t choose this mission of fighting workplace bullying and mobbing. I would have been perfectly happy if I had gone through my career never having experienced or observed the behaviors of those we refer to as “work place bullies” and those who support them, their behaviors referred to as “mobbing”. But, since I was chosen as a workplace target more than once, and observed the devastating effects on others that were also chosen as targets, it has become a moral obligation to do all that I can do to stop this terrible evil in our work places. I have always agreed with the statement that if you don’t try to stop something that is wrong, than you are a part of it. It’s not as simple as just walking away, at least not for me.

I have known my bully boss for over 20 years and have worked with the coworkers who support her for several years. I have developed a fondness for my bully boss and her supporters based on the length of our relationships alone, as well as for their many positive attributes. My bully boss is 62 years old and can retire at anytime. She has stopped bullying me and a coworker in recent months. Although I don’t doubt that she is capable of crushing me like a bug, at any time, if she could, I, being of a different nature, would never do anything to destroy her career this late in her game, unless I absolutely had no other moral choice, that being reason to believe, that she again resumed bullying behaviors.

My real name, My bully’s name and my employer’s, and where we reside, can be Any Name, Any City, USA…it could be yours. It is not my intention to expose my bully boss, her supporters whom I refer to as “little mobsters” in my blogs, nor my employer, and the Human Resource Department that represents my employer. They are all unwittingly entangled in the phenomenon of workplace bullying and mobbing. Whether it be a coworker who turned into one of my bully’s “little mobsters” or a Human Resource Rep. who fails to acknowledge the existence of classic bullying and mobbing, they are all playing their roles, almost exactly as predicted on bullying and mobbing articles on the Internet. It’s all very predictable. My “true stories” are true from my perspective, a target of workplace bullying and mobbing. It all sounds unbelievable I’m sure, but that’s what workplace bullying and mobbing is, Unbelievable! There are millions of people just like me, with incredibly similar stories.

Getting the word out about workplace bullying and mobbing is an important public health message, literally saving the lives and emotional and physical health of unknown numbers of targets. This is my only motive, reaching out to those targets whose health and lives are threatened by their lack of understanding of this little understood phenomenon.

It’s my hope that someday, all working Americans will have a thorough knowledge and understanding of the phenomenon of workplace bullying and mobbing. Let’s recognize it, name it and end workplace bullying and mobbing together!

Who knows, the serial bully’s next target may be you!

ABC-AntiBullyingCrusador

Author’s Bio

I am a Registered Nurse, licensed in the state of Connecticut. I have recognized, repetitively, in my 30-year career, something I previously called “leading by intimidation.” I realized that some managers used identical emotionally abusive tactics against their subordinates. I then came across information on the Internet about the phenomenon called “work place bullying and mobbing”, which describes in detail exactly what I have been observing. I finally found the answers I had been searching for, which was why my supervisor, then my coworkers, began and continue to emotionally abuse me. Bullies think in ways and have the ability to manipulate the thinking of others in ways that are inconceivable to me which lead to an almost obsessive desire to fully understand their ways of thinking and manipulating others. I learned that most people in my state of Connecticut in the United States, have never even heard of the phenomenon. This, being an unheard of concept in this country, my expertise is based on the study of hundreds of Internet articles on the subject, and related topics, reading thousands of target testimonies and interacting with other targets in person, and through Internet support forums, weblogs, and email. I am also one of the first members of Connecticut BullyBusters, which is an affiliate of The Workplace Bullying Institute, in Bellingham, Washington, USA.