Bullying in the workplace and leaving job because of it.

TK Lemon

My OH is male, 27 and he believes he is being bullied by a female coworker in early 40's.


When he started in his role he was trained by this woman to “take readings” from certain instruments and enter them into Excel sheets. He was trained by her to round up the numers (the numbers would be displayed to two decimal places ending in either 0 or 5. For example, 15.55 or 15.50, 16.45 or 16.40 etc. He needed to report these numbers in an excel sheet and the numbers should always be in triplicate and have a RSD of <=0.2%. Since he was errnoeously told to round up, his RSD was always out and he was unnecessarily creating reports for non-conformances. It only recently transpired what he was doing was wrong, she is now denying down to the ground that she trained him that way (he has no proof but he swears by his life and has notes taken in his notebook from peer training that that's what he should do). It's now looking bad on him.

Just before Christmas he overheard the same woman saying to their manager that he is falsifying data. He overheard this conversation and was waiting for his manager to approach him but since his manager never approached him he just kept quiet about it and pretended it never happened.

Before Christmas as well, my OH pulled out his phone in work to check a text he got (it was for a medical appt). You're not supposed to have your phone out in work, he admits that but his coworker tried to confront him on it. She also said she had a stopwatch and “timed him for 45 minutes” doing nothing and that she'll be reporting him. During this time he wasn't doing nothing, he was compiling spreadsheet templates for other data analysis.

After being criticised and belittled he was feeling very underpressured about this. Only last week, he got a new coworker to confirm his instrument readings when inputting them into the spreadsheets (the other coworker has to “electronically sign them” to verify that they are not being falsified. The coworker bullying him asked me “who verified them?” My coworker replied “Amy did” (A South African girl he gets on very well with), she then snorted, sure she can't verify it, she's not trained (she is thgough). My partner interjected “those readings are legitimate”, the bully replied “Yeah, sure thy are, Amy, don't verify any of his readings again, you're not qualified, he has to ask me”.

My OH never niped it in the bud early enough and his coworker is gone to his manager with lies about him and it looks like (to the manager) that my partner is the incompetent one. Does anyone have any advice on this?

If he isn't granted a request to move to another department away form her, he may want to leave because of the bullying from her.

Would changing jobs look bad?

His career history is as follows:

Mid April 2014 to Mid March 2016 he got his first graduate position, commute was 100 km so was not viable long term, pay was poor too. He loved his coworkers and job and still talks to people from there.

Mid March 2016 to Mid October 2017 he worked in another similar role close to home where it was very repetitive and no scope for promotion or variety in tasks, again, a good evironment and job.

Mid October 2017 to Mid October 2018 he worked in a one year fixed term contract, this was clarly stated as being one year with no scope for renewal of contract. He took this for the year and worked there, it was an interesting role and he loved his cowworkers and still keeps in touch with one or two.

He was been in his current job since mid October 2018. If he changed now would it look bad? He is still on entry level (he never made much progress career wise as he doesn't chase that type of thing). He never had a senior role if that makes a difference. He is 27 btw.



Sorry for long post and thanks for reading.

Andrew00

Tell her to f*ck off

_Brian

Report the bullying.

It’s
Likely he’s not the first individual she has done this to amd hopefully someone else has complained hflefore.

Either way I would complain, even if nothing comes of it the next complaint against her will be taken much more seriously.

Larbre34

Co-worker? This woman has no official or unofficial supervisory capacity over your chap?

Give her the serious shade right back. Tell her to mind her own work and let him worry about his.

On the CV, i genuinely wouldnt be concerned about the regular job changes. 1 year contracts are common and the market is such that cutthroat head hunting and salary bargaining are the reality in many technical fields.

banoffe2

That's a tough one OP. it goes on in a lot of places, very subtle, give him all the encouragement and support, he has done noting wrong, taking a stand and reporting to HR looks like the obvious solution, unfortunately the person who is causing the trouble may be well in with HR, you just never know, one could be speculating forever i.e. was she pulled up about his performance regarding rounding up and down the figures, and using him as the scapegoat to shift responsibility from herself, If he can stay strong and keep busy and keep focusing on himself for the time being, also if they say something, he could pause and look them in the eye and ask " what would you like me to do with it?? Tell hims to stay professional and confident as they will play on the slightest hint of vulnerability, It would be great if it could be resolved without making a big thing out of it, and it would also help him in the future, the very best of luck, hope it all works out, he has a great track record

Diziet

Please get it out of your head that changing jobs looks bad. It does not - you may need to have a good reason prepared (I wanted more challenge, and this job I am applying for with you looks like an excellent fit and I did not want to miss the opportunity, something like that).

In the current job, stay professional, keep notes of every incident in detail: time, place, witnesses, and what happened. Keep the notes in a notebook and don't ever leave it lying around at work. Focus on doing a good job in the meantime and don't be afraid to raise a complaint if necessary.

These things happen. Hard to nip in the bud as you don't know when it starts that it will get worse. We are in a period of full employment, he is hardly trapped.
Best of luck.

Berserker

I wouldn't be overly concerned about changing jobs. People change their jobs more frequently these days. I'd have a quiet word with her manager if I was your OH or HR, if possible. Timing his inactivity is downright bizarre. What was she doing for that period of time. Watching him "doing nothing" I presume? She wasn't doing her job, that's for sure.

TK Lemon

Hi everyone thanks for the replies.

Just for clarity, names were obviously changed.

His manager pulled him aside today and asked him is he "having issues with Rachel". He said he was and asked his manager how she knows. She just replied with "I have my sources and I know more than you think". She said this as she was smiling.

He spoke about how he was spoken to by Rachel his coworker about "doing nothing and timed on a stopwatch dossing", how Rachel undermined Amy. And how Rachel was undermining my OH's work. She said to report any more such incidents immediately.

My OH said to his manager that it would be his word against her's if he wanted to pursue it further. His manager agreed. She said she'll put Rachel in another department and do the same with my OH when the new starts and a few graduates come in on Monday just to make it look like a "shake up" of staff. That way everyone is happy and there will be no confrontation.

Hopefully it'll be an end to this from now on.

Wanderer2010

TK Lemon wrote: »

Hi everyone thanks for the replies.

Just for clarity, names were obviously changed.

His manager pulled him aside today and asked him is he "having issues with Rachel". He said he was and asked his manager how she knows. She just replied with "I have my sources and I know more than you think". She said this as she was smiling.

He spoke about how he was spoken to by Rachel his coworker about "doing nothing and timed on a stopwatch dossing", how Rachel undermined Amy. And how Rachel was undermining my OH's work. She said to report any more such incidents immediately.

My OH said to his manager that it would be his word against her's if he wanted to pursue it further. His manager agreed. She said she'll put Rachel in another department and do the same with my OH when the new starts and a few graduates come in on Monday just to make it look like a "shake up" of staff. That way everyone is happy and there will be no confrontation.

Hopefully it'll be an end to this from now on.

Managing Rachel out of the business would be a much better resolution to this issue in my view.
So many bosses and managers post on these threads about it being really hard to fire someone and being scared of legal repercussions etc but plenty of them have no problem "managing someone out" of the company, which seems to be the only correct way of handling this wagon.

Berserker

Wanderer2010 wrote: »

Managing Rachel out of the business would be a much better resolution to this issue in my view.
So many bosses and managers post on these threads about it being really hard to fire someone and being scared of legal repercussions etc but plenty of them have no problem "managing someone out" of the company, which seems to be the only correct way of handling this wagon.

Managing the difficult employee out of the company wouldn't be easy. Difficult employees will find ways of staying in their role to the bitter end. You'll probably cause friction trying to get rid of them, risk legal action and lose a few good employees who'll get fed up with it all messing that is going on. Relocating staff is far easier.

Diziet

Managing the difficult employee as part of the team and dealing with their behaviour is much better all round, but glad the situation is getting resolved for the OP.