Bullies I have met show value of ‘get lost’ fund
Among my more shameful performances as a father was an incident of repeatedly shooting small boys with paintball guns, at close range, while they cowered in a dugout in an old warehouse in Petone.
Nice middle-class men with sons about 10 years old, we’d been persuaded by one dad, who must have been a diagnosable sociopath, that the only way to hold this contest was dads against boys.
Most of us had wanted to stop after the massacre in the first round. Apart from me accidentally shooting another dad in the back of the head, no dads were hit, certainly not by any of the boys. We over-ran their foxhole with ease.
Second time around, there was a bit of: ‘‘Maybe we should even things up a bit? Seems a bit unfair.’’
‘‘No,’’ said alpha dad. We played again. This time the boys just stayed in the foxhole.
Round three wasn’t much fun. Some of the boys were a bit weepy, but somehow we’d agreed to do it again because alpha dad said so. Why? Because we didn’t stand up to a bully.
In corporate life, as everywhere, there are plenty of bullies. The ones we can name have sexually assaulted film stars, are the MP for Botany, or, apparently, the retirement commissioner, Diane Maxwell, a woman I knew as shrewd, engaging and great company for lunch, and who has now been stood down.
The ones we can’t name are the ones we’ve all worked with, the ones who’ve made the lives of groups of fellow workers miserable with their nastiness.
The shouters. The blamers. The mercurial mind-changers who explode when the team gets confused. The loudest. The splits and divisions experts, pitting colleagues against one another.
An earlier draft of this column was rejected for publication back in February. It was a bit too personal.
In this redraft, the temptation was to name and shame a couple of former bosses: brilliant blokes who were vile to work for and got away with it.
The first version suggested the #metoo movement would expand from the bullying that is inherent in sexual assault and sexual harassment to bullies of all stripes.
But this is the toned-down version, containing only my handy hints and suggestions for dealing with bullies, based on a lifetime of bearing the surname ‘‘Smellie’’. ❚ Challenge them bravely. Watch them melt away.
❚ Don’t work for angry people. They specialise in making it all about you.
❚ Don’t become a bully to deal with a bully. Keep your cool. Provocation is what a bully craves. Deny them the satisfaction.
❚ Don’t let your boss let a bully off the hook. Bullies succeed when they assume those around them are cowards. Bosses can be cowards, and the bullies get protected. Just ask boys who went to [insert Catholic monastic order here] schools.
❚ For gig economy workers, where bullying can be a way to refuse an invoice, think about your ‘‘get lost’’ fund: your untouchable nest egg to pay the bills when you need to find something else.
And finally, let’s all start calling it out. We don’t go to work to be belittled, undermined, upset and enraged by the actions of a person who you happen to work with.
Give it a try. You might be pleasantly surprised.