Opinion
Is workplace abuse more prevalent than I realised?
Jonathan Rivett
Careers contributorI’m lucky enough to mentor some young adults. One (I’ll call them Max) came to me a while ago and described a situation where their boss rang them up and screamed abuse at them for being away on a day when the roster said they should have been working.
Max described the manager getting so loud and aggressive that his voice became distorted over the phone. Then there was a pause, and after the silence the manager admitted they themselves had misread the roster. Instead of apologising the boss asked why Max hadn’t said something and stopped his rant earlier.
There’s a desire in our society to believe most companies exist on a reasonably narrow spectrum with nothing radical at the extremes. But that’s a myth.Credit: John Shakespeare
I gave lukewarm consolation, but deep down I doubted that this had happened in the way he described. It was so unlike anything I had ever heard of or experienced in my career.
Just the other day, another of my mentees called me upset and described a similar incident. Am I just living a sheltered existence? Should I have been less sceptical of Max’s story?
I think you definitely should have believed Max’s story, although I don’t know if your incredulity comes from a sheltered existence. From what you were saying in our longer email exchange, it sounds like you’ve had a varied and interesting work life to date.
As you’ve hinted at in the question we published, however, you’ve had mostly good (or at least neutral) experiences in your time working for others and have been conscientious about treating those who work for you with dignity.
While it’s healthy to reflect on your bad decisions, my advice would be to use less energy on regret and more on affecting change.
Rather than having your perspective narrowed by a lack of experience, I wonder whether your response to Max was more a case of wishful thinking. I think there’s a pervasive desire in our society to believe that, although there are a few bad apples, most organisations exist on a reasonably narrow spectrum with nothing radical at the extremes. They’re neither great beacons of ethics and morality nor are they vectors of the worst societal diseases.
That sentiment is reflected in the platitudes you hear when something awful happens in, for example, the political sphere: that the behaviour of a parliamentarian or staffer would “never be accepted in any other work environment”. This is a reassuring idea – it can be gratifying to point in disgust at a small minority of powerful people and tell yourself “they’re not like the rest of us”. But it’s a myth.
The world of work is big and heterogeneous. It’s made up of all sorts of different cultures and populated by all sorts of different people, some of whom exist within that benign spectrum I mentioned above, but a significant number of whom exist outside it. At the very edges are utterly wonderful people doing work that makes the world objectively better for little material reward and zero acclaim. And on the other side despicable predators who ruin lives without a hint of shame.
We don’t need to believe this latter type is lurking around every office corner to understand that their effect can be enormous. They harm their direct victims, of course, but they also shape the behaviour of others with their cruelty. And due to their power, they have an outsized influence.
The supervisor who screamed down the phone at Max may not be a predator. He may not even be a terrible person. But I suspect he’s seen a boss rant or bully in his previous work life, and has adopted that ‘tactic’ himself.
And he can do it because the organisation he works for doesn’t know or doesn’t care about his conduct. Neither of these things – abusive behaviour and implicit organisational acceptance – is an Australian workplace anomaly.
If it were, the stats from formal investigations like the National Inquiry into Sexual Harassment in Australian Workplaces would be far less shocking. (I know Max wasn’t talking about being sexually harassed or abused, but he also wasn’t talking about a slightly discomfiting disagreement.)
I mentioned wishful thinking earlier because, when so much of our time is spent at work, and so much of our lives intersect with private and public organisations, it’s uncomfortable to know stories like Max’s are all-too-common.
I know from our email back-and-forth that you’ve started feeling uneasy about your initial doubt. And while it’s healthy to reflect on your bad decisions (rather than waving them away as inconsequential), my advice would be to use less energy on regret and more on affecting change.
Your generally agreeable experience of work is not universal, but it should be. Even in only some small way, use your position of authority to fight against abuse at work.
Send your Work Therapy questions to jonathan@theinkbureau.com.au
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