Messages By: preraph

I get it.  But my point is that it's never an issue how many women the men have slept with, but it's a bug friggin deal how many a woman has slept with.  Oh, well, I guess you can't expect to even up the standards in 40 short years of contraception and ERA, huh.

I honestly don't think Chris should even get supervised visitation until some psychologist has determined that there is ANY hope that he will ever be rehabilitated.  And here's why.  That little girl should not be placed in a position to build trust with a man who is volatile and probably will never be a suitable parent.  She should not be exposed to such a person, because as most anyone who watches Phil's show must have gathered, she will likely model the men she gets involved with further down the road from him.  If she is taught to love and get along with a violent, volatile alcoholic who will likely end up back in prison, how is this doing her any good?  She, like most other kids, will accept this as the norm and spend the rest of her life picking bad men to rationalize her love for her father, and trying in vain to fix them, probably exactly as her mother has done, who made some very, very bad decisions from the beginning.  I only hope she has changed and won't repeat the pattern by bringing another similar man into the house, as we all know often happens.   

  

Scott is, unfortunately, representative of many divorced fathers who weren't involved with the rearing of the children while they were married but now, mostly for revenge, want their "rights" as a father enforced and make as much trouble for the mom as possible in order to exercise control over her.  I see child custody and child support depositions and hearings on a regular basis, and it is like a broken record over and over and over.  You couldn't get them involved with the children if you begged while they were married, except to do things they wanted with them.  And ALL of the child-custody battles I've seen and the child-support hearings, the thing that invariably sets the man off is when the woman, regardless of who divorced who, starts seeing other men.  Up to this point, many men do not care that much about the custody and may be paying child support, but once it dawns on them that their ex might actually have the audacity to see other men, they just go ballistic and stop cooperating with everything.  What I find to be the scariest thing about it is that THEY FEEL TOTALLY JUSTIFIED in cutting off child support and/or starting a big custody battle, so justified that they almost ALWAYS indignantly whine loudly to the Court in an accusing manner about their ex seeing other men and say why should THEY pay child support if she's going to see other men.  They really feel this woman and those kids are their property and once another man is involved, however incidentally, they are outraged and retaliate any way they can, usually to the detriment of the children.   

  

       I tell you, I have lost a LOT of respect for the male gender since having these cases go by my desk and seeing such consistently selfish narcissistic behavior with no regard for the children.  I have to say I am to the point where I would never give one the benefit of the doubt  in my mind without plenty of proof and witnesses to back it up, because they will do absolutely anything to regain that power over the woman, including sacrifice the kids for it.  And these are just men you see on the street every day.  You get one like Chris, and it's beyond frightening.  

It's because dads so rarely take on any of the responsibilities for the child, in most cases.  Most of them only do what they want when they want, they don't change diapers, take off work to take them to the dentist, or help around the house to give the mom a break, and then they want to exercise their "rights."  It goes beyond what they're "entitled" to.  If a man has been incompetent and uninvolved in the child rearing, what mother, even if she still thought highly of the man, would feel comfortable turning her kids loose with someone who doesn't know how to care for them?  How many random men babysitters would you trust to care for your kids for a weekend?  I bet there's not many.  A friend of mine has a good marriage, but she said no way would she leave her son with with her husband for an entire weekend, because he's just not focused on it, like most men, and doesn't care to be.  One reason men with custody remarry is just so they'll have a babysitter for their kids on custody weekends, and usually their mom does it when there's no one else to.  I've seen it over and over again in the courts.  The man comes in wanting custody, and the whole time it turns out the kid is being babysat by the mom all day anyway, while he does about his busiess.  You guys need to open your eyes.  Someday it will happen to you.

re:  "love is a behavior, not a feeling" 

  

That's wrong.  It's both, unless you're a sociopath.    

My life was ruined by workplace bullies.  It started when a young new girl started.  I like to say she was kind of a Monica Lewinski.  She moved right in and started sucking up to the higher ranking male employees, flattered them, told them how indebted she was by them and how smart they were, bought them presents.  I was the only high-ranking female.  I had 7 years seniority on her.  My immediate supervisor and I had some old (prejob) history, so there were some complications there or at least a situation ripe for conflict, but we had been getting along and were very friendly.  This new girl was his absolute pet.  She had a sob story to tell anyone who became annoyed with her.  Before long, she was his assistant and not really doing any work, but spent her days talking on the phone and sucking up to salesmen.  At some point, I was told to filter certain work down to her and she would do it.  I already had my antennae up about her, because it was clear to me that she was a real operator and that men were blind to it.  (She wasn't really a looker either, as you might think.)  I gave her a simple task that should have been back to me inside a week and was time-sensitive.  I was patient but when I hadn't heard anything in 3 weeks' time, I asked about it, and she told me and my supervisor that I never gave her the work.   

  

This is a three-year long story of deceipt and I can't put all the details here, but over a three-year period of time, she eroded all my credibility with my supervisor and the VP of the company, who was also relatively new.  She did it just by lying and flattering the men to gain their support.  Before long, they tried to scapegoat me when other people she was screwing around came to me with similar complaints.  They didn't go to my supervisor (their supervisor) because they knew she was his pet and were afraid to.  I was next in line with seniority, and they came to me, a couple of them.  Then the VP and supervisor, after I let them know what was going on, turned it all on me and called me the "ring leader," saying I had ganged up on this evil person.   

  

This was a career I had wanted ever since I was a teen and had worked very hard to pursue, as it was a man's world when I first got into it.  It was my dream, and this one stupid lazy manipulative lying you know what completely ruined my career for me.   I did eventually, as a last-ditch effort, go to the President of the company, who by now was pretty uninvolved with my area, but when he hired me he said if I ever needed to, I could come to him, so I did, fully expecting to be stonewalled and simply turn in my resignation that day.   

  

But when I told him what had been going on, he said his nephew was running a retail store that this same evil girl was working in at night, and that he had reported something along those lines to him.  So he believed me, and he told the VP and my supervisor that when it was my word or hers, they were to take my word, not hers.  But she wasn't fired, which clearly she should have been.  She wasn't fired because a bunch of good ol boys wanted her there to boost their egos. 

  

Time passed and she had more problems with people in another department and, I believe, though I was never told, that they gave her all the time she needed to find another position and even found one for her.  Meanwhile, though I felt better, the damage was already done to my relationship with my supervisor and the VP.  They both resented me and spent the next year trying to find an excuse to fire me.  Finally they did, and it being a very political industry, I was blackballed until 5 years later, the week when the VP got fired from his position and left the industry entirely.  For 5 years, I was unable to get a job sweeping floors in my industry in my part of the country, and probably beyond.  The week he was out of the picture, I was offered a branch coordinator job. 

  

This was all before the Anita Hill hearings.  Many of you may be too young to remember, but there was a time when nothing could be done about this sort of thing.  And the abuse is still rampant, but at least there are some options.  Some companies encourage you to report things now, which is an improvement. 

If there's one thing I've learned, it's that men promote and protect each other.  They will also promote and protect select women, in my experience, those who flatter them, but if push comes to shove, they will stand together and crowd out most any woman if it serves their purpose.  I've heard of many cases of workplace bullying, and I know there must be exceptions, but I've always heard about ones where it was women being bullied, which runs consistent with general criminal/victim percentages, which are almost all women victims.  Of course, it's not only men who do the bullying, as in my case below, where it was a group effort.  But you know, that lone woman couldn't have brought me down without the support of the good ol boy network at my company. 

Here is a link to a website that deals with workplace bullying.  You will be amazed at their psychological profiles of the different types of bullies, as they are truly predictable, as we're starting to learn in all criminal profiling.  They're painfully predictable, the different types  My bully fit right into one of their descriptions, to a T.  The website is a little hard to find your way around in, but it's worth the effort.  Once you see a description of your workplace bully psycho on there, at least you will know YOU'RE not the one who's crazy.   

http://www.bullyonline.org/ 

I'm going to share with you a letter that I wrote complaining about a bully.  I'm changing all the names.  Now, this was a big company with proper rules in place to deal with this sort of thing, but it all depends on who you have to report to.  The person I wrote the letter to was then my supervisor, and I can tell you he was not happy I wrote it and didn't follow up to tell me what, if anything, would be done.  Me and my partner, who is the one I call Andy, tape-recorded the meeting with him, also.  You should know that one thing that made me so mad about this Rainman incident was that my partner Andy actually was sort of slow, so there wasn't one thing funny about the bully's comments.  While my supervisor did as little as possible and no changes were made, he soon left the company and as fate would have it, the bully's supervisor became my boss.  I believe it was at that time that something was done about it, but I was never sure why, if he just then saw the complaint or if he met me and knew I wasn't a wingnut.  At any rate, they kept the Bully away from me entirely for a full year and I believe they probably sent him to anger management, because he never hardly spoke with me again, which was fine with me.  They didn't, however, fire him, which is stupid.  Anyway, the letter is self explanatory. 

  

Dear Supervisor, 

  

 

          I have a serious problem with Technician "Napoleon Complex" which I think you should know about since it undoubtedly either has affected other first-line staff or will affect them in the future. 

          I remember that during our training, you told us that basically the technicians were not under your control and to be nice to them.  That is why I haven’t spoken up until now about this problem, but I feel must say something now because I don’t think anyone should be expected to put up with this sort of behavior.  I can’t imagine why a respectable institution such as Bank Delux has tolerated his behavior this long. 

          To sum it up, Napoleon has an anger-management problem.  He frequently gets very angry and yells loudly at myself and my partner Andy.  During his yelling episodes, he gets up in your face, makes very insulting comments in a nonhumorous tone, slams things around,  goes on prolonged personal philosophical tirades about “harnassing the power,” and sometimes outright lies.  If you don’t bow down right away and hang your head in submission, his tirade escalates.  After the first couple of episodes of this behavior, I made some discreet inquiries and found out that Napoleon has a reputation for his anger and was told that his anger has turned to violence in the past.  His bad temper is common knowledge. 

A few weeks ago, Napoleon was showing us how to do something, and as he lectured while we stood quietly listening, his anger escalated until he was yelling and waving his arms around and finally said in a very nasty tone, “I guess I’m going to have to get a chalk board and draw you two a picture.”  We were fairly new at that point and admittedly didn’t  know everything.  However, I remember his nasty insult coming out of the blue, unprovoked by any physical or verbal action on our part.  It was just the comment that ended his tirade, and I felt that we had very little to do with it at all.   

Napoleon routinely yells that he has shown us a certain procedure before.  Sometimes he has, and sometimes he hasn’t at all.  I will say that when Napoleon is “explaining” procedures while yelling and displaying his anger and hurling insults, it is very difficult to concentrate on what he’s saying because his behavior is so overwhelming and out of context compared to the subject matter. 

April 5, we arrived at #111 on a printer default.  Upon arrival, I noticed that one of the printer covers was lying loose in the machine, as well as two of the four screws from the printer head cover.  We worked on clearing the jam and got it to run a few receipts, but it broke again, at which time we disassembled it, put it back together and tried it again; but it still jammed.  We cleared the jams again, put the printer mask back on as a last-ditch effort, knowing it would probably not stay, and then I went inside the branch to answer a page.  When I returned, Andy had tried to run the printer and it was again jammed up and Napoleon had arrived to work on another machine inside the branch.   

I told him about the printer cover and screws being off.  He told us we knocked it off and that’s why the machine was jamming.  I told him that wasn’t true, that it was off when we arrived (and of course, the machine was already jamming before we were paged out on it, so it was a ridiculous accusation anyway).  Napoleon went on an at least 30-minute tirade about us not knowing how to clear a printer jam.  He went through the steps again, yelling the entire time.  He forbade me to agree with him as he was yelling by saying “uh-huh,” “okay,” or “right,” which I was only doing to let him know I was listening, like anyone would do, and also in hopes that knowing I was listening would calm him down.  He made a lot of personally insulting remarks about my saying “okay” and “right,” such as “See, your partner here is standing there nodding her head and saying yeah, okay, but she’s obviously not listening because I’ve shown you both how to do this a million times.”  Then, still yelling, he launched into what can only be called a strange philosophical tirade about harnassing power, which seemed basically to serve to illustrate that he had harnassed it and we hadn’t.  As I say, this episode went on for quite some time.  At some point during his loud critique of our abilities, he referred to us as “Rainman,”  the idiot savant from the movie “Rainman.”  It was not done in a joking tone.  It was in the context of  “y’all stand there like Rainman…” 

During this incident, I simply stood quietly and agreed with him when possible and until I was told to quit and had offered the information about the printer cover and screws.  When he said we had broken the printer by knocking off the printer cover, I did tell him that was not true.  Andy was very quiet. 

During Napoleon's “demonstration,” he did not do anything to the printer that we hadn’t done prior to his arrival, although there’s no contest that he did it better and faster.  Afterwards, I phoned to put us in travel for our next call.  Napoleon told us to stay there and help him work on the machine inside.  About 30 minutes later, while we were working on it, 111’s printer jammed again and Napoleon's Toadie [a different tech who sucked up to Napoleon] arrived to work on it.  Napoleon told Toadie that I had gone and knocked the printer cover off after me twice telling him it was like that upon arrival.  It was about 1700 when I left 111.  A little after 1800, 111 was paged out again on the same printer fault.  It had jammed again.  Toadie said he didn’t know what was wrong with it, that he needed to replace the printer.  We were yelled at and insulted by Napoleon for 30 minutes about not fixing a printer that neither of the techs were able to fix either. 

In addition to these incidents with me (and other less dramatic but still uncalled-for behavior), I have twice seen Napoleon be confrontational with bank customers wanting inside the branch after hours, telling them in pointed or curt tones that the bank was closed when no face-to-face interaction was necessary.  

I know Bank Delux needs technicians and that they certainly need an experienced tech a lot worse than they need me, but I can’t help but think that they would have better luck hanging onto its first-line people if they weren’t asked to submit and tolerate Napoleon’s reprehensible conduct.  In my 30 years of work experience, I have never worked anywhere that condoned this sort of behavior.  I have witnessed an isolated outburst or two in my years (everyone has a bad day every now and then), but never have I seen any company ask employees to tolerate verbal abuse on an ongoing basis.   

I was hoping that someone else would speak up about this before I felt I had to so that I wouldn’t be perceived as a complainer, but this situation is so extreme that I don’t feel I should try to wait it out.  I am simply unwilling to quietly subject myself to another day of bullying.    

I have provided extra copies of this letter for you to distribute to Napoleon’s supervisor and other appropriate personnel.  Please advise me of what actions you will take or any further action you need for me to take to resolve this matter.  Don’t ask me to confront Napoleon on these issues outside the presence of you or some other supervisor because he is too out of control.  Sorry to trouble you with this unpleasant business. 

  

 

  

It's hard to accept that people sometimes will victimize you even when you've done nothing but be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but it happens.  Your story reminded me of one I just saw on Montel this week where a similar situation ended by the boss' wife luring her to be at work alone on a Saturday and then both of them came up there and the wife almost killed her with a baseball bat, and the man helped.  She could only gather from the wife's ranting that he had given her some reason to believe the victim was trying to be involved with him, which wasn't at all true.  Probably some sick game they played together.  They got life because someone saw it through a window.  This poor girl was still just completely traumatized by the incident , and she was an innocent type of person who just had no idea there was that kind of evil in the world and couldn't make sense of why it happened.  I was just hoping that someone got her help and they sat her down and explained to her what a sociopath is, because otherwise, you start thinking that ALL people are capable of such a thing.

I know just what you went through.  I went through intense anger for 10 years about it.  What really gets you is that you can't do anything about it.  You like to think justice will win out, but in the workplace, it doesn't.  I had given everything of myself for my career, which was my dream that I had worked so hard to accomplish, and to have it all unraveled by one lying sophomoric girl and two stupid inflated-ego men was just too much for me.  I actually was diagnosed with posttraumatic stress syndrome, and it lasted 10 years. During that time, I isolated myself and couldn't have anything to do with anyone connected to my career, and worst of all, I couldn't bear to listen to my favorite music.  I snapped out of it finally when I read my journals I'd kept for years.  It took that to remind me who I am and how far I came.  But it has had a lasting effect on me just knowing that at any time, one liar can take your life away from you and there's nothing you can do about it.