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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. 

Well done for speaking out. I have been in similar situations and spoke out too which is so difficult. It seems this kind of behaviour happens in the workplace wherever in the world you are. I worked in the UK and it happened there and it seems crazy to let it slide.

Of course the best thing I ever did was to get a much better nicer job with wonderful people who have integrity and are considerate and fun loving. My new job is working for ( would you believe it ) an investment bank which is the most supportive and wonderful environment for me. I have learnt so much more in this role and it is because I am not constantly worried about being beaten up emotionally. I find people can't believe that I would ever have been bullied and make a point of explaining to others who might be looking for work not to work for company X which I found so terrible.  Word of mouth spreads, there is another girl who works for my new company who also quit under similar circumstances at the same place because of bullying. These things do eventually get found out.

I hope everyone else on the site finds a good role and a culture where tolerance and diversity are evident. Some people might want to take legal action but I just wanted to walk away and get my life back which I now have, I know now when I interview with someone that I need to ask lots more questions and DO! Good luck everyone and stay strong. Everyone has individual talents and skills which can be brought out if they work in the right place.