Mobsters attack with Intimidation

Mobbing survivors are not paranoid, insecure, narcissistic, or vindictive. Instead, they notice a pattern of intimidation that is meant to attack their mental health. Where the public sees anonymous acts as just "random" coincidences , the survivor sees a gas light message that cannot be proven.  They  doubt anyone will believe them. They also do not feel motivated to reach out for help as they have been regularly stonewalled.    

My workplace mobbing includes hurtful acts from sources I could not identify. More than once during the 2020-2021 school year my phone rang during my open period. I would answer it, and the person on the other end would hang up. This was especially frustrating as I was often in the middle of recording a virtual lecture when it happened. Interrupted by the telephone call, I had to restart my presentation. After I filed my 2018 sexual harassment complaint to know my free speech rights, I got a keychain randomly in my mailbox that said, in effect, my life motto was "like a dog: piss on it and walk away.” Another time a student found a pencil in my team’s classroom that had written on it “Erica no one loves you anymore.” I reported it to my principal who said there were no students in the building with that name. Finally, I got random package dropped off to my house.  It had no barcodes or address labels.  It was just a brown box.  In it, was a beautiful wooden "footprints" plague that no one at my church ever admitted to delivering to me. To date, I have no idea how this plague came to rest on the deck outside my home.  

Mobsters also use stonewalling to intimidate their targets.  Stonewalling is when someone refuses to answer questions or address a concern. This is meant to make the target feel unsupported, frustrated, and continually anxious about an unresolved issue. 

In my own narrative, I countless times would present an idea to my principal only to be stonewalled. I asked one spring to wash all the school’s flags over the summer. He told me I could and said he would notify me when the custodians had taken them down.  When I returned after the summer, he told me he had taken care of it himself. He also never took an interest or offered support for my grants, student clubs, or student competitions. Yet I observed him doing this for other teachers. He went to athletic events, attended concerts, and one time even came to my room to interrupt a meeting to ask a colleague if she “needed anything” for her science fair project. 

Similarly, once the district went to a one-to-one device, I offered the school access to a $24,000 iPad cart (30 tablets along with a $100 iTunes gift card.) I asked my principal to extend their usage to three specialized programs in our school. My principal ignored my emails.  When he finally agreed to it verbally, he ruled out one specialized team that had the most to gain from the devices.  He never told me why and I found that so odd given the plethora of apps that would have helped this specialized program.  

Perhaps the best example of stonewalling in my narrative deals with a heat vent that whistled so loudly it could be heard two classrooms down from my room. It was so unbearably loud that I could not teach over it and students could not work through it. I had issues with this vent in the past, but each time our lead custodian could repair it. When he could not, my principal contacted outside support to fix it. Yet its malfunction during the 2017-2018 school year was handled incredibly different. 

Much to my dismay, after multiple attempts, my building’s lead custodian came to me and told me there was nothing he could do to fix it. On December 21st I emailed my principal about the issue and told him that the custodian could not fix it. I then asked if I could get a new heater. He said he would “see what we can do to get someone out to look at it.”  January 5, I reported the problem again and this time I recorded a video of it so my principal could see how unbearable it was. The recording showed its noise level in the hallway, as you entered my room, and then as you sat in my room. I then went down to his room and we listened together to the video. He said he would get the custodian to fix it. The problem was still on-going and I reported it again on February 2 and again on February 7th.  My principal once again said he would put another work order in to have my custodian look at it. The custodian came to me once again and said he could not fix it.  And that is where my principal left it: broken.

I was left to fend for myself the remaining two months of the cold season. During class instruction, I tried to stop the whistling by hammering it. I instead cut my finger as I lifted off its vent. Another time I tried to loosen the screw to the register to allow the steam to escape; this caused its coolant to erupt and burn my hand. At that point, I told my students I was done trying to stop it, and we would have to painfully endure it. I then creatively tried to think of ways to convince my principal to look into it more. Consequently, February 2, I emailed him and asked if the whistling would be a testing irregularity during students’ Smarter Balance Assessment (SBA). He quickly responded that it would not be a disruption. 

This surprised me as we had to fill out paperwork if a single cell phone rang in class during SBA. Now there could be a loud, piercing sound heard two rooms down and that did not count as a disruption? It did not make any sense to me. The heat register did whistle during my students’ SBA sessions, and I emailed my assistant principal about it. In April, I asked him to try to fix it over the summer. I worried my room concerns would continue to be ignored as a form of mobbing. When I returned after the summer of 2018, the heat vent was repaired. Ta da! No more whistling. No explanation was given to me as to how suddenly the custodians resolved an issue they had neglected for over 6 months. Somehow over the summer they could fix it but not during winter break, President Day’s break, or Spring break the previous school year. 

Finally, I asked my principal if I could start new programs like peer tutoring (2016-2017) and a student of the month decoration library (2015). He ignored multiple emails and only said yes when I went down to visit with him. Looking back, I believe this explains why some of our conversations were verbal; he frequently ignored emails I sent and offered the excuse that he was just “too busy” to respond via email. If I wanted any information out of him, it required I talk in-person.  And today, due to his stonewalling, some of my evidence remains, "coincidently" undocumented.  The only proof I have for some of my claims is my word.  A testimony that "coincidently" can easily appear paranoid as I speak out about the gas lighting I believe he "coincidently" led.