Workplace Mobsters attack with Words...

Workplace mobsters attack the survivor’s reputation in order to make them feel so anxious, distressed, angry, and depressed that they resign from their position.  Attacking the employee’s reputation also draws employees away from the survivor’s side. The survivor is not someone to ally with as they cannot be trusted to complete quality work, look after others’ interests, or win administrative approval. The survivor, meanwhile, wonders who knows and believes the rumors. They also become frustrated and depressed knowing their colleagues do not understand everything that is going on. Colleagues may be innocently unaware of the mob’s tactics or rumors, but their silence makes the survivor feel alone and leads them to believe the group thinks they deserve the mistreatment.  

My mobbing experience included rumors. These rumors said I was self-centered and selfishly motivated. It was whispered from employee to employee that I pursued best teaching practices not out of a desire to serve students but to obtain a district award called Teacher of the Year. By 2011, I was aware this rumor had spread around campus as a teacher retiring wrote me a thank you card that referenced the teacher of the year award.  During the winter of 2013-2014, a teacher was angry with me and told me I was adopting just so I could get teacher of the year. In May of 2014, after a teacher received our building’s teacher of the year award, one of my perpetrator’s allies came up to me and said, “well looks like another year you did not get teacher of the year.” In all three of these instances, I never told the employees involved I wanted the teacher of the year award. Someone else had told them this. 

My principal himself seemed okay with spreading gossip around campus too. During the 2016-2017 school year, one of our school counselors told me my principal did not think I could handle a peer tutoring program I had started. The counselor stated my principal thought I already had too much on my plate. This comment did not upset me for two reasons. First, I thought he was right. I was in over my head. I was writing new curriculum for the honors program and was at school until midnight some nights. I reasoned my principal was expressing his sincere concern for me. Second, my principal had approved my program the previous spring, knowing full well I was piloting the honors program the following fall. Consequently, I was not insulted enough to confront my principal about his gossip. I already had his support. I did, however, make a mental note that my principal had gone to another staff member and talked about me. He did not come directly to me with his concern. 

My workplace mobbing attacked my reputation in other ways as well. I wrote an iPad grant for myself, my perpetrator, and my bully. Once we had the $24,000 devices, my perpetrator and bully abandoned me. They did not help me set it up or collaborate with me as I tried to incorporate it into our curriculum. When I wrote financial literacy curriculum in 2016 with my perpetrator and another social studies teacher, my principal held me responsible for its mistake. To my knowledge, he never reprimanded my perpetrator or the other social studies teacher for designing the curriculum with me.  He left me with the impression it was purely my fault. 

In December of 2017, one of my perceived mobsters sat in on a team meeting where I confirmed an event we had planned two days from that date. This confirmation was verbal as well as visual as our team notes were displayed on a projected screen. The day of the event, my perceived mobster was missing. Upon entering their office, I learned the event was not scheduled for that day and that “I” was way off on my date, as it had been rescheduled close to six weeks later in January. I was very angry and completely shocked as I had confirmed everything with them at team just days prior. They never told me they had emailed out a different date. And now, I had seconds, to figure out what to do with all 110 students for the next 80 minutes of our morning. I quickly recovered and used the event to reinforce a team norm of grace, but inside I was fuming and thought there was more to the story than I was being told. 

During the spring of 2018, one of my perceived mobsters asked me to have my students complete a form for their lunch seats. I was not the lunchroom supervisor, so I just copied the form they made and put the link on our team webpage. They asked me to have the students complete the form and I did. That was as much as I was responsible for. The next morning when my students started to fill out the form, one of them raised their hand and told me they could see every student’s response. In other words, the form setting was set to public, not private. I was totally embarrassed and felt awful for my students. 

In all these situations, I knew I could not prove if my perceived mobsters accidently or intentionally mistreated me.  I could only determine that by asking them, something I felt I could not do as my contract prohibited me from “knowingly blaming other individuals for mistakes they did not make.” I interpreted this clause to mean I could not confront my mobsters about a mistake that could be perceived as my fault. The clause demanded I accept that human communication was socially ambiguous and any mistake that resulted from this vagueness was owned by the group. There was no “you should have told me” or “you should have asked” defense in other words. From another angle, I also knew I did not have proof of their intent. If I privately went to one of my mobsters and accused them of purposefully sabotaging my work, I would have falsely accused them as I did not have concrete evidence to base my inquiry on. (No evidence but my testimony anyways.) I reasoned the clause meant I could only advocate for myself if I had clear evidence my reputation was being intentionally sabotaged. Confused and intimidated, I remained silent amid an environment that I perceived more and more as workplace mobbing.

The ironic thing is that I did not even know what mobbing was at the time. When I talked about it with my support system I called it triangulation. I did not learn what workplace mobbing was until the summer of 2020. All I knew is no one would believe me if I described what was going on. I would look crazy or vindictive. Googling “triangulation” turned up no online support for what was happening to me psychologically or how to I should respond to this trauma mentally, emotionally, legally, and spiritually. Such ignorance meant my mental health spiraled out of control. I was completely isolated. No one could validate what I was experiencing. No one was there to help me fend off the constant attacks or helplessness I constantly felt. My perceived workplace mobbing worked. I did not like my job and wanted to leave. 

Workplace mobbing also uses innuendo to control a survivor. The repetitive, intentional process where a person covertly says something in order to manipulate them is known as gas lighting.

The best way for me to describe this aspect of mobbing is with this scenario. Imagine you go to your boss with a complaint. This complaint is entirely confidential, meaning you have told no one except them. Later that day, a colleague seeks you out to discuss a similar situation they encountered with a friend, client, or family member. In their situation though, they express personal remarks that shame one party involved in the conflict. And the side they shame is always the group you identify with. In other words, you see yourself in their story and hear something is wrong with you. 

After multiple experiences with this, you note that this anxiety is not about you being insecure. Instead, you realize you suspect your boss violated your privacy and spoke to your colleague about your concern in order to have them manipulate and intimidate you.  Of course, initially you connect the two conversations and brush it off. Surely they cannot be talking about you in their story. How could they know anything about that private conversation? It would be unethical for your boss to share that information with them. And they were so encouraging and friendly to you. They would not do that, right? Right? 

Once it starts to happen repeatedly, with the same staff members, you start to wonder if your boss is acting immorally and violating your privacy. You think you perceive something, but you cannot be certain. The more you perceive it, the more convinced you become it is real. As you observe this behavior, you start to realize the mob’s goal is to intimidate and manipulate you off record in a way that eliminates any legal proof. All they have to do is label the event as a miscommunication or a mere coincident or the employee’s “crazy paranoia.” And then they get away with it while you are psychologically terrorized and legally unprotected.

In my narrative, students became the means to execute this strategy. I would go to my principal in person and advocate for my safety. A perceived mobster would then come to my room (intentionally seeking me out) to gas light me privately with a story of how a student flipped them off in class because she was angry my colleague was forcing her to do difficult work. The teacher then emphasized how irresponsible and defiant this student was for complaining and avoiding her difficult work. This occurred multiple times. Each time I discussed my narrative with my principal, she came to my room to tell me privately how this student had, once again, flipped her off, and how, once again, she remained disgusted that the student would not accept responsibility for completing the tough work assigned to her. I asked this teacher what she was going to do about the student’s behavior. She told me nothing as there was no way she could prove the student was flipping her off. This gas light me even more as she modeled an approach not to go to my principal with a concern unless there was proof. 

It is important to note, I was close friends with this teacher. I respected her for her teaching expertise. I admired her for the work she did mentoring a refugee family in my community. I welcomed any advice she gave me as I knew her perspective included a close relationship with a middle school principal in my district. I trusted her and told her how I was bullied by my perpetrator and his allies due to my advocacy for stronger reading instruction. She knew I was angry that my administration did nothing when my windshield broke on campus.  She knew I felt like there seemed to be no end to my bullying and that I was angry my principal did not come down harder on my mobsters. And once that confession came out, the gas lighting involving students started.

I did nothing with the initial gas lighting encounters. I did not even know what it was then. That knowledge would not come until over a year later. I merely breathed a sigh of relief when she retired the end of that school year. I did not like the way I felt around her and was happy the problem was going away. Little did I know, it was not going to end. In fact, I was about to recognize how systematic workplace mobbing is. 

The following two years (2017-2019) was the worst teaching years I have ever had to endure professionally. A fellow employee I trusted as a friend, suddenly and unexpectedly, began to degrade my professional choices (i.e. criticize me in front of my team). She, along with another colleague, discussed in a cold manner student behavior that corresponded to my work history. One student who was being bullied was too afraid to file a full report with the counseling office so nothing happened. She admitted how sad she was by the outcome of this bully situation but that ultimately it was the target’s choice to make. Another student had problems with his parents’ divorce but would not get any help because he refused to talk with her about it.  These two events unfolded while I was formally reporting my 2018 sexual harassment complaint. At least twice during that time frame, I heard that students who refused to admit they had a problem, failed to have their problem resolved. It was under this gas lighting that I decided, among other reasons, not to appeal my 2018 case. I heard the message that I had decided to go off record, which meant nothing was going to happen to my perpetrator or “the problem” I had created. 

Besides, I had filed the report not to know what happened but to know my free speech rights. I already knew what happened. He had sexually harassed me, I had reported it informally, and we agreed I would go off record. The union told me I had to complete an investigation to be protected legally should I speak out about my experience. I completed the investigation, and the district choose to issue a partial, incomplete report that failed to interview two key employees involved. I felt betrayed by the union, a group I had only recently joined but my perpetrator was a long time member of.  Only after I started the investigation process did they tell me they would  not represent me,  I absolutely disagreed entirely with the district's findings but I was not looking for my perpetrator to be punished or for the "truth" to come out. I simply wanted them to know I was going to talk my experience moving forward.  I gave them a fair chance to display legal and ethical sexual harassment practices ahead of this free speech.  And their partial investigation showed they were protecting not just my perpetrator, but also themselves.