Sit down and communicate with her about the incident and tell her your intention now is to improve your relationship for the benefit of the team. Easy to say, hard to do but that's the key here. It will put you in the right position and no one can argue if you maintain this position.
Ask HN: I’m being bullied at work. What do I do?
31–40 of 65 posts
Re: Ask HN: I’m being bullied at work. What do I do?
#32You must be very submissive.
Re: Ask HN: I’m being bullied at work. What do I do?
#33You must be very submissive.
Not true. Bowing down symbolically to avoid an arbitrary fight and resulting loss of face is right at home in the playbook of somebody with real work to do elsewhere.
Resolution, and apology, are not the same as submission.
Re: Ask HN: I’m being bullied at work. What do I do?
#34First, I would ask an impartial third party if you're right or being over sensitive. Not that I'm suggestion you are... you just want that sanity check before you move forward.
I would not be afraid. I would have a direct, civil (but still with a "I'm not fucking around here" tone) and tell them you don't appreciate it. Have a list of examples, ideally with dates, you can point to.
If at the end of that conversation you feel things are not going to improve, I would immediately start A) looking for employment elsewhere and B) getting materials together to burn her. Will she get fired? From your story, probably not. Can you make her life and those above her painful for a while? Yes, and you should. Set that fire on your way out the door. From my stance, everyone impacted will deserve what's coming even if it's just some extra stress.
You'll be doing nothing wrong. It's a standard grievance that, at least in the states, is potentially legally actionable. Even if a company has the money and lawyers to deal with EO complaints and alike, they do not want to deal with that! And, again in the US, they put themselves in another potentially actionable place by communicating with potential future employers.
As long as your complaints are valid, what do you have to worry about? Just tell prospective employers that you gave the position 6 months but wasn't happy there and are looking for opportunities to continue learning.
Re: Ask HN: I’m being bullied at work. What do I do?
#35she wants to have sex with you...
Re: Ask HN: I’m being bullied at work. What do I do?
#36You must be very submissive.
If prefer, imagine this is alike a hostage situation, where terrorist are close to kill a bunch of toddlers and his puppies.
And you are the hostage negotiator
And that not preclude the swat team behind you ;)
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If wanna a good perspective of this more martial oriented, take a look at "The Art of War":
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3200649
"The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting."
-- Also, some ideas of
http://nononsenseselfdefense.com/negotiation.htm
Point to this.
Re: Ask HN: I’m being bullied at work. What do I do?
#37Apologize. This sound counter-intuitive; but it work a lot of times. The things is that most people fixate in that "the other" is wrong and "I'm right". Probably is , but the other is thinking the same . If 2 persons fight, and one have the arm broken and the other have only a finger, you can' count that the one with the broken finger will be calm and rational and know is he that is hurting more. It have the broken f…
I agree. What some people don't understand is that conflict resolution has nothing to do with being right. In fact because of human obstinacy, often times a dichotomy of either being in the right, or resolving the conflict are the only choices present. If you wan't the problem to go away, you have to be the bigger person as much as that sucks. Remember bullies are mainly seeking a reaction but not a conciliatory one, it ruins the effect they were after.
Re: Ask HN: I’m being bullied at work. What do I do?
#38"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."
Re: Ask HN: I’m being bullied at work. What do I do?
#39You asked what to do. You seem like an intelligent person early in their career.
I want to tell you a quick, true story. In my high school Geography class (or Social Studies, or something), our teacher told us that the USA was the 2nd largest land mass country and my friend knew USA was 3rd and Canada was 2nd.
Sure enough, we looked it up in the new almanac (This as back before Bing was a thing) and Canada has annexed some land and we proved the teacher wrong.
We went to the history teacher and showed him the facts. He said he didn't care, he'd mark us wrong if we didn't answer the question like he taught us.
We went to the guidance counselor for "guidance." He recommended we write down what the teacher said to get a better grade and avoid conflict.
So, my friend and I, we wrote down Canada for the 2nd largest country, and we got it marked wrong.
And we dropped it after that.
Pretty stupid story huh? Doesn't matter now.
Whatever you argued with this Product Owner about, you need to go and apologize to her, and tell her you're sorry you weren't supportive, and that you want to help make her product great, and can you wipe the slate clean.
If you can't do that, quit and go work somewhere else.
This is not a place that needs to adapt to you and your opinions. You either help the company and the organization, or they get rid of you.
I mean this with love, and with gentle guidance: You are not a snowflake. Maybe they're sexist bigots, or maybe you're just a jerk.
I don't know.
But if they don't like you, you won't work there long. It doesn't matter how good your code is.
So find a way to become liked, or go work somewhere else. And when you get there, don't attract conflict or disagree rudely. Find a way to be liked and make your perception be one of a helpful friendly approachable person.
Re: Ask HN: I’m being bullied at work. What do I do?
#40Typically, agressive people are those who can't admit defeat, agressivity being their last resort to "still win".
The trick is to maintain their illusion that they are in control.
So instead of saying: "It would be unwise to implement this feature because of X"
you could say: "I'm wondering if X could stop us from implementing this feature efficiently, what do you think?"
(what do you think = I am relegating control to you)
Stay clear of personal statements as much as possible but if it's unavoidable, think of "leaving them an open door"
Say your PO ate your lunch (for god knows what reason),
you would not say: "Why did you eat my lunch?",
you would say: "It might have been an accident but did you eat my lunch?"
(It might have been an accident = I'm giving you a ready-made excuse that you can use so that you can still feel in control about stuff)
It is important to have you "open door" at the begining of the statement for maximum effectiveness.
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Business-wise though, the typical steps is
- try and fix it one on one (use the open door trick): "It might be just me but did you notice work tensions between us, if so how can we fix this..."
- if this fails, go to HR but don't talk badly about anyone, you need to use the "ask for advice" approach.
- if this fails, start sending your cv to other jobs