Here in Australia, oddly enough a cfmeu heavy construction union guy
I wasn't doing anything wrong, they just wanted to swing their dicks around
this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2025
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An ex-boss. After many run-ins with HR, she still works there somehow. I don’t.
I haven't, actually. Have you tried being a 6' male?
It's pretty swell, would recommend.
Ha, maybe you're the bully
Idk I think workplace bullies only exist in already toxic environments. It requires a lot of people looking away or not standing up for others to really become a problem.
You might be right. Tbh even in outright toxic companies, I've never had a toxic team, nor a "work bully". Only toxic upper management and that was mostly about compensation and perks, or lack thereof. Not personal stuff. Closest thing is one guy who often made mean or uncomfortable jokes at people but I think he legitimately didn't realize that some people didn't like them. He was very social and yet never seemed to grasp boundaries.
Guy parked women in on multiple occasions and harassed them.
Close talker. Jacked 5,9 ex con with a hint he enjoyed the gay in jail. 55+ black man.
Put his hand down bf shirt. Said his ass looked good in them jeans etc at the same time criticized a young cook who was closeted lmao
Told a woman one day "whose car is that in your driveway". Quoted make and model. Real creepy shit.
One of the two times I thought I'd be really hurt was when confronted him on close talking to a woman who was just trying to work. We stayed in the back for a bit while he finished dishes, never broke eye contact with him. Nodded along essentially. Was later told they could hear him from the front of house how loud he was going at me. We were always fine after but he could have killed me in a second.
Fucking crazy creep. Who was tolerated because he was a dish and truck machine. Disgusting.
A woman who emailed people about little mistakes they made and sent them to the entire department, instead of just discussing it in private
I’ve probably told this story a million times now.
Had a boss that was clearly an entitled, arrogant, hand-fed asshole his entire life. He used to pull all kinds of illegal shit at his company. I’ll bullet this to save time:
- Asked me one time if I wanted to do some web dev work for the company website. He wouldn’t tell me what he was willing to pay or anything and said I had to accept first. I refused because he wouldn’t tell me. The kicker: his web dev team was waiting in the lobby to meet with him. He was trying to undercut them by underpaying me to do their work.
- He was paying a woman under the table illegally as a favor to a friend. Pretty sure she was in the country without a visa. I didn’t give a shit about that (fuck ICE) and never said anything. What pissed me off was that he was clearly exploiting her and not paying her well.
- He regularly tried to force people into signing pieces of paper that would outline an error made, and would try to garner the wages of employees to cover it. This is highly illegal but some people signed and in one instance, a woman had $800 taken from her pay over a few weeks. They tried to pull this on a colleague and I for a job we had never even heard of. It was obvious he thought we could be scared into signing. Get fucked, pal.
- He tried to make me do work off the clock once and I was essentially fired until it was done. For context we installed and designed vehicle wraps. I was a designer that ran a 54” printer. We had a ton of client jobs come in so I was pretty busy. He calls over to the office I’m in (we had 2 locations) and tells me he needs some stickers for his own vehicle pretty quickly. I tell him we’re pretty busy but I’ll fit them in. Fast forward a few days or so. His stickers aren’t done because I’m swamped and customer work comes first. He tells me (through my manager) that I have to print, drive to the other office (1 hour round trip with a paid toll), and install the decals off the clock because I’m essentially fired until it’s done or I’m fired fired. This was the last straw for me. I tell my manager verbatim “I’m not fucking doing that,” clock out and go home—never to return.
- Fast forward a few weeks. I get a notice that the company has reported me for getting unemployment benefits without being fired. So a phone mediation session gets scheduled between myself, the dickhead, and an unemployment office person. The owner lies the entire time saying that they called me multiple times and I refused to answer. I call bullshit and ask if they’d like me to obtain phone records. Silence. Of course because employees have zero fucking power in the US, I’m told I have to pay back the unemployment and they rule in the company’s favor. I tell them “I’m not paying back a single penny of this” and hang up on everyone. Every time the mail came stating what I had to pay, I tore it up and threw it away. No one ever came after me.
- It gets worse. I hear from a woman that works there that she won a court case against him. Apparently he called her late at night, super drunk, and verbally harassed her with sexual comments. He had a wife and kid at the time (I say that because I’m pretty sure his wife divorced him over this). He also had to take a massive hit to pay out the settlement. Fucking piece of shit human finally getting what they deserve.
😲😲😲 I have no words. I'm sorry you experienced this
It was a wild ride. Any time I tell folks about this place, it blows them away what kind of things the company got away with. There’s probably tons of stuff I don’t even know about…
But I did just recall another gem:
The company often times didn’t have enough money in their business account to cover all paychecks. On a couple occasions when I went to the bank to cash it, they told me I had to wait because there weren’t enough funds. When it happened one time, I got super pissed, drove to the office on a Saturday and demanded they put cash in my hand. I embarrassed one of the owners in the lobby when I held up my paycheck and said “I can’t cash this.” They were only able to front me $100 and I made accounting give me a receipt as proof. They would regularly tell us to wait until Monday. So they were writing checks that were worthless.
If a company ever struggles to fulfill payroll, it’s already dead in the water. Labor is the single most important resource for every single company, and is a cost that can (and should) be budgeted for well in advance. Plus, many states have steep penalties for failing to pay on time, so even shitty companies make sure they have enough cash to make payroll.
You probably could have taken them for a ride when they failed to pay you on time. My state allows for triple your average daily wage per day that you go unpaid.
I couldn’t believe it. I talked to other people at the company and it had become like a running joke. Some people could cash paychecks, others couldn’t. So it was a race to the bank.
The company has since downsized considerably, but I don’t know how they’re still around. Shit floats to the top I guess.
Lord almighty. And yes you're right fuck knows what else was going on that you didn't hear about.
What is a vehicle wrap, and are they purely decorative, or can they serve a protective purpose?
They’re primarily for companies to advertise using their fleet vehicles, but folks get them for appearances too (you can get textures and colors of all sorts). It’s a vinyl material often made by 3M that is super resilient and is installed using a heat gun, squeegees, utility knife, and patience. It’s not primarily used as a protective layer but conveniently doubles as one.
I think he means those vinyl things people put over their cars in place of paint. Sometimes to change the colour for decoration and sometimes with things like a company logo or the like.
All the people who "accidentally" said things like "they (Chinese) just don't value life like we do" within earshot of me kind of merge together in my memory as one enormous workplace bully.
The ones who would then pretend to spot me and wide-eyed add, "Oh, not you Dianne. You're one of the good ones" form the second enormous workplace bully.
There's a reason I moved here "for a year or two" … almost 25 years ago.
😬😬😬 thats a yikes. Thats several yikes even 😅
This is why I laugh bitterly at the notion that Canada is somehow a "nice" society that "celebrates" diversity.
I'm sure it looks this way if you're white. It doesn't look this way if you're "Asian" (between people who call us "their fetish" and people who do what I reported above), if you're Native, if you're Middle Eastern of any stripe, if you're Indian, if you're Somali, if you're ... You get the drift.
Yeah. It does feel like some places have never had to confront racism and work through it in the same way America has (not that we're doing a great job 😬😬😬🥲). America has a LOOONG history of acute racism, but it's also been a cultural conversation here more than I think it has been in a lot of other places.
It seems to me like it kinda manifests differently here and some people assume the outwards, acute image of racism they imagine in America is the only way it can look, and there's no need to reflect on how they themselves relate to race. Or maybe that racism is mostly about mistreatment of black folks, and they never make the connection to their gross assumptions and internalized "othering" of other demographics. Racism comes in a lot of different flavors and intensities, whether it's acute hatred, or gross subtext that shows you the assumptions someone has made about people who look differently than themselves.
I'm sorry to hear you've dealt with so much gross behavior in Canada, that's always a sadening thing. Sending love from one of your neighbors down south, take care!
Thanks. I'm sorry you're going through all that shit you're going through right now Down South™. 😥
It only looks that way if you're dumb. There are only two types of society in this world: racist, and racist but trying to deal with it.
It's why I have a lot of schadenfreude for Sweden/Scandinavia as well. Enlightened multicultural social democracy for everyone... Until migrants show up with the wrong race/religion then suddenly a fascist contingent of your population materializes and there's a "security crisis"
People really are vile sometimes. Usually you have to just tell from people's behaviour to you but they actually fucking verbalised it.
There was this woman that worked in my department named Rachel who was the absolute worst. She was condescending, rude and just overall bad at her job. I actually had worked with her previously and she was just as bad at the previous job too. When she put in her notice a few of us actually threw a party in the break room.
Fucking Kevin. Told me to my face that he hated me. Of course he was "just kidding."
The CEO.
Spent hours weekly on random blank agenda meeting invites to bully employees. Assigned tasks to one employee and then secretly to another, to pit them against each other I guess? Spread false rumors of employees ("that one employee doesn't like the other"). HR had received multiple bullying reports but wouldn't or couldn't do anything. Apparently also racist, looking for "ethnic qualities" to fit outsourcing (and underpay) needs.
I don't what the fuck that was
Had one boss who disclosed a new employee's diagnosis to the rest of the team in order to discredit that employee's ability to do their job. Among many many other things. The tipping point for me was her sending out an email (after the employee had already moved on to another department) which was just titled "EVIDENCE OF BAD [WORK]" trying list a bunch of shit that in her eyes had been done badly. This would be whatever if she was emailing it to her own boss or whatever - no, she cc'd the ENTIRE team and it was very clearly done to try to embarrass the employee, who as I mentioned had already left and couldn't even defend themselves against the bullshit this person was saying.
Also worked at another place where the bullies (who were mental health specialists) bullied a 60-year-old team member so hard that she went home crying. They'd also regularly make 'team plans' in office and have 'team lunches' where they'd very purposefully exclude one or two people but then very loudly chat and comment about all of it in front of those people. Place was toxic as fuck.
Mate that's awful. It's one of the worst I've ever heard of. Using someone's minority group status to discredit them is awful. Disability awareness is often poor, (eg we know we can't assume black people don't speak English but make negative assumptions re Disability) but this is deliberate malice. How did you cope working there?
Honestly it was a really rough few months, I think I mostly got through it by trauma bonding with the person who was being bullied, were actually good friends now. After that email, I ended up reaching out to HR because that was the tipping point for me. I left shortly after to another department and there was a full investigation where (for various reasons) the person wasn't fired but quietly moved along to a different department. The investigation opened up a lot of gates though and that department has gone through some pretty drastic changes to address the toxic culture.
I'll bet it was rough, it's no exaggeration to say toxic workplaces can be traumatic. I'm really glad you got a bond with someone you needed it. It's outrageous that the dickhead was just moved, hopefully the investigation did change things.
I was intern at a discount store and we had one manager and she was so far the worst.
She started out all cool and chill. However when there were stressful moments, she would blame anyone else but herself.
I remember, she told a colleague to put all the materials “on the left side”, I saw the colleague being really busy with multiple costumers. So I told the colleague, I would do it for her. So I did and then the manager starts to yell, that she didn’t want it at the left side and wanted to speak to the one who did it.
I just said, I did and took the blame. Colleague kept thanking me. But these situations were basically an everyday thing. She bullied people this way into quitting, even if this wasn’t her intention.
Glad I left after my internship ended there.
A fucking real estate agent
By far
Met a few power tripping, bullying assholes in my 20 years in casinos. Mostly the dealers are alright, the waitresses are nice enough but seem to host their own private dramas in the kitchen, cashiers and receptionists are fine. Even the customers are decent enough people 99% of the time. Management though. I feel like spitting when I think of some of the things I have witnessed.
First and foremost, most of them need a massive amount of cognitive dissonance to function, gas lighting is a close second trait. It’s fair to say that there are a few that are ok but they are quite rare. Whereas 99% of customers are nice people, it seems to be 1% of managers are decent people in my experience. They get into a comfortable position and look down at others from their high horse, usually because it’s what happened to them in the past so now it’s “their turn”.
There are two main bullies in my current workplace. One gets angry every time a dealer pays out an amount over £500, he will kick chipping machines, break pens and walk off to smoke a cigarette outside, he will remove dealers from tables if they are paying out too often, he stares at games angrily when someone is winning as well, he trash talks staff when they aren’t around and is just generally unpleasant to work with. The other one acts like he’s the saviour of the whole casino, he makes out like he does everything selflessly, he will go and take over from inspecting tables with a cup of tea in his hand, acting casual like it’s no big deal whatever is happening. At the same time he practically does nothing but drink tea and brag about all the things he does. During my shift I sometimes check the cctv for fun to see what exactly they did and it’s usually not a lot but then when you ask them about it, “Oh god I didn’t stop but you know we can handle things like that”. He’s a one upper as well, if you did something, he’s done it but always way more. Dealt a busy game? ”nah, you don’t know what busy is, when I dealt, the table looked like New York City with all the chips piled so high”. He’s another short angry man though.
Then you get the wannabe managers, some that already read the mantra “fake it til you make it” and do just that. Either through nepotism or favouritism they get what they desire most in the workplace and make other people’s lives hell. One in particular is another short angry man, he treats people like shit and likes to act like he’s the owner. Each time he would try to focus on me I would just look over his head and say “I can’t see who’s talking” he would turn bright red, just like his tie and walk off. He stands watching dealers with his arms crossed and nodding like he’s some kind of Caesar acknowledging your right to breathe.
I’m at the position in my career where I have no desire to progress further in terms of promotions, because fuck it, it’s just a job, but I’m knowledgable enough to know more than most of the management and the wannabes there, so I have some leeway with what I can get away with. I fix a lot of things and am generally well liked by the actual owner. This often leads to situations like the above where someone will be feeling bad about themselves and try to take it out on me but I can be quite harsh with my responses when provoked. I’m not really afraid to point out the truth in those kind of situations.
So yes, I had a bit of a rant but those are the kinds of people you can expect to work with in casinos. Go and travel the world to work in another one and it’s still the same.
I worked with someone who mercilessly victimised an innocent guy who was autistic to the point where the poor bastard was talking about killing himself
Management knew. There were no consequences.
There are few people who I genuinely hate, but he's one of them.
What constitutes a workplace bully?
A person who bullies. In the workplace.
Bullies how? What are they doing to you?
Why even respond to this post if you don't know what a bully is?
This sure feels like bullying
Yes, it does. Which leads me to wonder why you're doing it.
Are there no other messages showing for you?
Giordan Benavides.
Fuck you, you lying, scheming, friendless piece of shit
Fuck Giordan, all my homies hate Giordan 😤
A story that tells you everything you need to know about Giordan:
Giordan sometimes attended a low-stakes house poker game with a group of longtimer expats in Korea. He always lost. So, one week he brought a friend and they got caught passing cards to each other. If it was any other country they'd have beat his ass
Giordan is such a self-aggrandizing narcissist that he couldn't cope with losing.
He's been booted from two Seoul Toastmasters chapters (maybe more?). Imagine what an insufferable narcissist it takes to annoy Toastmasters, a group designed to create and elevate insufferable narcissists.
I worked with Giordan and he was nuts. When I started, there were two employees and he called himself "the head teacher". Students regularly complained that Giordan would reach over and pinch their arms real hard as punishment. Giordan would lie to the boss about coworkers and lie to coworkers about the boss. He wanted to have control over everyone. He got people fired if he didn't like them.
Later I learned that everyone in Itaewon knows Giordan is a snake. I heard he can't work in Seoul anymore but I don't know why
Oh, I had someone try to be a Giordan in one school here in China. He was the incumbent foreign teacher and when three new foreign teachers were hired he tried to ingratiate himself with us (badly: more on that later) on the one side, offering to act as the conduit between management and the foreign teachers.
Unfortunately for Leslie (for that was his name), I had enough experience in tech firms and the social service to recognize his type. So while to his face I agreed, I opened my own conduit to the foreign affairs office as well. (Being able to speak the language somewhat helped.) And sure enough, the FA would say something reasonable and our wannabe "conduit" would transmit it with a twist that made it sound horrible and unjust and abusive and such, then he would reassure us that he would "straighten things out". To the FA he would say the foreigners are very angry and very unreasonable, but he calmed us down and blah blah blah.
Only of course it didn't work because the FA dean was talking to me, so I played back what he'd told us about the FA's statement. So he wasn't the conduit very quickly, and wasn't really welcome in the FA's office either.
The guy was a real piece of work. He claimed to be Australian. He had an American passport. He spoke with an American accent. He expressed American ideals. But he was Australian. And he kept that up until a couple of Aussies joined the crowd and one of them, after hearing enough of his "Australian" bullshit, tore a major strip out of him in front of all the other expats. After that he kept to himself.
Oh wow that sounds EXACTLY like Giordan. Fucking unhinged behavior.
Giordan is even cagey about his nationality! Is he Canadian? Is he American? Who knows?
Too many to count. I used to do office work and there was a pair of women who were just fucking nasty, would mimic how people spoke, openly blank people and give people catty looks up and downs. They only did it to women. Loads of people complained but the company didn't care.