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The Bullying Thread


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I saw this story somewhere in the information ether.

https://www.lep.co.uk/news/crime/four-men-jailed-after-vulnerable-colleague-set-on-fire-with-blow-torch-at-garage-in-wesham-3697199?fbclid=IwAR09ZUOghGy1aR-c02bl-yQBZh-ER8TaUUCmKMztaF4tXYehyOeE-4d38mM

Four men have been jailed after using a blow torch on an apprentice at a garage in Wesham, Lancashire.  The victim, who has autism, was bullied and abused prior to the attack, which was caught on CCTV.  The four mean were given prison sentences of between 21 weeks and 18 months.

I've no doubt the people who did this thought, on some level, that they were having a laugh, hazing the new guy etc.  There's a big culture in some workplaces of doing this, sending apprentices off for a long stand and all that.  The violence involved in this is pretty shocking though but not unknown.  Stuff like this is often seen as a bit of a laugh, a rite of passage.

Bullying is obviously a behaviour as old as humanity but recently there has been a big focus on it.  You often hear of workplace bullying now which you didn't a decade or so ago.  High level people are accused of bullying - the former Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow was found guilty of bullying staff.  Bullying used to be seen as something children did to tease each other, now every workplace has an anti-bullying policy.

Have any P&Bers been the victim of bullying?

Have any P&Bers ever bullied anyone else?

Have any P&Bers ever blow torched someone else for a laugh?

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Been a victim of bullying but didn’t realise it until afterwards really. Was mental rather than physical. 
 

happened a few years ago and tbh I have never really talked about it to anyone.  I am now at the point where it is behind me and I am back to what I see as my older self - happy in my work, confident in my abilities.  The guy is still at my work but I just ignore him and don’t have to deal with him 
 

I am now much more watchful for this behaviour in others - now I am aware will not stand for it. 

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Memories change over time. Looking back on some stuff I am a little bit horrified that I didn't do more to stop bullying. 

In third or fourth year at school we had an English boy join us and he was bullied horribly. At PE, his clothes and bag would be put in the shower and soaked. I heard that someone shat in his shoe once. I got on fine with him but didn't speak up or confront anyone. 

In fifth year, a few us us set up a safe space in the school (a cupboard). The school allowed us this, just a place where one or two prefects would sit and where any kid that was being bullied could spend their breaks or lunchtimes with us and not be in the playground. No idea if this helped anyone, but there were a few guys who regularly came and sat with us. One boy was really small and was best known for playing bagpipes. he looked terrified all the time. 

Since school nothing comes to mind.

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12 minutes ago, scottsdad said:

 

Since school nothing comes to mind.

This is part of the problem. At school it is easier to identify as it is stuff like sticking clothes in the showers, head down the toilet etc. 

I work in an office environment and it was constant running people down for no reason in front of big groups, behind your back.  Harder to identify sometimes and results in some folk labelling those who speak up as snowflakes etc. they are not - a bully is a bully and if you call them out they still shit it. 

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28 minutes ago, scottsdad said:

In fifth year, a few us us set up a safe space in the school (a cupboard). The school allowed us this, just a place where one or two prefects would sit and where any kid that was being bullied could spend their breaks or lunchtimes with us and not be in the playground. No idea if this helped anyone, but there were a few guys who regularly came and sat with us. One boy was really small and was best known for playing bagpipes. he looked terrified all the time. 

 

A relative of mine is a teacher and in one of their placements the school would try and prevent bullying by letting the kids who were getting bullied leave early so they could get away from the bullies.  Didn't seem like the best solution to me.  

I think back in the day bullying wasn't taken seriously, it was just seen as inevitable, wimpy kids getting battered and made fun of was just one of those things and some teachers looked at them as though they deserved it.

In terms of work, in my experience you get bullying when you have managers who aren't properly skilled or trained to do the job.  THey don't know how to properly get their staff to do things so they fall back on aggression and exploiting their authority.  I work in IT and you get this quite often - people without the required managerial skills get jobs in management because they are good technically, good engineers or coders, and they just don't have the skills, they aren't properly trained etc.  This is probably tied into the UK wide economic issue of poor management and productivity due to not investing in training staff and properly developing their skills.  

Strangely, I've often heard of people working in care jobs and the health service as experiencing disproportionate bullying.  Again, might be due to people being over promoted.

Edited by ICTChris
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9 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

A relative of mine is a teacher and in one of their placements the school would try and prevent bullying by letting the kids who were getting bullied leave early so they could get away from the bullies.  Didn't seem like the best solution to me.  

I think back in the day bullying wasn't taken seriously, it was just seen as inevitable, wimpy kids getting battered and made fun of was just one of those things and some teachers looked at them as though they deserved it.

In terms of work, in my experience you get bullying when you have managers who aren't properly skilled or trained to do the job.  THey don't know how to properly get their staff to do things so they fall back on aggression and exploiting their authority.  I work in IT and you get this quite often - people without the required managerial skills get jobs in management because they are good technically, good engineers or coders, and they just don't have the skills, they aren't properly trained etc.  This is probably tied into the UK wide economic issue of poor management and productivity due to not investing in training staff and properly developing their skills.  

Strangely, I've often heard of people working in care jobs and the health service as experiencing disproportionate bullying.  Again, might be due to people being over promoted.

The Peter Principle.

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A pal of mine was bullied so bad it made national news. He was the classic specky introvert who was clever and wasn't the faintest bit interested in football. He's in his 30's now and it still affects him.

I mind our head teacher giving it big licks every week about bullying, but there was never anything done about it. Teachers didn't give a shit. There was a boy in my year who should never have been in mainstream education. He was also the classic smelly kid so he never stood a fucking chance. He got it tight or his entire school career. I Lee Wallaced to the deputy head when I was in 6th year, so he got some protection after that, but it was a bit too late.

I've definitely been a bully at work, mainly when I was in hospitality. I hid behind the "doesn't suffer fools gladly" and would steamroller over people who dared to question my highly thought through and undoubtedly correct wisdom, and would yield my condescending sarcasm quite heavily too. It would have qualified as bullying tbh and I should have been pulled up for it.

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16 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

Strangely, I've often heard of people working in care jobs and the health service as experiencing disproportionate bullying.  Again, might be due to people being over promoted.

Worked in the care/support sector for over 20 years and I don't know what it's like in other spheres of work, but in almost every place I've worked there's always been at least one who loved to micro-manage the workers. Desperately trying to find problems so they can be seen to be solving them. I suppose you have to pass the time somehow when you're camped in an office all day.

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45 minutes ago, ParsJake said:

The care sector is a magnet for this sort of stuff, usually low-level management doing a bit of concern trolling.

 

22 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

Strangely, I've often heard of people working in care jobs and the health service as experiencing disproportionate bullying.  Again, might be due to people being over promoted.

I worked in the care industry for over a decade before starting university.

For a supposedly "caring" industry, it is full of bullies and absolute fucking wankers.

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1 hour ago, ICTChris said:

Four men have been jailed after using a blow torch on an apprentice at a garage in Wesham, Lancashire.  The victim, who has autism, was bullied and abused prior to the attack, which was caught on CCTV.  The four mean were given prison sentences of between 21 weeks and 18 months.

Surely not. They don't look the type at all.

b25lY21zOmFjMTEzMjMzLTgxY2UtNDRlOS1hYzY4

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2 minutes ago, oaksoft said:

Not sure why the company itself were successfully sued for £250k. The article doesn't explain that.

Oaksoft taking the side of the bosses again, trampling on the little guy!

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1 hour ago, oaksoft said:

In the good old days, if you went home and told your parents (the people who should be protecting you), that you had been bullied at school, they'd have skelped you for not fighting back.

That generation really has a fucking brass neck criticising the generation of parents who came after them.

Bullying isn't taken seriously enough. Never has been. And because it's not dealt with at school level, many of these b*****ds just continue it into adulthood.

It's a true saying though that the second you stand up to a bully, 9 times out of 10 they back down.

Wish I'd known this sooner. I put up with a few years of it until I snapped and thumped one of them. The trouble stopped overnight.

I mind getting a hard time off a lad older than me when I was a kid.  I knew my old man had the exact mindset you described so I couldn’t go to him.  Ended up lamping the c**t with a cricket bat.  Parents round house doing their dinger and all sorts until my dad lamped his old man when the story came out.

Never happen these days 😂

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1 hour ago, oaksoft said:

In the good old days, if you went home and told your parents (the people who should be protecting you), that you had been bullied at school, they'd have skelped you for not fighting back.

Ah the good old days of weans battering each other or being battered by adults for not resorting to physical violence.

Makes you feel nice and gooey! Such nostalgia.

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