Girls Will Be Girls

GIRLS WILL BE GIRLS

Girls can be the cruelest of bullies, using verbal assaults and shunning as their weapons. I was the target of bullying girls in school and have been the target of their adult counterparts in the years since. In the last dozen years alone, I worked with four workplace bullies. I was not their only target. In one case, I was able to get the offender fired for her reprehensible actions toward me. But this is unusual. In most cases, I was the one who was terminated and the bully went on to the next object of her intimidation.

I asked myself every time what, if anything, I did to attract such behavior. Conversely, am I attracted to such behavior? Why do I incite such anger and hostility? What could I have done differently to engender their trust? I have come to understand that the bullying is not my fault. I did nothing to deserve their attacks.

Others with whom I worked often told me that my intelligence intimidated the bully. That the bully was insecure and threatened by me. That my self-confidence, experience and background revealed to the bully her own weaknesses and doubts about her abilities.  That my appearance and professionalism were disturbing to her.  Perhaps. Perhaps not. Only the bully can know what provokes her to respond to others in a hostile way. Only she knows the depths of darkness in her past that inflames her reaction. Nonetheless, I am stunned each time it happens.

I was raised by a mother who encouraged me to break the mold of past generations by having a career; by supporting myself; by not getting married too soon, if ever. She was the one who said, “Let’s go!” when my father was offered new jobs that took us to other cities as well as halfway around the world, exposing me to other cultures. She was the one who provided me with books and magazines; who poured over the Encyclopedia Britannica with me to explore other worlds and people and beliefs. It was she who helped me get from the Midwest to New York City after college, a women’s college where the students are urged to strive and succeed in whatever way that means for them as individuals. 

I was on the leading edge of the Baby Boom generation with outspoken leaders who were considered radicals: Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan, Pat Carbine and Erica Jong, Angela Davis, Madeleine Albright and Hillary Rodham among so many others. I believe in supporting other women. I believe in giving a helping hand to the women who came up the ladder after me. I believe in sharing information and knowledge and mentoring them.

Perhaps I am the victim of my own naivety; however, one thing has become certain – I need to listen to my gut. That inner voice is the one thing that never fails me. Every time I ignore it, the object of its warnings proves that I should have listened and heeded. The most recent evidence was a new job that I accepted nearly four years ago. I felt uneasy in the interview with the employer, a woman who is the wife of an accidental billionaire, a man who was in the right place at the right time over twenty years ago.

Despite my misgivings, I accepted the position based on the money being offered. Friends expressed excitement for me and told me that it was the perfect job for my skills. They expressed admiration that I had overcome rampant age-ism in my job search.  

But my response was one of discomfort; something did not feel right. My gut was in a knot. I noticed subtle things during my meeting with her that raised concern on my part.  Was it her arrogance? Was it distrust? The surroundings in her apartment where we met and where she and husband had their offices and home seemed disturbing for reasons I could not explain. During the interview, the man with whom I work every day clearly pandered to her. They laughed at private jokes that left me looking from one to the other for clues about what they were referring to. Something was off, my gut told me.

I told my friends that the jury was out but I was going to accept the offer if it was tendered. The money was good and I wanted to stash as much away as I could over the next few years. Perhaps it would be okay. Five years at most, I told myself.  I told my gut to be quiet.

Then came a call from the woman I would be replacing.  Having decided to leave a year earlier, she had agreed to lead the search for her replacement, a search that took more than a year, she said. She asked somewhat nervously, “Are you still interested in the job? Have you accepted any other job yet?” I assured her that I had not taken another job in the meantime and was still interested in joining the organization, a small family foundation.  I would be working not in a professional office but in a rented apartment a few floors below the employer’s much larger co-op apartment where other employees oversaw the family’s affairs. I was told that I would be involved with the family even though I was going to work for the family foundation managing grants they gave to nonprofits. It would be very different from working in a corporate office, I was told, and would require discretion on my part. I would be expected to sign a confidentiality agreement. I signed and started work the following week.

My concerns were quickly confirmed.  During our first meeting, the employer was denigrating and insulting. She talked down to me and did not invite my opinion or ideas.  She was uninterested in what I had to say and cut me off in midsentence.  I looked at her with a steady gaze and did not show any reaction. I made a silent agreement with myself to not get upset.  But, like a cape waved in front of a bull, that is often a fatal mistake when a tyrant is testing her power and looking for a path into the victim’s weaknesses.  

She began to reveal an extreme need to be in control that extended not only to her employees but to her extended family whom she supports financially. Rampant among the family members are alcoholism, drug abuse, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, hoarding and her own self-confessed Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.  All were made worse by the control she exerted over them with the money she wields as a weapon.

She had married her husband after his first wife died a few years earlier. They had known each other for many years; had raised their children in the same middle-income housing project in New York City. She became an attorney for the city; he was pulled along by a now well-known entrepreneur who became a billionaire and politician to create the algorithms required for a product that changed an industry. She saw opportunity and he needed someone who could take care of him like his late wife had done. The shouting and fights were the stuff of legends among the staff.

I tried to do as I thought she wanted despite unclear and ever-changing directions. I was criticized repeatedly in writing as most of our interaction was via email since she and her husband left for their home on the west coast soon after I began the job. The situation went from bad to worse very quickly and by the end of two months I was, to my great relief, terminated. The woman I replaced returned to the job, although, upon my departure, the employer told the other staff members that “she never left.” This outcome was desired and manipulated by her all along. I was the pawn.

I did not listen to that inner voice that warned against another bully, another mentally unbalanced individual who takes pleasure in holding destructive power over others. I now know much more about her background from her childhood onward; about her recently deceased mother who was also a bully; about her brother who bullies his wife and children; about her anger toward her parents; about her demons of insecurity and explosive anger. I would like to sympathize with her but I can’t. I can only pay attention to my gut.  Next time. If there ever is one.

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