[A CONVENTIONAL TOKEN OF SKEPTICISM]:
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[TO WHICH I REPLY]:
IWorkplace bullying, as I experienced it, involved the shifting of the blame for bad managerial decisions onto me as I was weakly positioned to deflect criticism. In terms of the organisation's structure, I was in the weakest position as a new employee who didn't know the ropes, furthermore didn't understand the dominant culture of the society I was in, and was female to boot (thus easily impugned in terms of various already salient cultural insults).
Deflection of blame for bad decisions (in this case, the purchase of a computer database system I was using, that was not as efficient/easy to use as had been anticipated), plus an already stressed out workplace with dysfunctional ways of handling stress (taking it out on junior employees) led to my predicament.
Of course the gendered element in all of this is that a male is automatically presumed to be competent due to some supposed inherent rationality that he inherits via his penis. A female, conversely, is assumed to lack this basic function of rationality in her assessment of the situation -- particularly if she is a junior employee, and even more so if she is not fully cognisant of all the workplace psychological and structural dynamics that were set into place before she entered the scene, and which tend to trip her up.
A female who is being bullied because of the prior existing illnesses of the organisation must be able to thoroughly explain the full background of the disease and disorder of the organisation to anybody who will listen. If she cannot account for the seemingly irrational behaviour of others, then it falls upon her (as the feminine, and therefore imputed irrational party) to take the blame for the irrational behaviour of others. So she simply must strive very hard to get to the bottom of things and furnish a very thorough explanation (to explain the REASON FOR the seemingly irrational behaviour of those in the organisation) or else whatever appears to be irrational is imputed to her, as if it were her own irrational perceptions, or behaviour, that was at the seat of the organisational problems.
jennifer armstrong | Homepage | 05.17.09 - 4:29 am | #
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[TAKE /2: emendment]:
If I may utter my feminist whine or two in relation to the above comment conveying skepticism. Workplace bullying, as I experienced it, involved the shifting of the blame for bad managerial decisions onto me as the path of least resistance to criti[ci]sm.
By this I mean to say that I was in no position myself to deflect the blame onto others for problems that were passed down to me, and made into my responsibility by bad management. Actually, it is impossible to "manage" from the bottom, especially if you do not know the history or the deeper workings of the organisation. But this is effectively the burden that was passed onto me, as a junior employee, to take responsibility for things that had gone wrong at a managerial level many years earlier, and yet without understanding the background to these problems initially.
jennifer armstrong | Homepage | 05.17.09 - 4:34 am | #
I’m sure there are true instances of workplace mistreatment but I’m also just as sure that there are times where mistreatment is perceived where there actually is none.
Dee | 05.16.09 - 2:36 pm | #
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[TO WHICH I REPLY]:
IWorkplace bullying, as I experienced it, involved the shifting of the blame for bad managerial decisions onto me as I was weakly positioned to deflect criticism. In terms of the organisation's structure, I was in the weakest position as a new employee who didn't know the ropes, furthermore didn't understand the dominant culture of the society I was in, and was female to boot (thus easily impugned in terms of various already salient cultural insults).
Deflection of blame for bad decisions (in this case, the purchase of a computer database system I was using, that was not as efficient/easy to use as had been anticipated), plus an already stressed out workplace with dysfunctional ways of handling stress (taking it out on junior employees) led to my predicament.
Of course the gendered element in all of this is that a male is automatically presumed to be competent due to some supposed inherent rationality that he inherits via his penis. A female, conversely, is assumed to lack this basic function of rationality in her assessment of the situation -- particularly if she is a junior employee, and even more so if she is not fully cognisant of all the workplace psychological and structural dynamics that were set into place before she entered the scene, and which tend to trip her up.
A female who is being bullied because of the prior existing illnesses of the organisation must be able to thoroughly explain the full background of the disease and disorder of the organisation to anybody who will listen. If she cannot account for the seemingly irrational behaviour of others, then it falls upon her (as the feminine, and therefore imputed irrational party) to take the blame for the irrational behaviour of others. So she simply must strive very hard to get to the bottom of things and furnish a very thorough explanation (to explain the REASON FOR the seemingly irrational behaviour of those in the organisation) or else whatever appears to be irrational is imputed to her, as if it were her own irrational perceptions, or behaviour, that was at the seat of the organisational problems.
jennifer armstrong | Homepage | 05.17.09 - 4:29 am | #
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[TAKE /2: emendment]:
If I may utter my feminist whine or two in relation to the above comment conveying skepticism. Workplace bullying, as I experienced it, involved the shifting of the blame for bad managerial decisions onto me as the path of least resistance to criti[ci]sm.
By this I mean to say that I was in no position myself to deflect the blame onto others for problems that were passed down to me, and made into my responsibility by bad management. Actually, it is impossible to "manage" from the bottom, especially if you do not know the history or the deeper workings of the organisation. But this is effectively the burden that was passed onto me, as a junior employee, to take responsibility for things that had gone wrong at a managerial level many years earlier, and yet without understanding the background to these problems initially.
jennifer armstrong | Homepage | 05.17.09 - 4:34 am | #
1 comment:
Great post.
The thing is also that trying to get to the bottom of what happened years ago is fraught with problems because people willing to give information tend to be those who want to give misinformation.
And: the organization may not actually want to function well, but only to seem to function well. It is hard to understand that when one is new.
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