it's interesting how many posters are quick to jump on the "bullying bandwagon". they want to ban bullying, demand that all bullies be fired immediately, insist that no one ever bring their personal issues to work. the definition of "bully" seems to be rather fluid, though. usually, it seems to mean "anyone who is doing something that i don't like or that makes me uncomfortable." they're often the first to insist upon their right, however, to do things that make other people uncomfortable. but that's not bullying. not to them anyway.
good manners are the grease that makes society run smoothly, including the society of the work place. so perhaps good manners is the anti-bullying. perhaps, then, bullying could be defined as ill manners. unfortunately, some of those who are quickest to take offense and fastest to scream about bullying are those with the worst manners i've ever seen. in fact, based purely on my own personal observations, i'd say that those who are the fastest and loudest to complain about bullying in the workplace are the biggest bullies i've ever seen in my workplace.
there are those who insist it is their absolute right to speak their first language in the common break room, to the exclusion of anyone who might be there who doesn't speak that language. that's rude to those who are excluded . . . and sometimes those people are the very people they're accusing of being rude to them because they failed to acknowledge their "good morning", pointed out their error in drug calculation in front of another person or wouldn't "let" them take charge of a patient. (if you ask me to double-check your insulin and it's wrong, i'll tell you -- before you give it to the patient. and if i fail to acknowledge your "good morning," it could be because i was preoccupied with my own drug calculation, didn't see you because i was cleaning the rain off my glasses, or assumed that you were talking into the cellphone you were holding up to your face.) if half the nurses in the unit are filipino and they refuse to speak english while on break, that's a form of bullying . . . unless they're all taking their breaks downstairs in the cafeteria and not at our seats-six table in our tiny little break room. (before i'm accused of being racist, let me just say that the filipinos i work with are some of the nicest people i know. i recently entered the break room to find four of my filipino colleagues sitting there eating lunch and conversing in english. when i jokingly asked them why they weren't speaking tagalog, they assured me that they speak tagalog together when they're out somewhere, but it would be rude to speak it in the break room because "if you walked in, you wouldn't be able to be included in the conversation.")
those students, pre-nursing students and orientees who are horrified to see that "their nurse" doesn't do things the exact way they learned in school and are anxious to report them to someone -- well, they're budding bullies. why not wait and see why the nurse is doing it that way -- could be it's a better way than what you were taught in school. at the very least, why rush to "report" someone? i'm sure you'd be indignant if someone "reported" you because you didn't do things the exact way they did. you'd have all kinds of arguments marshaled about why your way was just as correct, if not better. and probably you'd be complaining about being "eaten."
the newbie who was horrified that the nurse she was shadowing didn't use gloves for some aspect of patient care and was determined to see that nurse punished -- again, bullying behavior.
the night i was working in our eight-bed ward with five newbies and one other "old dog", the newbies were tittering together in a corner, and would immediately quiet down the minute the other nurse or i approached. i don't know if they were talking about us or not -- but that was rude. one of them then wanted me to drop what i was doing to help her troubleshoot her balloon pump . . . the same balloon pump i'd been troubleshooting off and on all shift while she was off tittering with her peers . . . and when i said i couldn't because i was starting a levophed drip for a patient whose blood pressure was rapidly headed south, told me i wasn't being sufficiently supportive of her growth as a nurse. the other "old dog" told her she obviously hadn't been sufficiently supported in her growth as a polite human being . . . and all three of us were in the manager's office the next morning to explain why us two "old dogs" had been "rude" to poor princess.
increasingly, "bullying" seems to mean "not giving me what i want when i want it". "eating your young" seems to be not giving the new person what they want when they want it.
as a rule, i don't see my older colleagues being rude to the younger ones. the rudeness seems to flow exclusively in the other direction. amazingly, those who are rudest to their older colleagues are the ones who are screaming loudest about not being respected, supported or encouraged at work. i rarely hear complaints from the older nurses about being eaten by the young. they just suck it up and do their best to socialize and orient the newbies into the unit.
about bullying, let me just say that if you look for it, you'll find it, whether or not it actually exists. but these days i'm thinking most of the bullying goes up hill rather than down.
