Were you a bully in high school?

[Koalified]

I was scrolling on Reddit and one question that came up was, “What are your high school bullies doing now?”. Interestingly many said that their hs bullies are now nurses. Do you think the nursing profession attracts former bullies? How many of you were bullies in high school?

[vintagegal, BSN, DNP, RN, NP]

I wouldn’t say nurses are bullies or rather were bullies, but I dare say we are gossips;) just look at this site! I’m not afraid to fess up and say that I have partaken in the good ol’ “did you see what she did on the last shift?! Wouldn’t help me at all and left a mess!” But even though we gossip and get cranky and sassy, if a colleague needed help watch out for the brigade of nurses that would be there having their back.

[brandy1017, ASN, RN]

My high school bully is dead, died in her sleep a couple years ago.  Lots of people on facebook talked about what a nice person she was, a side of her I never saw,  but her harassment was short lived.  I was a new transfer and out of the blue she followed me into the bathroom and slammed an egg in my hair.  The next day I brought an egg and threw it at her, but she was very big and it bounced off her and hit a senior in her group.   Yellow egg all over her white sweater.  I expected to get beat up by the senior, but nothing happened and that was the end of that.

Another girl volunteered to go into the pond rather than be thrown in.  Heck if that was me, we'd both be in the pond! 

The one bully I dealt with in nursing harassed me as a new grad literally because she was jealous that I was an RN and she was an LPN.  She was a seriously disturbed individual, but more difficult to deal with since I couldn't duke it out with her.  In the end, I survived, she got demoted to a HUC when they phased out LPN's merely a year later.  She had lots of problems, health, weight, emotional and married to an abusive, deadbeat alcoholic.  Over the years he died and her house was foreclosed on.  She was frequently hospitalized and twice I was assigned to be her nurse which didn't sit well with me.  I refused the first time, but the next time I accepted maybe God wanted me to face her so I did and just told her about my wonderful life. 

Weirdly, a few years ago she actually friended me on facebook, but I declined!  No desire to be friends as she put me through hell which made my first year even more difficult than it already was.  But I was not a quitter.  What frustrated me most is that I had no way to fight back and just had to wait it out, while she did all she could to make my life a living hell in her attempt to either run me off or get me fired!  But I wasn't going to let her win!  I know she never became an RN, but doubt that she is working with all her health problems.   I never met someone so delusional before or since, seriously wonder how she was able to work and not be in a psych ward! 

[brandy1017, ASN, RN]

On 9/22/2021 at 8:46 AM, Davey Do said:

"You don't pull on Superman's cape, you don't surf a tidal wave, you don't pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger, and you don't mess around with Dave." -Jim Croce (possibly paraphrased)

You gotta add the song to sing along with. LOL

 

[Hoosier_RN, MSN]

I must be a bully because I've never been bullied. I will put anyone in their place in a heartbeat, the minute they try to walk all over me. I'm noted as the "least easy to cave" nurse at work, but am the first one to have someone's back, as long as they aren't trying to pull a fast one. I think the military molded me to this

In high school, I was unnotable, which was fine by me

[brandy1017, ASN, RN]

On 9/29/2021 at 10:57 AM, ~Shrek~ said:

Yes, nursing attracts bullies. But the type of bullying I have experienced in nursing isn’t the stereotypical high school bullying that we normally see on TV. With nurses it’s about power and stress. The stakes are higher in nursing. A squabble with a coworker can hurt the patient with injury or even death. Some examples are poor training for new grad nurses, refusing to help a nurse if they need help caring for a patient, giving nurses that they don’t like unsafe workloads with patient assignments, etc. in an office setting, mistakes can make a big impact but they are hardly ever if at all life or death. 

Yes that's it exactly!  I almost made a med error one day when I was upset over the bullying.  Thank God I caught it before I gave the med to the wrong patient.  The bullying can rattle you and make it difficult to think clearly, and, of course, make you isolated when nursing is a team sport by necessity!

This LPN turned HUC was insanely jealous of all the new grads, but I got the worst of it I think.  But once she was demoted to HUC she would harass the other new grads that came after me and tell them the Dr orders were wrong and they needed to call the Dr back for this, that or the other just to get them in trouble!  Then there was a time when she didn't show a nurse the run of VTach her patient had so it was definitely endangering patient care.  Thankfully she didn't stay long as she couldn't bear the utter humiliation in her mind of being a secretary which is another delusional thought.  I've been a secretary and it is a fine job and many times I wished I could afford to go back to being a secretary rather than being so stressed out as a nurse!

[guest1163268]

So here's an easy way to deal with bullies. I actually am too big to be bullied but I am brilliant at making people cry if I don't like you. 

Look for their insecurities. Even the prettiest, most good looking person has insecurities. 

So let's take Brad Pitt. ' Why are you such a loser? How many times have you been divorced? Are you gay, why are you so good looking? What's with the stupid girlie smile? Are you a moron?'

You get the picture of how you deal with a bully? Be relentless. 

And no offense to anyone with what I just said, just demonstrating. 

Pass this on to anyone you think is being bullied. You make them uncomfortable and they will leave you alone. 

[Emergent, RN]

Speaking of Brad Pitt, there used to be a naked photo of him online taken by a paparazzi by his pool. Maybe it was cold out that day, but we were not impressed...?

[Davey Do]

12 hours ago, brandy1017 said:

You gotta add the song to sing along with.

Thanks for the link, brandy! It also had a Youtube bio on Mr. Croce that was great. Watching them made me think of my older brother, Eddy, who I've always thought resembled  Jim Croce.

Here's a pic of Eddy from 1979:

Wanting to stay on the topic at hand, bullying, some guys tried to bully Eddy in HS, being 5'7", but like Big Jim Walker, Eddy was "stronger than a country horse". He got into fights and would best his bigger opponents.

Eddy earned the nickname of "Dugo", a play on our last name, and his one of his friends said, "That dude will go! But his nickname also referred to his dancing abilities, for which he was well known, with a style compared to that of Tom Jones.

I was also a scrapper, getting suspended for 3 days my first month in HS for "fighting in a classroom". A guy sitting behind me was messing with me, I told him to stop, I turned back around, and he hit me in the back of the head, so I laid into him.

All's well that ends well. The guy turned out to be the son of one of my Dad's friends. When the guy's Dad found out about the fight, he made the guy telephone my Mom & Dad and apologize for starting the fight.

So I got three days off school without my parents being upset with me. I also graduated HS with honors.

The pattern of extremes, e.g. being suspended from HS my first month yet graduating with honors, followed me the rest of my life. At Wrongway, I was given a prestigious award one month and fired the next.

Newton's Third Law.

[Guest 1152923]

5 hours ago, Curious1997 said:

So here's an easy way to deal with bullies. I actually am too big to be bullied but I am brilliant at making people cry if I don't like you. 

Look for their insecurities. Even the prettiest, most good looking person has insecurities. 

So let's take Brad Pitt. ' Why are you such a loser? How many times have you been divorced? Are you gay, why are you so good looking? What's with the stupid girlie smile? Are you a moron?'

You get the picture of how you deal with a bully? Be relentless. 

And no offense to anyone with what I just said, just demonstrating. 

Pass this on to anyone you think is being bullied. You make them uncomfortable and they will leave you alone. 

     I'm not sure this is the best approach.  Why sink to the same level as some insecure, petty, ignorant, brutish person.  I think it's better to not even dignify their ignorant comments with a response.  Personally, I don't suffer fools or bullies

[Davey Do]

49 minutes ago, morelostthanfound said:

 I think it's better to not even dignify their ignorant comments with a response.

One thing about bullies is they want to get a reaction from the one being bullied, as it gives them a feeling of power. So your persons non grata response, MLTF, takes away their power and they go away unfulfilled.

The rat isn't going to push the button if they're not rewarded.

Another thing about bullies, in accordance to eliciting a response, that they're entertained by their own comments. If we respond to their comments with humor, something often clicks in their minds and they subconsciously think, "This person gets me!"

Case in point: A surgeon that I often scrubbed with would bully the nurses with put-downs. While still relatively new in the OR, I wasn't quick enough for the surgeon. He knew that I had just transferred from psych, so he said, "Why don't you just go back where you came from?!"

I retorted, "Well, if I told you to do that, doc, you'd be in South America!"

The surgeon just glared at me, but the surgeries with him turned into relatively good-natured bantering fests. In fact, after several surgeries with the bantering included, when he stepped out of the sterile field, he'd give me a pat on the back and say, " Good job, Do!"

Some time later, new nurse was to first scrub on on surgery with the surgeon. The assistant OR sup requested that I not banter with the surgeon as I assisted, so the new nurse would feel more comfortable, and I said I would do as she requested.

During the surgery, the surgeon tried to get a response from me. For example, he said, "Don't hold the retractor like that! Hold it like this!" l only replied, "Yes sir".

The surgery wore on with a couple more attempts by the surgeon, I responded appropriately, and he looked at me as if to say, "What's wrong with you? Why don't you want to play with me?"

I got no pat on the back after the surgery, even though it went through without a hitch. What I did get was a talking to by the assistant sup, who told me, "The surgeon wants me to write you up for harassing him".

I got the last laugh, but the surgeon got the last dig.

 

[nursel56]

On 9/22/2021 at 1:54 AM, Koalified said:

I was scrolling on Reddit and one question that came up was, “What are your high school bullies doing now?”. Interestingly many said that their hs bullies are now nurses. Do you think the nursing profession attracts former bullies? How many of you were bullies in high school?

The overarching theme of bully nurses and a supposed negative fixture of nursing culture "bullying" really didn't pop up in my experience until the last 20 years or so.  This, however doesn't say that such behavior didn't or doesn't exist.

In my view, the term is too non-specific, so I can't answer the question.  I don't remember being bullied at all in high school, and by "bully", my only actual memory is 7th-8th grade kids who made demeaning comments about their peers pubertal development or surrounded the tall, geeky guy who carried his clarinet case everywhere in a horrifying group-bully.

I've never seen that in nursing but worked with a few who had personalities indicating they were capable of it.  Just learned to suppress the urge I guess.

[guest1163268]

12 hours ago, morelostthanfound said:

     I'm not sure this is the best approach.  Why sink to the same level as some insecure, petty, ignorant, brutish person.  I think it's better to not even dignify their ignorant comments with a response.  Personally, I don't suffer fools or bullies

Sure, ignore them and hope they will gain insight before bullying the next person? 

The next time you see a car wreck, ignore it because you know for a fact that the injured people don't need help and has lots of time because you are too busy with being above the fray! 

That Texas abortion law, ignore it, Texas will eventually feel ashamed and recant their ways along with the voter suppression laws! Little bullies never grow up to be big bullies, right ? They always treat their women respectfully, right ladies? 

Bullies are well known for ignoring people who don't stand up to them and doesn't sink to their level of pettiness and brutishness. Right? 

I mean the Ostrich ploy is a very successful strategy! If you can't see them, they absolutely can't see you and you are totally safe. Try it standing on the train tracks and I will bet the train absolutely goes straight through you and you will be unharmed! 

I think you folks are so right, each man for himself. Let the strong survive. Suits me!