A workplace in which bullying is allowed to go unchecked is an insidious environment

I suppose it was looking at the way my then boss operated which led me to that conclusion. I think the problem was that he only became my boss after I had been offered the job but before I actually started. In the interim the chap who made me the offer was put out to pasture.

I always had the feeling that no matter what I said about things, he preferred to believe the contrary – an automatic assumption, I used to tell Herself, that I was wrong and that those who spoke about me were right.

Of course, as she told me at the time, my bolshieness didn’t help matters and that, coupled with a lack of ambition (other than to earn sufficient cash to provide us with the necessary so as not to be banging on the Constable’s door for a bit of welfare) meant that I quickly reached the conclusion I mentioned above.

I have lost count of the number of grown men and women I saw emerge from his office having been reduced to tears – he used to keep a box of tissues in a desk drawer, considerate bloke that he was – and I used to describe what he put people through as a form of bullying.

There is, after all, the world of difference between a boss or a line manager carrying out their proper function regarding discipline in its broadest context and what I used to see at that particular place of employment.

A workplace in which any form of bullying is allowed to go unchecked is an insidious environment in which to earn one’s daily bread, and the felony is compounded when he or she (I’ve seen some nasty women bullies in my time) is the boss.

Bullying takes many forms, and what sounds trivial to colleagues can often seem like the end of the world to the victim.

Quite often there is precious little that can be done about it. Indeed, if the growth industry that is the human resources departments actually did anything meaningful about it – some do, perhaps, but an awful lot of them don’t – then people like me might well refrain from suggesting that if these people actually had a function, they’ve managed to conceal it from me.

I heard not long ago of a case where someone had made what can only be described as a cock-up, and one of considerable magnitude.

He was disciplined according to the agreed procedure and he exercised his right to appeal against the finding – an appeal which meant that he kept his job.

His boss didn’t like that particular decision and ordered that the man be given no work at all. He simply came into his office at the proper time and left at the end of his ‘working’ day, having done the sum total of zilch. He did that until he drew his pension.

That is bullying – vindictive, nasty bullying for which the person responsible should have been shown the door. Sadly, to the best of my knowledge he is still there.

I am pleased that Dr Bryn Williams carried out his recent study and I am not at all surprised that he reached the conclusion that bullying is a significant problem in Island workplaces.

By the sound of it the survey, which involved 830 people (a bit more thorough than seven out of ten women prefer a particular brand of hair spray, in my view), brings no surprises to those of us who, in varying degrees, have been bullied.

THE letter last week from l’ancien bailli, Sir Philip Bailhache, illustrated another type of bullying – this time on us collectively by the British government.

I have a good deal of time for the former Deputy for Grouville and often sit in The Shed – fortified, I have to say, by a slug or three of calvados (to which I understand Sir Philip is also partial, although perhaps in more moderate quantities) – and wonder what life would be like here had he not opted to become Solicitor-General but had remained in the Big House.

I’d hazard a guess that the man who famously told Home Secretary Jack Straw where to get off when the Edwards Inquiry into the finance industry (among other things) was sneaked into being by way of a planted question from a tame Labour Member of Parliament would have given short shrift to Chancellor Gordon Brown when the latter held up one of our Budget laws because he didn’t like what was in it.

I always thought that it was the Privy Council’s function to approve legislation from here unless it fell foul of the good governance rule, but clearly the then British government, and this one as well, for all we know, thought otherwise and seemed to treat the Privy Council as being just another government department.

Not surprisingly, his letter brought the predictable response from Richard Murphy of the Tax Justice Network – he who seems to be joined at the hip to John Christensen.

I suppose the latter was making the tea so it was Mr Murphy who chose to tell Sir Philip how wrong he was. Still, I suppose it keeps the pair of them out of the pub.

If push ever came to shove, I know who I’d like in my corner defending my interests and it would be neither Mr Murphy nor Mr Christensen.

AND finally … with the annual exchange of mostly unwanted retail trash just a few days away (although distilled apple juice is always welcome and the older it is the better it is), I wish all those who have featured in or read this column all that they wish themselves.

And in the greedy age in which Christmas in shops starts when the kids return to school in September, let’s remember it’s a special time for children.