Someone is secretly bullying me at work..

[Hungrycaterpillarsmummy]

And I don't know who it is.

Basically, someone constantly changes my chair settings on the days I leave at 3pm (and others are in the office until 4/5pm).
I have a really bad back so my chair is set at a position that helps it plus we all have to do ergonomic checks as part of an EHS thing for our desk and chair.
So it really annoys me when it has been played with and someone is doing it on purpose. Other things happen to like the cables of my monitor are unplugged and my mouse is switched off.
When I started there over a year ago there were a couple of guys who would do stuff like this and it happened so much I had to bluntly tell them to stop. And they did. But this seems to be a bit 'extra'. I obviously made the mistake of showing my annoyance when it has happened previously (and by that I mean by saying something like "who has changed my chair settings?"

But the issue is - I don't know who it is and won't be able to find out.
My manager won't be able to find out. There's no CCTV and no one would admit it if she brought it up..so what do I do?!

OP, it's great that you've got your manager on side with a plan of action. I hope you get to the bottom of it.

It's not Murder She Wrote

One thought keeps coming to mind: won't she look a bit mad? Oh, there's @Hungrycaterpillarsmummy smearing god knows what on her chair again.

All of which are abusive behaviours. Therefore bullying.

If this is unequivocally abusive behaviour, which is one possibility, then there is a sensible route to go down, which doesn't involve a hidden camera.

There are definitely other possibilities, though, and if they are coming from different circumstances. The top of the list would be 'other people in the building using a desk that is not in use, at the times when one of its occupants is not present' - which is also supported by the information, and really normal in many offices - then that could look a bit like a defensive, kneejerk reaction. It's annoying, but in that case, you take steps to make sure your chair can't be changed easily and you have some kind of 'Don't remove plugs or cables' warning. If that doubles down on the abusive aspects, then you are more sure it's deliberate.

All academic though, as the OP has raised this carefully with her manager.

Can't you just ignore it? I mean its irritating but does it take much to readjust a chair and plug in a mouse?

bullying is a massive stretch.

someone could be using your desk space and changing the chair to fit their needs.

im one that unplugs everything (from the socket) at my desk. I’m in one day a week so its annoying for whoever sit there the other days.

are you able to move desks? Maybe put up some signs on the desk and chair?

if it continues, then maybe bring it up in a team meeting, just to remind people about your back and that it causes problems for your mobility having to plug everything back in.

Not RTFT but here is what I would do.

1. print out in large letters - Idiots mess with Ergo settings and paste on the chair, table, Monitor
2. if no CCTV - report to security that someone stole an important document left on the chair (slide the chair under the table with a few papers. When investigating someone will tell who messes with your chair
3. leave eggs on the chair and see what happens
4. come early one day and mess with everybody cables - its a everybody issue then it gets addressed

good luck

This happened to a friend of mine. She had a chair made for her through OH especially for her checkout and on the days she wasn't there another colleague, who had made it clear on a few occasions that she thought it was preferential treatment, used her chair, messing with the settings. This went on for a couple of weeks, until I was doing an overtime shift to cover another team leader and caught her. I told her to put it back and use the one she had on her c/o and when she refused saying she had a bad back too (BS) I told her to see OH and get her own.
I did report it and our manager gave her a disaplinary and a final warning letter. She transfered to another store before she was sacked.

Any reason you just couldn't get permission to put your own camera watching your workspace. If I were the manager I'd want to know who's messing around instead of doing their job. I'd also want to nip it it the bud as if they keep getting away with it they are likely to target others / do worse things.

Have your team done 'bystander' training, because somebody will know who is doing this. You need to tell your line manager in order to record it because your chair-setting is part of your welfare at work.

I know LOADS about employment law. I have written some of them myself for the BBC.

This absolutely is not bullying. You're a...

Could the cleaner be knocking things accidentally? It seems a really odd way to bully someone.

This explains a lot. As someone who was bullied at the BBC…

Discus the camera option with your manager? 🤔

You must have a formal H&S and/or Occupational Health representative....

It's not bullying and harassment to deliberately muck around with the chair of a colleague with a disability?

Your answer explains a lot about the culture at the BBC....

I'd ask if I could lock it in an unused meeting room at the end of the day so the childish fuckers couldn't get their hands on it.

But before I did that, I'd report it to the manager as a bullying issue, and to whoever deals with H&S as a risk. And if neither of them take appropriate action, I'd go straight to HR. This is a horrible form of bullying, and as it's related to a disabling health condition, management ought to come down on it like a ton of bricks.

Could it be the cleaners?

I would be very wary re the camera- if you get caught you could end up in serious trouble. it’s really not worth the potential fall out.

Even if the camera works, and you find out who it is you won’t be able to say how you know it was them. You could use the “I came back and caught them in the act”- but if you don’t come back when others are there, it is your word against their, isn’t it? And it will be, because you are not intending to come back to catch them out. So, if they deny it, you won’t be able to use your “evidence” against them, and they will a) know you are annoyed about it; b) on to them; c) could be able to try to make it look like you are making false accusations/ bullying them as a cover.

Re-read your post. You're claiming you've written "employment law" for the BBC - we both know you haven't. New laws are created by acts of parliament and precedent - not written by people working for companies. Try writing that post again so that it's truthful and makes sense - and to help you, I believe the word you're looking for is "policies".

I am sorry this is happening to you.

Beetroot juice is a good natural stain and easy to apply but it will wash off hands eventually. It is harder to wash out of pale clothes though!

Oil paint is good because it stays wet for a long time and it does have a noticeable smell to it so it might put them off even if you don't actually catch them.

Any other ideas?

I do love the idea of the camera though. I am sure that you can get spy stuff that's smaller than a GoPro.

Please come back and let us know how you get on.

For those saying it's a quick easy job to adjust the chair and plug cables back in, you've clearly never had a bad back issue.

It took me a week to fine tune the settings on my made to measure office chair, and before I got that if I had to adjust my "standard" office chair I wouldn't always get it perfect first go & it could take 2-3 tries to get it right; each try after thinking I'd got it right then realising after half an hour that it wasn't.

And regarding cables, depends on how easy they are to access. I'm OK if I need to check a cable around the middle of the desk area, but reaching across & round monitors etc can hurt. And don't even think about anything to do with floor level plugs - if I got down to plug something in under the desk I wouldn't be able to get up again!

Anyone here who thinks that repeatedly acting in a way that they know causes pain and distress to another staff member just for the sake of laughing at them behind their back isn't bullying, maybe you should read up on the subject.

Where's your office? Gordonstoun?