evil work biatches - give me hope!

[tympanic]

After yet another week of horrendous sabotage from the mean girl brigade at my work I'm in dire need of some optimism.

My workplace is toxic to its very core but I am not in a position at the moment to readily find something else. I'm not looking for advice or ideas to seek vengeance (though they might be amusing...). Believe me, I've tried everything above board short of a lobotomy to make the situation better for myself. I'm just looking for stories where other women - after being the underdog - prevailed in the end, to help keep me from losing my shit completely lest I go nuclear on these bitches.

Help me, O'Mumsnet Kenobis. You're my only hope.

I have found women to be bitchy, but the worst colleague I ever had was a man. We were the only two people on the team. We worked hard and had a laugh. One day he just stopped talking to me. Completely ignored me. I never found out what I was supposed to have done. A month later conversation resumed as if nothing had happened but it transpired that he had been stealing my clients from under my nose so that he would hit his sales targets.
As we sold advertising in different categories this was a complicated kind of internal fraud. He didn't even get a slap on the wrist.

The worst work colleague was male and he followed me everywhere - he told me this on the day I left work. Creepy bastard freaked me out and caused me mental health damage.

I work now in a female dominated industry. I'd gladly not be friends with most of them, but I do work well alongside them.

We were talking and laughing the other day about work affairs. Apparently the rumours apply to everyone and the consensus was that those who start them have no life beyond Coronation Street.

OMG I feel your pain. I worked with some super unpleasant people in one company.

They sabotaged my work too. A file had been lost and because I was in charge of the filing they blamed it on me and I got a written warning. It turned up later at the bottom of one of the mean girls inboxes.

Other thing they did was trash the works kitchen and leave it in a mess and blame it on me.

Once I had a right bollocksing over ‘leaving the kitchen in a really dreadful mess’ I went into see what the problem was, it was literally two tiny specks of tomato sauce the size of a pin prick.

Oh and they used the work messenger to slag me off and be really abusive. Someone accidentally cc’d me into the conversation so I saw it all.

The MD’s attitude was my fault for reading the messages rather the people who sent them.

Totally toxic people. I had a bit of a breakdown from the abuse and quit.

I’d say leave as soon as you possibly can for the sake of your men

industrial grade german stink bombs. get a teddy with recorder so you can hear conversations when not around. compile evidence. i'd go for another job personally. make a note of emails missed off.

@QuitMoaning Brilliant :)

I had a part time job near my home many years ago, worked mornings only. With one exception all women staff who were as mad as a barrel load of ferrets. I had my work sabotaged, think deleting all the corporate member’s records from the database and saying it was me. Making everyone but me a coffee or tea. Saying I had to frank the office post and answer the phones apart from my own job, (neither of these in my job description). They ganged up on the director and set her up for a disciplinary with the trustees. I used to leave at 1.30pm and go home for my lunch and to entertain my Mum with the day’s excesses.

I was in that job 18 months and the last 6 months knew I was leaving to go on an extended holiday. I gave them the required 4 weeks notice. The response from one woman was good, I can have my old job back.

I got another job when I came home and within weeks had a phone call from ‘Nicked my job woman’. There had been mass redundancies after I left and were there any jobs going where I was now. Nope, in your dreams.

@ToEarlyForDecorations

Very helpful, wasn’t it. Maybe whoever posted that sage advice can help give some insight into the minds of the bitches.

You’re right about the “smile, don’t speak” policy. I think it’s the only real option for me.

@Alice. I’ve done a lot of self-reflection in my life and it’s nothing I’ve done. Although we’re considered the same level, I’m actually more experienced and qualified than these women. I am friendly with everyone and complain a lot less than they do. I don’t join their bitch sessions, and I’m not prepared to do so just to win them over. Maybe that’s it.

@cider That’s terrible. I’m sorry to hear about your husband. They always seem to promote bullies. Will never understand it.

I experienced bullying at my last job. I had to go part time due to chronic illness. Guy was brought in to take up the slack and he was an absolute prick towards me from day one (when he hit on me and I knocked him back). He would ignore emails offering advice (resulting in company losing money) he would fetch everyone a drink but blatantly ignore me, hide files he knew I needed. I complained in the end and he was spoken too but I decided to leave the 18 year career I had there as I just didn’t need the hassle on top of being ill.

I then found out via a colleague the bully had been stalking my Facebook and Linked In profiles after I left and commenting on my profile photos which he claimed were “sexual” and “what’s she doing putting pictures like that up?” Profile pics were of me on holiday in a pretty off shoulder evening dress! But WTF this guy was doing stalking me I don’t know

I had a workplace bitch who had a couple of side kicks but it was really her who made my life so difficult. I put up with it for over a year and she got worse and worse and upped her game thinking she could get away with whatever she liked. Finally she pushed me too far and I complained about her to my manager who was different to her manager and we had a meeting together (with her manager and mine). Unbeknown to me her new manager was sick up to the back teeth with her and the bitch was clueless at the meeting (she was the only one not in the know) it was billed as an informal meeting to improve the service but she was rude, arrogant, awkward and bitchy towards me in the meeting but I have never been as calm. She has been moved elsewhere now which she is furious about and depressed about. I smile every day when I go into work now so every dog has it’s day OP.

The same theme seems to come out. The antagonist almost takes on cult status but no-one seems to want to confront them. I can understand, with some bullying types, if they, themselves, picked up a culture in their early years and have just conformed to it and have not been exposed to better working practices. However, there are examples of wherever these people get transferred to, they soon behave the same. It is so often the case that people don't hate their jobs, the actual technical mechanics of doing the jobs, but inter-relationships with others can - as we've seen - drive them almost to want to fall under a bus.

Agree with 'kill them with kindness'. It's very easy to get drawn into bitchiness but that just makes you as bad as them. My oh and I got together through work and there was so much gossip and nastiness from jealous coworkers about us.
Even though it upset me I just kept smiling sweetly. Eventually they get bored and reveal themselves as the pathetic bitter cretins they are with absolutely zero input from you.
Good luck x

I once had a job with school hours with a local haulage company. There were only 3 other people in my actual office bit and my role was actually created through the office manager emigrating abroad but continuing to work remotely, her deputy taking over the manager's day to day duties together with her own and then me picking up her slack. The other two employees were a data entry clerk and the financial controller.

I have never felt such an outsider in any other job before...they all used to slag everyone off constantly and have in-jokes and the deputy would never explain any of the procedures to me properly so I was constantly making mistakes which she would present to the MD! She would also only correspond with me via email despite only sitting a couple of feet away from me. Part of my duties were to collect figures from a manager off another site but he would ignore emails and phone calls so I could never get in touch with him - turns out that he would drop by our office most days around 7:30am and that's when the deputy used to get the figures etc off him when it was part of her job. My hours were 9:30-2:30, I was never going to catch him and she refused to get them off him on my behalf. Of course this didn't become clear until she complained about me to the MD again and he had words with me.

I was only there 8 weeks as the nit-picking was constant and during this time my DS (3 at the time) was hospitalised with breathing difficulties. I spent 36 hours at his bedside and then convinced his deadbeat father to stay with him so I could go to work as snide remarks were being made about me having time off so soon after starting there - when I went back in, they slagged me off for being a terrible mother and leaving my sick DS's bedside "just" to go to work!!! I was a single mother, my ex didn't (and still doesn't) pay maintenance, if I didn't work I didn't have money!

The last straw came when my nan died so I had a day off to help my DM and the deputy rifled through my desk to find "evidence" for her latest complaint about me to the MD and sent me a horrible email about my performance. I broke down crying to my parents who told me to pack the job in and offered to support me til I found another as it was making me so unhappy - I never set foot in the place again.

There have been horrible people in every place I have worked but I found it relatively easy to avoid most of their crap but in this place all of my co-workers were the same

OP - huge sympathies from me too. I work with two very difficult women.

Don’t ‘kill them with kindness’ they don’t deserve it. Don’t engage anymore than you have to, send e-nails to back yourself up. Save extra copies of work elsewhere so if it’s tampered with you know and have the correct version.

What you will find is when you stop engaging you will suddenly become really interesting to them as they try to work out why you aren’t bothered about them. Icy and professional.

I've always found female bosses in my sector to be on a total power trip, therefore they are horrendous. I imagine men are like this too, overall, although I've had 3 male bosses and 3 females bosses.

The women by far were the worst although I must say my experience shouldn't be generalised. Maybe its because things are harder to advance career wise with women, it pits us against each other (I'm not competitive, I just want to be happy and get paid every month!)

Don’t kill them with kindness I tried that and thought eventually I would wear her down and she would be forced to like me an dbw nice to me. It just made her furious and her behaviour even worse.

@FlurkenSchnit

Sounds a lot like my workplace. You just can’t win. The whole place is shocking so it’s hard to remember there are actually a few normal people there too. I am on friendly terms with colleagues in other sections and they can’t believe some of the nastiness I deal with.

Thanks for everyone’s insights. Definitely lifted my mood. I’m going to channel my inner ice queen and hope they lose interest in being arseholes and start to grow up a bit. Off to watch Heathers...

I had two women who had wanted the previous caretaker manager to be kept on and not me. We were in an office together, with the previous incumbent still there. Awkward. She barely spoke to me, and in the end did a full on ignore, after telling us all that she always got revenge when she was wronged, even if it took years...sinister.

She was caught out sabotaging some of our immediate manager's work too, wrong versions of reports being sent out, that sort of thing, which could be explained away as a mistake. She never made mistakes....

They all continued to sit together, whispering and being really petty about things like tea making, always leaving me out. They would always moan about changes I made and in the end, we had a final showdown with senior managers, when their true colours came out. They had numerous things to say about me which were just daft, as in I was too cheerful and didn't respect them because I made decisions which they didn't agree with...ie, behaving as a manager. It was so nasty that the senior managers ended by apologising to me for their behaviour in the meeting.

Shortly after that, they both got other jobs elsewhere in the organisation, and I gave them good references through gritted teeth.... I’ve got a great team now and I can't tell you the difference , all pulling together instead of sulking and resentment.

Sadly, one of them had previously worked with me on another team, when we got on really well and I’d supported her through some really tough personal circumstances and really had her back when they were looking at redundancies... so it was quite the stab in the back. The other one just never disengaged from her old manager and clearly felt I had stolen her job (which she wasn't qualified for).

No matter how gently I introduced change, and how carefully I acknowledged their great work, it was never going to be better. Kill them with kindness? No, four or five years on, I would still rather like to slap them and hope,I never set eyes on them again.

Yep. I used to have a Line Manager who was an utter bitch. She took total pleasure in putting me down and making my life miserable. I just kept my head down and got on with my job. It was one of the most awful times of my life. I hated her and still cannot forgive her for being so fucking awful. I have managed very many people since then and I cannot contemplate treating people so badly as she treated me.

Fotunately we got a new senior manager who wanted to rearrange things and she got moved to another office in the same city and I got a new Line Manager. A few months after I applied for a different job in the same organisation and got it, which opened up a whole new world to me. I'm now 3 grades more senior than she is and have professional qualifications. She's still the same grade she was 25 years ago. when she managed me Oh dear, how sad, never mind...

My story was I got a job in a well known large company. I was doing well here until my direct supervisor came back from maternity leave. After that I was given more work to do and no matter what I did it was never good enough.
Most of the people I worked with could see what was going on. One lady said to me I don't know how you keep going with the work load and her.
She then made sure I got no bonus.
I had spoken to my union rep about her and told them about this.
After this I decided I had enough. I knew I would get full pay if I went out sick. I waited till the last week in the month. The week I had to do the work of 3 people and rang in sick. I got a sick certain due to stress. After a few weeks I started to look for another job. I got a job paying £3000 a year more.

I was in contact with my union rep and told them I got a new job. The union rep arranged a meeting with me, them and the head of hr.
I then told the head of HR all about my supervisor. My union rep was aware that she had done the same to several people. I explained that I had no choice but to leave the company due to her and that also they were not paying staff enough.
I heard that she was bought up in front of some of the top managers in the place and her life got very uncomfortable in work after this.
Her bonus for the following year was gone. About 5 years later this company let 80% off their staff go including her. This industry at the time were letting staff go everywhere. I heard that she did not get great redundancy. Some one we know in common told me she was job hunting without success but she was telling people it was great to spend some time at home with her kids.

I have a friend who I will call Jane. A number of years ago Jane got a job with decent pay in a well known company.
The manager of her department just had work in her life and expected her staff to be the same. This lady would give out if you were 10 seconds late to work but never praised a person for doing extra work or using their inatative to benefit the department. Along with this their were 3 supervisors, 2 of them were bitches and one of them was nice.
One of the supervisors (a) if she decided she like you made sure you got the nicer jobs or put into the area you told her you wanted. She managed to make one girls life such a misery she left the job and then moved one of her favourites into this job. This girl was not able for the work load but suddenly part of the work load moved to another area near this supervisor.

Jane worked hard but because she was not a friend of (a)(supervisor) she got all the hard horrible and time consuming jobs. Then another lady called Paula joined the department. Jane realised that only her or Paula would get a further contract at the end of the year as the company were making changes.

Well Jane was told 3 weeks before the end of the contract she was not getting another contact. Her manager then decided to tell her in not a nice way just why this was not happing. She also said to Jane I will be saying this if I am asked for a reference for you in the future.

Jane was not happy to hear what she said but she was glad to get away from a crowd of bitches. She ended up getting a nice job and working with nice people.

Well within a few months the following happen with previous crowd Jane worked with:
They gave Paula a 2nd contract. A few weeks later Paula give them her notice saying she had enough of doing X and y. She did not like been treated like she was back in primary school. She also told her manager that letting Jane go was the biggest mistake she ever made and she could not stay in a place that treated staff so badly. Jane's ex manager offers Paula more money to stay but was told no.
2 of the supervisors got HR approval for a leave of absence at the same time to go traveling. Jane's ex manager had 3 staff leaving within 6 weeks just at the busiest time of the year.
The manager had 2 staff working mornings only. They had worked full-time before they had kid's. She asked them could they work full days for 2 or 3 days a week each. They came back and said no due to child care.
She moved staff around and took on one new staff member. The person she took on was always late, ringing in sick and was told after 3 months her contact was being terminated.
Then the 3rd supervisor came back from traveling early and was snapped up for a better job so she never went back to the company.
Jane heard from one of the friends she had their that the place had become a total nightmare to work in due to how busy it was and due to the lack of staff. This lady left also with 12 months.
Jane said to recently if I had been given another contract their I would not be in such a good position as I am in now.

It just baffles me how women can treat other women this way. Not that it's solely restricted to females, but in my experience men tend to be more overt and aggressive with their issues, so it's much more out in the open. Underhanded and subversive behaviour seems to be more the remit of women.

I don't have the answer to your question OP, other than to only make sure that you keep your own morals and standards. Never stoop to their level.

I've had experience of an individual maliciously and vindictively trying to destroy my/my family member's career, seemingly with no come back. This has included:

• falsifying evidence for formal complaints
• spreading false and potentially very damaging rumours both in the professional and personal spheres
• socially isolating individuals whilst playing the 'benevolent social butterfly' (presumably because having a crowd of sycophants around you means you couldn't possibly be the bully)
• using pregnancy as an excuse to justify why their bullying was actually acceptable/why they can't be disciplined
• using social media posts to obviously gloat over potentially distressing events in people's personal lives

All of this whilst working in what is supposed to be a 'caring' profession, and actively self-promoting themself as a poster child for it!

I won't lie - it's a struggle every day to see them seem to get off with it, or worse, be actively protected by ineffectual management. Even more so when you have no recourse to redress the balance without compromising your own integrity. But keep your chin up, do your own job to the best of your ability and find a support mechanism that works for you. It's quite powerful to recognise that they can't affect you unless you let them - so give them no excuse to have any more power over you by not putting your personal validation into the hands of other people.

A healthy amount of self-reflection is also a good idea (as already suggested) - not to beat yourself up, but just to help identify how you let it get to a stage that you're upset by it, and how to avoid that in future!