New job - feeling a bit shocked by something that happened

[bagpuss90]

Sorry me again 🙄I’m semi retired , I started a new part time job today. Everyone was lovely, very helpful and friendly . I’ve no complaints at all. However I overheard some of the staff laughing about one of their colleagues who I gathered was off work with stress and anxiety. Two of them were mimicking their colleague having a panic attack and hyper ventilating. Obviously I don’t know the back story and I’ve obviously never met their colleague - but AIBU to be a bit shocked by this. I’ve suffered panic attacks myself -though thankfully not for years . But I know how debilitating they can be. I just thought it was really cruel and unkind. It’s put me off the job tbh though otherwise I did enjoy the day

Sorry, I meant to quote this post

Of course it isn't . You must have worked in some right cesspits.

It depends on the circumstances. It is unkind but you don't know how often this person has a panic attack and leaves their work for everyone else to deal with. Sympathy can get thin after a while.

I was telling @Sockloon that the OP wasn’t ‘bitching’.

They sound unpleasant. I would avoid them. What is your new job?

It's not good behaviour but you're one day in, eavesdropping on colleagues, missing context, judging them harshly and posting on MN about it.
Starting a new job is hard. Only you can decide if it's fair to judge a workplace on an overheard, out of context conversation on the first day.

It sounds like these colleagues are on this thread. Posters minimising completely unacceptable behaviour like this must have very low standards.

I would be shocked and very wary of these people. It is never OK to mock someone with mental health issues.

So much projection for a situation of someone with first day nerves overhearing a conversation about a colleague she doesn't even know and transplant herself into that situation.

The fact she openly said she didn't know the background implies she is aware of employees gaining the system which is common among all industries across the globe, hence why HR has become a thing.

The people taking it personal and wanting to inject themseleves into the situation isn't helping the op at all, a common factor on MN, considering it is supposed to be full of multiple degree educated women from RG Uni's the lack of 'it is just first day, you admit you don't know the background of the person they was talking about, or in fact the people who you eavesdropped into thier conversation'

What sort of workplace is it? I worked at bookmakers during university and even with my colleagues it was anything goes. I now work on an office where that behaviour would be inappropriate. Also worked in a supermarket which would be somewhere inbetween the two!

I can't believe you typed that.

Disgusting but very common in my experience unfortunately.

I've worked in many different places and never seen anything like this.

People are dicks. But I wouldn't be leaving my job every time I came in contact with one.

It’s all very well saying it’s unacceptable but who polices it? In what way is it “unacceptable”? Someone makes a “joke” and you report them to…who? Is it in your terms and conditions “you will not take the piss out of colleagues who are off sick”?

It’s a nice thought, but I think in the real world (ie the minimum wage workplace rather than the MN 6-figure one) bitching about people who are off sick is sadly perfectly normal, and more often than not led by management.

Don’t quit, that’s ridiculous! You’ve overheard people you don’t know, taking the piss out of someone you also don’t know. Don’t leap to the defence of someone you haven’t met, you may have completely the wrong end of the stick.

Of course it's not. I think it is ok, bitching about a colleague for having form for taking the piss, which might be the situation here. OP has no idea, as it's her first day 🤷‍♀️

Do you really think so? I hope not. It isn't where I work and where I work is practically hell on earth. :)

Definitely not. In my 35 years of working I have worked in about 20 places (lots as a temp). Only one was like this, and the manager was a spineless weasel who ignored the racist behaviour of two members of staff.
Where I work now never ever happen. We are professional, decent folk who look out for each other.

Nor mine. It’s totally unacceptable isn’t it

No not at my work place. Never acceptable to publicly mimic a colleague, even if you do not believe their condition or symptoms

This would be my take also. And the subject being mocked - a very genuine and unpleasant mental health issue - makes it clear that at least those colleagues are pretty unpleasant people.

I'd do what a previous poster suggested: leave, citing this as the reason why.

No point taking on a new job where there's a major clash in your expectations of decency from colleagues, and the apparent company ethos that it's ok to discuss private health information and fun to victimise the sufferer of mental health problems.

It’s normal I feel in a lot of workplaces for mental health challenges and the long term impacts to not be recognised and supported in the same way as physical health conditions. However, it’s not normal, and it’s very unkind for staff to behave in that way. I wonder if it is ever challenged by management if witnessed

For a while l worked part time in an estate agents as a sideline to my 'proper' job.
They all seemed lovely. Until one day when there was only me, the manager, and one of the other girls in the office.
Knowing l could hear everything they were saying (all in the same room, about ten feet apart) the pair of them proceeded to make derogatory and bitchy comments about one of the other staff who was on her lunch break.
I didn't say anything at the time, but a couple of days later l rang the head office and said l was handing in my notice. And l told them why. I don't know if anything was ever done about it, but at least l felt l'd said my piece.
Yes, you do get this, but to do it in front of a new employee on their first day is appalling. As a PP said, gossip is normal. Mocking someone when they're ill, isn't.

@Emptycrackedcup how would a colleague know a person was taking the piss? I managed to stay in work when I was struggling but mostly because I knew the bullying would be worse if I was off. I was having suicidal thoughts. Had I been signed off, none of my bitchy colleagues would have had a clue and would have assumed I was taking the piss.

Never mind unprofessional, that is seriously nasty behaviour.