Aggression from men in the office

[OfficeWoes]

AIBU? I felt a man had been aggressive and intimidating to me at work and was preventing me from doing my job effectively so I made a formal report about bullying without naming him. It’s not happened before in that office and I’ve been there years without an issue.

There was no physical aggression just a kind of verbal blocking of my tasks.

I probably won’t name him and now feel I overreacted, but I also feel like men get away with this all the time so..

I get the sentiment, but if you're not going to progress it, it could be perceived as attention-seeking like those people on Facebook who post comments like:

"I had a bad day"

-What happened???-

"I don't want to talk about it"

How were you blocked?

The sad reality is that a number of men do have a superiority complex and think they can command women.

Have you ever said anything to him about his behaviour? Long ago I perfected the raised eyebrow, light sarcasm response, and hard stare. (With an occasional harder response.) Most will back off once they know they can’t get away with that shit.

if no other option, you are right to make a complaint as it’s inappropriate behaviour.

Why wouldn't you name him? Instead of lobbing a brick at this man, you're throwing him a marshmallow.

You should have named him. What was the point of the report otherwise? HR will roll their eyes and move on with their day.

I didn’t name him because I thought he might have done it unconsciously. I said this in the report.

I don’t see how you can make a complaint about someone without naming them? What’s the point, and how are HR meant to deal with it?

What outcome did you want?

Unconscious bias training for the team would be an outcome which might work??

Could you explain what you mean by verbal blocking of tasks? What did he say?

I would write down anything said & name them or you won't be taken seriously . Once could be happenstance , twice or more is a pattern of behaviour. But realistically HR will want more than two instances of it as the person could claim they were stressed or it was a one off thing you took too personally.

That does fuck all, IME.

You should have named him to HR.

For sure there’s a lot of unhelpful behaviour at work, most of goes unnoticed by the perpetrators and their counterparts because it’s just the culture. Reporting this behaviour may also be the culture. But this won’t be the last time you have to deal with aggressive behaviour that impedes your impact. And not always from men!

Since we know that unconscious bias training has little impact, and that you didnt even pinpoint the culprit, maybe the only good outcome of this situation is to develop your own strategies for dealing with similar, and so improving your own longer term success. You could maybe discuss this with a wise HR colleague…..

@Getabloominmoveon I will probably do that when they contact me (I left my contact details). I know I need to work on my responses to challenging behaviour.

What does 'verbal blocking of your tasks' mean in reality?

Of course men like this get away with it, because their victims are socialised to be nice and give them the benefit of the doubt, and not cause trouble. He didn't care about the trouble he caused for you, why would you excuse him?

Also, I've done my unconscious bias training for the year. Why should I have to do it again because Brian is an aggressive arsehole?

@TheresaCrowd refusing to follow some guidelines that I set, on a task I am responsible for. Then trying to make out I am a hypocrite by blaming me for something else unrelated.

He also keeps mentioning my line manager whenever he does this: “have you spoken to line manager? You need to speak to line manager” which I find threatening. I’ve never had someone say this to me before, I honestly feel like he’s trying to belittle me.

I say that when someone is doing something contrary to P&P. Have you asked him to clarify WHY he is asking about your LM?

Ad no, no one will thank you for department wide training that only one person needs, and he will likely be the one who takes nothing away from it.

What you did is not likely to be useful. If you haven't named the person, then the managers can't tackle the behaviour, and a generic "unconscious bias" training is unlikely to make this man stop and think.

Not naming names will either leave it being ignored or a system wide
"Hey everyone, please remember to be respectful to each other" type email

Which will piss 40% off because they feel their work is being interfered with, leave 40% worrying its about them and the 20% who need it will just ignore the email because it couldn't possibly be about them

I still can't see what he did wrong though. It's not threatening to ask if you've spoken to LM. It's wanting to clarify you aren't doing something against what they've said, presumably because your guidelines are going against his training