An anonymous writer talks about their experiences of bullying in the workplace

For October, bullying prevention month

I am writing this article anonymously and have omitted some details to allow for anonymity of those involved, and foremost to protect myself against further retaliation. I have suffered enough.

I am an autistic female. I am experienced within my field and have held managerial positions for some years. My autism is most obvious when I am faced with conflict. I find verbal communication significantly harder due to suffering with situational mutism when highly stressed.

I changed jobs just over 3 years ago. My manager was someone I befriended when we worked together over a decade ago. We therefore knew each other reasonably well, and he was fully aware of my autism and related characteristics prior to my employment.

Quite quickly it transpired that my manager didn’t appreciate my communication style. He claimed every senior manager in the organisation found it problematic. He stated he continually had to defend me. He made me feel increasingly unaccepted, isolated, and anxious.

He often had me living in fear of disciplinary actions, frequently taking me into a separate room, sternly telling me off, demanding that I look at him whenever I failed to make eye contact, even when I explained in between such incidents that I genuinely struggle with eye contact due to being autistic. He often would make me wait for 1–2-week timeframes as to whether any formal disciplinary action would be taken. During this time, he would refuse to communicate with me, leaving me hanging. He never evidenced these disciplinary threats formally, he only referenced them in phone calls and WhatsApp communications, yet for a long time I didn’t question the validity of his claims. I later learned that none of these disciplinary threats were ever real. I never understood what I had done wrong. I would suffer insomnia and beg my manager to let me know what the status quo on the disciplinary threat was.  I would not get any response until he finally and suddenly, often casually, informed me the matter had been dropped and there would be no further action. Each time he made himself out to be my saviour, advising me senior managers had been eager to see me disciplined, but he had strongly advocated on my behalf to have the obscure matter against me dropped. These occurrences increased in frequency and duration as time went on.  

Additionally, colleagues regularly informed me my manager was clearly undermining me through not supporting and often reversing decisions behind my back, mostly without any communication about this with me. He would also make public jokes aimed at me and then get angry when I took these jokes seriously or when I defended myself when it seemed like he was mocking my intelligence or industry knowledge.

Over the latter 2 years of my employment my confidence quite simply eroded. I was continuously petrified, suffering overwhelm, anxiety, depression, insomnia, and suicide ideation. I found myself having more autistic meltdowns, often crying in the office toilets. I was so anxious that I would arrive at work 2 hours early, at 7am, to avoid all rush hour traffic and remain put for over 12 hours to avoid evening rush hour too. When I told my manager that the uncertainty, he was frequently putting me under, was severely impacting my mental health, detailing the suicide ideation, he callously advised me to increase my resilience.

I started to question my manager’s narrative because the organisation displayed a strong ethos towards supporting their neurodivergent staff.  I was even encouraged to write about my autism and related difficulties within our internal online community. I struggled with my doubts enormously because I had fully believed we shared a genuine friendship prior to his professional position of power of me.

One day one of my peers quite randomly stated that we could access the bi-monthly line-management notes between our manager and his line-manager. Eventually I got curious about my manager’s claims that he was always having to defend me to more senior management, and I accessed his folder to ascertain whether he was being truthful. I was disappointed to see that nothing positive was ever said about me. Additionally, a minor incident was exaggerated into a major negative against my name. Big incidents involving other colleagues were not mentioned at all, these managers even had a very positive phrase next to their name. It seemed unbalanced and unfair. I vowed to work harder to change my manager’s narrative about me into a more positive one. I worked more hours, took on extra tasks, did my hardest to be pleasant all the time, I even frequently bought him treats to satisfy his sweet tooth. When his narrative didn’t improve by his next line-management meeting, I felt completely disheartened. Another manager who had received major complaints relating to sexist remarks, had the phrase ‘performing excellently’ next to his name.  I started to feel resentful but did my utmost to mask those feelings. One day I flippantly asked my manager whether he would prefer me to be negative behind his back, and friendly to his face. I stated that it seemed like he preferred such type people. This minor retaliation would come back to haunt me.  The final time I accessed the notes resulted in a major autistic meltdown because I saw myself described as a difficult person. I realised that my manager wasn’t defending me as he had claimed but was in fact creating and feeding a negative narrative about me. I cried uncontrollably, unable to understand what I had done to deserve this. Then it hit me. I did deserve this. I was reading notes between my manager and his line-manager without having the authorisation to do so. I was difficult. I was forsaking my values, I was unworthy. I deserved to be punished.

In the height of these dreadfully overwhelming emotions, mid meltdown, I called my manager and instantly owned up to reading his line-management notes. He was furious. He said he felt violated, he snarled he now understood why I had made digs at him about him preferring people who talk behind his back, he realised I had deducted this from his line-management notes. He reacted as if I had read personal therapy notes rather than managerial notes which foremost contained known performance targets and not much else, other than also evidencing he was not my protector and saviour as he had frequently claimed. While apologising repeatedly, I reassured him that the notes revealed little other than how he truly feels about me. He remained livid. I accepted I would face immediate disciplinary actions. I had no IT access while awaiting and undergoing a disciplinary process.  I feared I would get fired. I didn’t know whether to reveal what had led up to my actions. After getting legal advice I decided to be fully transparent and detail the anxiety I had been under for the last couple of years while my manager continually had me fearing disciplinary actions for matters directly related to my autism, such as writing an email rather than picking up the phone to discuss a contentious issue and being direct in my communications. I explained how this had been a very persistent, bullying, narrative, which resulted in gradual isolation through repeatedly being informed senior management have a very negative view of me and hate me. I clarified I had been in weekly therapy for nearly a year and had throughout each therapy session been in floods of tears while detailing the difficulties I was facing within my professional relationship with my manager. However, I fully admitted that I also realised I shouldn’t have accessed the notes. I apologised unreservedly while taking full accountability. I admitted that at times while in total meltdown mode I had been incredibly erratic while truth-searching and that I had accessed more folders, without reading any of the content, just clicking at random in haze of tears. I asked them to consider the mitigating circumstances I had detailed and take into consideration this was foremost an IT error, I shouldn’t have been given access to anything I was not allowed to read. Initially I refrained from full on using the wording my therapist and I had been using for the past year, ‘bullying’ and ‘gaslighting’, instead I stated that my manager’s actions had had the same effect as bullying and gaslighting, emphasising that I was unclear as to whether this had been intentional.

I was asked if I knew the policies in place to deal with potential bullying. I did recall seeing a bullying and harassment policy at the very start of my employment. However, whenever I had told my manager that he was causing me severe anxiety, he had instantly instructed me to put in a grievance against him to see how far I would get with that. I therefore had had no faith in such a process. I also didn’t want to anger or ‘out him’ while I still believed he was my organisational rescuer and guardian as he had proclaimed throughout my ordeal.

None of my mitigating circumstances positively affected the outcome. I was informed my manager was feeling suicidal because I had read his line-management notes and they therefore had to consider the impact of my actions on his mental health. Two days prior to my manager declaring to the investigation manager that my actions had caused him to be suicidal, he had taken me aside to tell me that what I had done wasn’t so bad after all, that he knew I hadn’t really seen any unknown information in the notes. He had also brutally informed me that the punitive reaction from senior management full on evidenced he had been telling me the truth all along, that I was indeed hated.  He held my hands and asked: ‘Do you finally believe me now?’ …

I felt broken when, despite never having faced a prior disciplinary within the organisation, I was given a final warning. I appealed, but it was a waste of my time despite being fully honest and detailing not only my misdemeanour, but also the events that led to my transgression. I had to accept that I had allowed myself to be pushed into breaching my own and the company’s values and no amount of regret was going to change the fact I had let myself and others down.

When my manager learned I had confided in a trusted colleague he sneered that I had no right to talk to anyone about what I had done to him. I realised then that my actions had fully enabled him to turn me into the perpetrator and himself into the victim, the stereotypical bully reversal narrative. All the managers involved in my disciplinary procedure, including my tormentor, are closely connected professionally, the outcome was likely predetermined and inevitable. 

If you find yourself contemplating whether your manager, or any other colleague, is bullying you, if you fear one is spreading a negative narrative, please have the courage to speak up. The worst that could happen will more likely happen if you don’t speak up.

If like me you’re autistic and find yourself struggling to know whether someone is telling the truth, don’t give anyone the benefit of the doubt if the narrative they’re feeding you is causing you to feel worthless. Declare the narrative to someone more senior or HR and allow it to be investigated. My manager’s relentless bullying narrative made me feel completely worthless and yet, I kept believing that he was, as he proclaimed himself to be, my saviour and protector.

I am hoping those who recognise themselves in my tale take a different course of action and speak up rather than mess up.  I should have approached someone within my organisation about what was happening rather than try find answers, going down a rabbit hole. Although I am unclear if I would have been helped if I had asked for help, I should have asked for help regardless. I didn’t ask for help and that was held against me.