Bully

Recently at work I was asked to help a girl who was not performing so well, she was pretty badly organised and took ages to do stuff so I was sent to see what I could do to help her improve. What I wasn't told was that she was dyslexic - I found that out for myself watching her write down letters in the wrong order etc. and then had it confirmed by my boss. To be honest her job really isn't suited to someone with dyslexia but apparently at interview she told them that she could handle it so they employed her. Then she couldn't handle it and the shit hit the fan.

Without going into too much detail, she is the assistant on a project and has a lot of admin work to do - sending letters, chasing up documents, filing etc - no big deal - only she is on the biggest project of the whole office and there is a LOT of work. By the time I was called into help she had months of filing to do, hundreds of pending tasks and was in quite a mess.

Anyway, to better understand I sat in on some meetings between the team and her to discuss the tasks she had to do and what had been completed(before I came along the people in the team had been writing out each week all the tasks that had to be completed for that week) and she pretty much hadn't done any. Every meeting was pretty much the same - she hadn't completed anything and justified it by saying she had been doing "little things", what little things nobody managed to find out. I tried to help but it didn't go so well and in the end, after a few more weeks, she resigned.

That's just background - the point of the post is the way that one of the team members spoke to her. Obviously I understand that this project team are having a hard time if their assistant isn't getting the stuff done but seriously, the way one of them spoke to her, let's call her the Bully, was incredible. I really felt uncomfortable in these meetings but the assistant handled it really well - if it was me being spoken to like that I would have cried. really.

When she resigned it was decided that I would do her job until they could get someone new - so we had another meeting to discuss the tasks left over and that kind of thing. At the end of the meeting the assistant was called in just to clarify a few issues - I felt so bad for the poor girl - she was trembling as she explained and at one point the team bully asked - "Did you complete the task, well did you?" over and over, the poor girl couldn't speak as she was clearly about to cry. "Well that's just great" sighed the bully sarcastically.

I just sat there like, fucking hell, should I say something? Should I say, "Hang on a minute, don't speak to her like that, you're not her fucking boss". But I didn't. I just sat there in silence.

The bully is looking to get a promotion - she works really hard but still - if she was promoted she would have to explain things to people, and delegate more work to others. If that's the way she treats the team assistant, I really don't think that she deserves a promotion. In fact i think she needs a bloody good bollocking.

I don't want to be a grass - but I really didn't like what I saw. Should I tell my boss? I'm not concerned that she would speak to me like that, I don't think she would dare, but the assistant is very timid and a little geeky and an easy target for the "cool" bully. It feels like being back at school.

Gah. What to do?