The Bully or the Bullied

Bully
verb

1. use superior strength or influence to intimidate (someone), typically to force him or her to do what one wants. Synonyms: persecute, oppress, tyrannize, browbeat, harass, torment, intimidate, strong-arm, dominate.

I was accused of this once by the management of the CRCU. Without going into too much detail, I was accused of bullying an employee. Immediately I was pulled into the director's office where an Employee Relations representative was waiting for me. Instead of giving me a chance to explain my side a letter was immediately shoved in front of me and I was directed to sign. It was explained to me that I was a bully and there was a zero tolerance policy for such. As I attempted to explain my side of the story I was cut off and ordered to sign this letter in front of me. At that moment I became the bullied. I was persecuted without evidence, and now I was being strong armed into signing this form stating I was guilty. No one was interested in what I had to say in my defense. Even when this employee accused others of the same thing and these accusations were found to be baseless, the damage was done. I was forever viewed as a bully. The real bully in the office is the CRCU management. With little provocation they have been known to just let people go without so much as a valid reason. At one point one supervisor even banged his hand on the desk while he yelled in the face of an employee. The saddest part of that ordeal is that he was yelling about a mistake of his own making. Let's not forget the "coming to God" meetings where all of the employees are pulled into the conference room. There they are stood over like a heard of cattle while being lectured. Listening to statements from management like "thanks for donating your time, because we're not paying you overtime" or telling an employee she's not able to take on extra assignments like training new employees because she's pregnant. All the while there are other pregnant women in the office who were being allowed to as much as they like without restrictions. While they vehemently deny such, the management of the CRCU are exactly what they accused me of being...a bully. They exert unnecessary and undue influence over employees by constantly threatening staff with losing their jobs. They persecute, oppress and tyrannize by virtue of micromanagement and oppressive quotas and unrealistic goals for staff. When those goals aren't met...you're let go and replaced by someone else. Management will often tell you that "this is how most successful companies are run" and they are right. A lot of successful companies are run by bullying its employees, for example Chinese sweat shops have been run this exact same way for centuries. There are two flaws in their superlative wisdom. The first is that the most successful companies aren't run by bullying its employees, setting unrealistic goal that can't be consistently met, brow beating employees that don't make the cut, or firing skilled employees and replacing them with ones that have substandard training at best. Countless studies have shown that this business model is a recipe for disaster. The second flaw is comparing the CRCU to a successful company. Being quite honest, they're not even running a successful department let alone a successful company. The CRCU management isn't running Apple, Microsoft, or Google, they are running a small department within the Department of Child Safety. Yet this is how they are running the CRCU, as if it were their company. Most businesses ran this way would have failed long ago. Short sided management tactics that belittle, undervalue, underestimate, and marginalize employees. This type of bullying management style which is deployed by the CRCU lowers moral, which in turn hurts production.  However there is a bright side to this story, in history the bullied inevitably always becomes the bully. So just because the CRCU  and DCS thinks they are done with some employees, it doesn't necessarily mean those employees is done with you. The bully will become the bullied.