Unfortunately, to submit a complaint to the Workplace Relations Commission I would have had to have tried to make a complain through HR channels within that workplace first as well as made them aware that I was considering making a complain to the WRC.Some specificsI never made it a HR issue because I was afraid of retaliation that would be hard or impossible to prove—and honestly, since she always did it when we were alone it would have been her word against mine and I am not confident that I would have been believed.
I spoke to the bully about a specific incident once in a way that was not even accusatory or that mentioned making a complaint so much as me saying "Just so you know, I was not trying to be disrespectful when [more diplomatic way of saying 'you verbally berated me to tears and then demanded I look you in the eyes and that I could "faint later" but had to "listen now" because you "weren't having it" when I apologised for being upset and said that I hadn't had a chance to eat that day and was feeling quite vulnerable and faint'], but I am autistic and while I'm usually good at masking, when I am upset it is much harder for me and that's why I couldn't make eye contact when you told me to" and she blatantly gaslit me to my face and denied that it had ever happened because she would "never speak to someone like that" and "wasn't that kind of person" and I must have "imagined it" and remembered it as her saying it to me when it was actually my internal monologue being self critical.
The thing she was shouting at me about was that I had said something to the effect of "Oh, sorry, I was doing it X way, because [manager] told me she wanted me to" a few times that day, which she interpreted as me trying to undermine her authority and talk back when criticised. The same day, in what was probably what got her boiling (that day) in the first place, she also tore part of a note I wrote to the manager about a question regarding an order that one of the curtain makers had asked me over the phone. The note had something like "I checked the system and asked [supervisor], but there wasn't anything on the computer and [supervisor] didn't know either" and she told me that it was inappropriate to write that because there was no reason she "should" know and I shouldn't be throwing her under the bus, to which I was like "I'm sorry, it definitely wasn't intended as criticism. I was trying to explain to [manager] what avenues I had explored so she knew what I'd exhausted and didn't try something I had already done, since neither of us are in tomorrow and she wants me to communicate handovers more clearly" and then she got even more angry and was telling me to drop it and that it "didn't need this level of nitpicking" and that it didn't matter, because "it's just retail." I was, at that point, in serious fear that I was going to lose my job because the manager kept criticising me over tiny perceived missteps and I was trying really hard to do what I was expected to. But... anyway.
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Date: 2023-09-01 07:45 pm (UTC)Some specifics
I never made it a HR issue because I was afraid of retaliation that would be hard or impossible to prove—and honestly, since she always did it when we were alone it would have been her word against mine and I am not confident that I would have been believed.I spoke to the bully about a specific incident once in a way that was not even accusatory or that mentioned making a complaint so much as me saying "Just so you know, I was not trying to be disrespectful when [more diplomatic way of saying 'you verbally berated me to tears and then demanded I look you in the eyes and that I could "faint later" but had to "listen now" because you "weren't having it" when I apologised for being upset and said that I hadn't had a chance to eat that day and was feeling quite vulnerable and faint'], but I am autistic and while I'm usually good at masking, when I am upset it is much harder for me and that's why I couldn't make eye contact when you told me to" and she blatantly gaslit me to my face and denied that it had ever happened because she would "never speak to someone like that" and "wasn't that kind of person" and I must have "imagined it" and remembered it as her saying it to me when it was actually my internal monologue being self critical.
The thing she was shouting at me about was that I had said something to the effect of "Oh, sorry, I was doing it X way, because [manager] told me she wanted me to" a few times that day, which she interpreted as me trying to undermine her authority and talk back when criticised. The same day, in what was probably what got her boiling (that day) in the first place, she also tore part of a note I wrote to the manager about a question regarding an order that one of the curtain makers had asked me over the phone. The note had something like "I checked the system and asked [supervisor], but there wasn't anything on the computer and [supervisor] didn't know either" and she told me that it was inappropriate to write that because there was no reason she "should" know and I shouldn't be throwing her under the bus, to which I was like "I'm sorry, it definitely wasn't intended as criticism. I was trying to explain to [manager] what avenues I had explored so she knew what I'd exhausted and didn't try something I had already done, since neither of us are in tomorrow and she wants me to communicate handovers more clearly" and then she got even more angry and was telling me to drop it and that it "didn't need this level of nitpicking" and that it didn't matter, because "it's just retail." I was, at that point, in serious fear that I was going to lose my job because the manager kept criticising me over tiny perceived missteps and I was trying really hard to do what I was expected to. But... anyway.