| Topic Name: |
Workplace |
| Message Name: |
Bullying at work |
| Date Posted: |
08/10/2003 |
| Message: |
Terror in Tech Support
Sioux Falls, South Dakota
I made friends quickly in the company and enjoyed helping others in my positon as a Help Desk Analyst. But it didn't take me long to notice that we had an ATS (assistant manager in tech support) who made everyone around him nervous, edgy and fearful. He was into intimidating others to get the work done and surprising them with on-the-spot meetings.
One day, the PC technician next to me and myself got called into a meeting with both managers. We were accused of not doing anything about a problem with the internet. "If you have checked the logs, you would see that we are working on the issue. We have been in contact with the representatives in Chicago about the problem. And I'm going to call them today if they don't call back."
At the end of the day during another hectic week, I received a call from my manager who was in another state. He could not dial in to the internet. He did not ask for my help. Instead, he asked a rather strange question: "Could you please go get one of the boys to help me?" I did not know what he meant. But I politely put him on hold and asked this young female PC Support tech to help out. After she had hung up, she looked like someone had really pissed her off. However, she did appear to be angry with me. "I'm really sorry. I should have told you about him. He doesn't like female employees. But know you know. He wanted "one of the boys." It's not your fault. My first week here, he made me cry. I was in his office fixing his computer and he came in and screamed at me. I ran out of the room and cried in the bathroom for over an hour!"
On another occasion, I was in the middle of assisting a customer with a computer-related problem when I heard a loud voice in front of me. It was the assistant manager of technical support. "I really need to talk to you now!........." And on and on he ranted.........talk about not getting to the point.
One morning I was greeted with a rather nasty email and a false accusation from the assistant manager in technical support. In the message, he accused me of making the Vice President in our New Business department crawl underneath his desk to check his network wire. The part that irritated me was that his message stated that "we don't treat managers and higher ups in this manner in our company." What about the people who do their work underneath them? Why are they not important? But what angered me more was that this whole accusation was false. The previous day, the VP called me and told me that he could not get connected to the internet or get to his email. I merely asked him to tilt his tower (backside facing him) towards himself and to locate the blue/white wire. We were looking for a flashing light. As he could not spot one, I asked him to disconnect and reconnect the phone wire to the tower. It took less than 2 minutes and he thanked me profusely for my help. So, I tried to explain this in my reply to the assistant manager in tech support. He stormed over to my desk, undid my monitor cable and started screaming at me! I could not believe that he would act in such an unprofessional manner. "I'm really sorry, but I thought I did my job in helping him. I didn't have to make him wait for me to get to his desk and he never left his chair or crawled underneath his desk. Why are you distorting the facts?" Later on that day, I visited the VP who told me that he was really sorry about what happened. "You did a great job helping me yesterday. I told him that he was wrong for treating you that way! And, yes, he was not telling you the truth in that email."
Get the point of this story???
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