In June 2020, sales were down among the pandemic and layoffs were expected. I preemptively cleaned up my cubicle. There was an online chat scheduled, and I strongly suspected I would be laid off. It turns out, there were layoffs, but it wasn’t me. That was a relief, but the real relief was that a coworker I hated was laid off. He’d been harassing me for years. I was even more relieved that we weren’t using video chat because it would have been impossible to hide the joy on my face.
This is going to sound stupid.
I should have complained, but how do you complain about someone asking “how are you doing?” 10 or more times a day, and then criticizing your response? I stopped responding, on the “ignore them and they’ll go away” principle. Didn’t work, it just kept going on and on.
Have you ever had someone push all of your boundaries, dig into every detail of your life? It’s exhausting. My coworker would criticize what I ate, what I drank, the clothes I wore, the car I drove, where I lived. A couple times, my coworker announced to people at work that I don’t go to church. I have never discussed, with him or anyone else at work, whether I where I go to church, precisely because that’s private and I wanted to avoid harassment.
And then there were the unending lies. He claimed to be one of the richest people in the world. He claimed to go on impossible trips over the weekend, taking multiple airline trips that the air travel alone would take more time than a weekend held.
I tried ignoring him, but as I said, that didn’t stop it. And we worked on some of the same projects, so I couldn’t just ignore him all of the time. It’s hard for me to stay focused, I really need to not be distracted. He got a kick out of distracting me when I was trying to focus on tasks. He admitted that he liked to “get people going” which is grossly unprofessional for a place of work. He also had the idea that if he gaslighted me enough I’d go to his church.
You’re probably thinking that this sounds stupid, and honestly, I don't blame you. I should have gone to HR. But I’m conflict-averse, and I’ve always felt that complaining would get me into trouble. I’ve felt like writing this diary for a very long time, but honestly, I felt embarrassed for not going to HR, but I knew that I wouldn’t no what to say, and if the discussion went off the planned “script” that I wrote in my head, by stress levels would just go out of control. I don’t do well in situations were I can’t anticipate how it’s going to go. But now I’ve finally clicked “Publish”, here goes.
Since he’s been gone, my life has gotten a whole lot better. I used to go home angry. I’d go home on Friday, and be angry all weekend because I had to go to work on Monday. Aside from him, this was a great job — interesting work, good pay and benefits. But I had a reputation for being really reserved at work, because I felt that I’d be opening myself to more harassment.
Things really have gotten a lot better. I regularly get praised for my work. One of the managers called me a “godsend” which felt great. I also feel better. I used to get tightness in my chest at work from constant boundary violations. I don’t get that anymore. But sometimes, when I feel stressed, those memories of how much the harassment sucked get dredged up.
Look, I realize that other people have experienced harassment much more severe than I have. I’m not trying to compete with anyone, just sharing my story. If you feel like venting about your workplace, the floor is open.