My arms betrayed me as I sat down opposite him. They started to shake which then started a series of tremors all down my body. The stress of these recent times was too much and it was trying to break me. As I sat across the table from the man who had been bullying me and my team, it took all my strength not to reach across and punch him. I felt so angry for everything he had put us through, and even angrier that he didn’t seem to care.
As I took him through my notes, and the accusations I held against him, I tried to keep my voice as calm as possible. It was even harder than I thought it would be to stand up to a bully, but as I had decided to throw everything on the line in the name of justice, I felt I had nothing left to lose.
When I finished going through my notes, I looked him in the eyes for the first time since we first sat down, a nauseous feeling settling hard in my stomach. He didn’t say anything for a few minutes, but never took his eyes from my face, as if trying to read me and see how far I would really go. After what felt like forever, he broke the silence with two short sentences: ‘I’m sorry that is how you feel. I will take your comments on board.’
What was I supposed to do with that?! I had no idea how he felt as he kept a poker face, and I couldn’t read his body language. He calmly pushed his chair back, stood up and walked out of the room, leaving me alone. I started to panic as I didn’t know what would happen next. I decided that I had to stay in control of this situation and so I went straight to HR.
After explaining the situation and the meeting I had just had with Peter, the HR Manager looked at me with great concern in her eyes. She explained the procedure to me, which included a face-to-face meeting with Peter, Peter’s manager and myself. I was asked if I had any other witnesses who would join me in the meeting, and I shook my head, certain that people would be even more afraid to stand up to Peter now that Gemma had lost her job.
As I sat there listening to how sorry she was to hear about the situation and how it was up to me to do something about it, but that she would support me, I looked out the window at a flock of birds flying overhead. As they landed in a nearby tree, I started to wonder what it would be like to feel like them. To not have to face issues like this, and to just go about one’s life doing what was necessary to survive and nothing else. Then the irony of that statement dawned on me. Surviving was what I was doing right now.
‘I can only help you if you denounce him during a face to face meeting.’ She continued, ‘You must bring proof and lots of it. Better yet, if you can get some of your teammates to join you it would help your case tremendously.’ She saw the look of hesitation on my face. ‘I am trying to help you,’ she said. ‘I have seen this kind of behaviour in the past and I do not tolerate it, but protocol is protocol and everyone deserves a fair chance. While I believe you, I only have your side of the story and Peter’s side needs to be heard too.’
I said I would think about it and told her I would come back to her the next day with my decision. I decided to first call the colleague who had left recently after the pressure got too much for him, and then I would gather the team for one more conversation about the matter and see if I could drum up some support.
The phone call proved to be very interesting and gave me the boost I needed. My ex-colleague had been very open in his exit interview about how badly Peter treated the team, including his plagiarism of other people’s work. I wondered why nothing had been done and thought what a shame it was that this had had no positive effect on the situation with Gemma. Perhaps she would have been able to keep her job if the exit interview had been referenced?
Having already taken more steps than I thought I was brave enough to take, for the first time in a long time I felt truly proud of myself. I hoped that confronting Peter would mean that he would leave us alone now. All we wanted to do was get on with our jobs and not feel him breathing down our necks.
When Peter was out of the office the next morning, I took the opportunity to hold a meeting with the team. I brought them up to speed with everything that had happened since Gemma had left and the conversations I had recently had. I asked if there was anyone willing to sit with me during the meeting with HR. No-one said anything. I tried again, this time taking a different approach and offering to be the spokesperson, and to lead the meeting. Still, there were no offers of support. I could understand. I had done the same to Gemma. So I took it upon myself to stand up to the bully like I had never managed to do in my school days, and blast the consequences. Bullies lose their power when their victims get up and fight and that was exactly what I intended to do.
I went home and spoke again to my wife, to ensure I still had her full support. The end result could be bad for our family situation and it was only fair that she got a say in the matter. She told me to go ‘rip him to shreds’, to use her exact words and that is exactly what I set out to do as I headed into work the next day.
However, as I got closer to the office, my stomach started to do somersaults and my confidence started to drain. I tried to picture what would happen in my mind, and each time all I could see was a negative result. I like to think of myself as a rather cool, calm and collected sort of chap, but that morning I was not even close. I felt like a nervous wreck by the time I got to my desk, not knowing whether I had the strength to go through with it.
I went to the kitchenette to make myself a calming cup of tea and I noticed two of my teammates standing nervously just behind me. As I turned to look at them, Greg opened his mouth and in a quiet voice said ‘We have been talking, Emma and I, and we have decided to join you in the meeting today.’
My heart could have burst for joy! My body jumped with the news, hot tea spilling over the side of my mug. I didn’t care. I couldn’t feel it as I was so happy to have the support of some of my teammates. They both smiled at me nervously, clearly just as terrified as I was. But now I had others to be strong for and it boosted my confidence to no end.
When the meeting time came, I nodded to Emma and Greg and the three of us stood up from our desks and headed towards the lift to go up to the boardroom where the meeting was to take place. The rest of the team lifted their heads and as I made eye contact with a few of them they smiled their support, and I knew I couldn’t blame them for not joining us. Their sense of survival had kicked in and their fear was leading the way.
We walked into the room, Emma and Greg walking a few paces behind me. ‘You can do this, you can do this’ I kept saying in my mind over and over. My knees felt weak, my stomach contained a whole kaleidoscope of butterflies and my mouth was as dry as a desert. But I knew I was doing the right thing, no matter what the result ended up being.
The head of HR started the meeting by thanking everyone for taking the time to discuss such an important matter. She noted for the minutes all who were present, with a slight surprise in her voice when she noted Emma and Greg. I thought I saw a tiny smile on her face when she said their names, but I could have imagined it.
The meeting lasted exactly ninety minutes, with quite a few heated moments and fierce rebuttals. But when I had said all I had come to say, and my teammates had been asked to comment as well, I finally found the courage to look Peter directly in the eye. His face was red, his shoulders were slumped and for the first time since he started with the company he looked utterly defeated. His gaze was downcast and his hands were in his lap. A tiny part of me felt sorry for him, never truly knowing why he had taken the path of the bully rather than the role of supportive manager he could have easily chosen.
Peter, Greg, Emma and I were asked to leave the room and we left the Head of HR and the Vice President of Finance and Sales to discuss our fate.
‘Thanks for nothing,’ was all Peter could mumble when we left the room. I slowed my pace and let him get ahead of me, not knowing what to say, nor wanting to speak. I felt exhausted, anxious, but somehow also at peace as I knew I had been brave, had stood up for justice and had done my absolute best.
We went back to work and tried to focus as best we c
ould for the next couple of days while we waited to hear what the fallout would be. At the end of that week I came into work and my team members who were already in the office were standing around talking and laughing and looking like they could walk on air.
‘What are you all grinning about?’ I asked, smiling myself as I picked up on their happiness.
‘He’s gone. You did it. YOU DID IT! You got rid of the bastard and now we can get on with our lives and not live in fear anymore!’ one of my teammates said, grinning from ear to ear. ‘He’s moved out of his office. We don’t know what’s happened but there is a meeting this morning with HR and the VP. We will find out then. But we are all still here and you did it!’ He pulled me into a fierce hug of brown bear proportions, nearly crushing my slight frame in the process and bumping my glasses askew.
At ten o’clock, we all gathered again in the boardroom, a strange feeling settling in my stomach as I walked back on to the battleground. We all sat around the table and waited for the meeting to start. Peter’s boss stood up and thanked us all for coming. She told us that Peter had decided to take up another opportunity within the company in a different department. We would not be seeing him at this office anymore but could still reach him on email if we were interested in contacting him.
We were told that recruitment for a new department head would take place in due course and in the meantime, we were to report into her.
We all tried to contain our excitement, but when we left the room, and were out of earshot a few fists happily punched the air and a few whoops of delight escaped smiling mouths. We agreed that we would go and have a celebratory drink together that night after work. Now I am not normally one to drink on a school night, so-to-speak, but this occasion was a true cause for celebration!
When I got back to my desk after the meeting, I picked up the phone and called Gemma to tell her the news. She was very happy to hear what had happened and relieved that justice had been served. While we didn’t know what role he had been moved into, we had been told that he would be managing a much smaller team and would be sent on a course to learn effective team management skills. I invited Gemma to join us for drinks but she gracefully declined. I could understand that, and it was simply good to hear that she had moved into a fantastic role after she left our company, one that really suited her and made her very happy.
I do not hold a grudge against Peter and I certainly don’t wish him ill will. I just hope that he learned a valuable lesson about team management; we are all human after all. As for me, I learned a lot about myself during that very stressful time. I learned that I really could stand up for myself, that I had courage and that I was able to fight for justice no matter the consequences or the fear that was trying to hold me back. While I haven’t found Peter to say goodbye, I don’t feel I need to. I do wish him well, however, and hope that he found his feet as well as the peace that must have been missing from his life.
Chapter 12
The Wife
I have now come to the final person that I want to say goodbye to. I have saved the best until last as they say. I want to savour this last goodbye to the only person who truly understood me and who devoted her life to supporting mine. What were her dreams as she wiped yet another snotty nose and kissed yet another grazed knee? As she provided yet another meal and collapsed on the sofa each evening after the kids had gone to bed. She never really said much but I could see the tiredness on her face at night as she crawled into bed exhausted from yet another day managing our family. I never really understood the true significance of this. I had had a long day in the office and I felt tired. When I clocked out each day at 5 o’clock and walked to the bus stop I thought about how nice it will be to get home and put my feet up and relax. I had spent the day providing for the family and now I deserved to come home and relax and recharge for the next day ahead.
I suppose I took for granted the way her body moved slower in the evenings than it did in the mornings. How her posture had changed over the years and what carrying a toddler on one hip while attending to a crying baby on the other day-in-day-out could do to a person. She adored her children and adored us, I knew that, but I never stopped to wonder how tiring her day had been, how much sacrifice she had made in order to make other people happy.
I am back in our street now and stand gazing at the house in which we raised our children and shared our lives together. To where we lived through challenges that life threw at us from time to time and to where we celebrated moments in life that we shared. I walk up the path towards the front door for the last time, and I linger outside a moment longer, taking one final look around. The moon is shining on the newly-wet grass and is casting an eerie glow across the street.
I walk through the front door and take a final look around the lower floor of the house. Photos of four generations line the hallway walls and I follow these down towards the kitchen. The lights are off as it is time for my wife to go to bed, but I see paintings and tiny handprints on paper attached to the fridge and tomorrow’s to-do list written on the white board stuck to the kitchen wall. I glance one more time at the oven that has cooked our family meals for the last thirty years and the washing machine, a more recent addition, that has washed all our clothes. I turn and head back up the hallway, keen to be next to my wife one last time.
As I enter our bedroom, I look at the photo on our wall that was taken the day our son started kindergarten. We all look at the camera smiling, painting the perfect picture of a happy and relaxed family, but I remember the stress behind that photo, how nervous we had been as our son approached his first day of school. He was always a sensitive boy, always one to get upset if another child bumped him accidently and didn’t say sorry, just like our granddaughter. He took everything personally and I suppose that rubbed my wife and me up the wrong way and made us worry about how he would get through life. We took quite a tough stance with him, perhaps not allowing his true emotions to shine through enough. We would brush aside his tears as if crumbs from the breakfast table, believing that we needed to toughen him up to face the cruel harsh world.
My wife would lie awake at night often wondering if we were doing the right thing. ‘What if we just let him be?’ she would ask. ‘What if we trust in our abilities as parents to bring our children up in the best way possible, while allowing them to be who they need to be. Why do we have to make them fit the mould?’ I would wonder that too as I reflected on yet another tense moment with my son as I reacted negatively to his tears.
He came home one day from playing at the neighbour’s and he was very upset. I could see he was frustrated and angry and hurt but he refused to talk about it. He was only six at the time but I expected him to think and act like an adult. I asked him what was wrong and he mumbled something under his breath and went and slumped down on the couch. I told him that if he was going to be moody then he could take his mood to his bedroom and not come out until he could find a better one. He stomped up the stairs and slammed his bedroom door. I chased after him, opened his door and said that he could stay in there for even longer for having a bad attitude. I went back downstairs, made myself a cup of tea and sat down to read the paper. My wife had taken our daughter to ballet class and I sat in the kitchen and waited for them to come home before I told my son he could come out of his bedroom.
His face was pale from crying and his head was held low. My wife asked what had happened and he silently started to cry again. ‘Oh great,’ I said. ‘Here we go again.’ But my wife lent down, put her hands on his shoulders and asked him what was wrong.
‘It’s just that Andrew wouldn’t let me have a turn of his Pacman game and would only let me watch. I got upset and so he said I could finally have a go but he kept telling me I was doing the wrong thing and so I got up and left. He was not nice to me and it made me feel bad!’ He burst into tears again and my wife put her arms lovingly around him and let him have his moment. When his tears subsided, she asked if he wanted to help her prepare dinner and he nodded, and
I saw his shoulders relax as they went off together to prepare the evening meal.
Perhaps I should have been kinder to him. Perhaps I should have allowed him to express his feelings a bit more and not worry so much about the future I was preparing him for but instead focus on the very moment when he needed me. I thought I was doing the right thing by toughening him up and thinking about his future and what I thought he needed, and while I think he turned out pretty well, I see now that a loving hand, or a kind word can make much more of a long-term difference to a child than a tough reaction and a stiff upper lip.
My wife had so much more patience than me. She was, and still is, a very loving mother. But she judged herself all the time. She constantly pitched herself against the ideal of the perfect parent. Her aim was to never lose her temper, to always be available for the children and to always treat them with the utmost patience and respect. She naturally failed at this and would berate herself nearly every night as she held up visions of her perfect ideal and saw how short she came. She constantly told herself she could do better, that tomorrow she would be better, more patient, more kind, less in a hurry and less demanding. Tomorrow she would not raise her voice or lose her patience or speak to the children crossly. She would lovingly coax the toddler into her coat rather than shoving it on her with brute force as they rushed out the door. She would sit on the floor and play cars and trucks for hours with her son, leaving aside the washing and the millions of chores she really needed to get on with.
And yet tomorrow would come and she would fall back into what she viewed as bad habits. The toddler would scream and kick as she tried to put winter boots on her tiny feet when all she wanted to wear was summer sandals. Our son would spill his milk down his freshly washed T-shirt as he again slurped milk from his cereal bowl (where he picked up this habit I shall never know). She knew that if she didn’t get out the door by 8.15 they would be late to school, and that would not fit with her perfect mother image. She would feel the heat rising in her body and manifesting in her face as she rushed around trying to find the missing school shoe or as she pulled the half-eaten and very squashed banana out of our son’s coat that he had forgotten he had placed there the day before. She would feel her temper rising as she thought everyone was ready but when she turned around to pick up the toddler, she was lying on the floor, coat cast aside, sucking her thumb and refusing to budge.
A Lifetime of Goodbyes Page 13
