Is it Bullying or Is it Incivility

Spread the love
arrogant young woman with rapper attitude

independent 20s girl with threatening body language

Often times we ran into people who are just jerks and are rude to random people. Just because a person is rude to us does not mean that they are bullying us.

Anyone, at any age, can become a target of bullying and there is evidence that child and teen targets are more likely to grow up to be bullied adults. Some do not, I didn’t, but others do.

All bullies, regardless of age, deep down at their core are COWARDS!
The difference between child bullies and adult bullies is that the young bullies select targets who are weaker, smaller, mentally handicapped, or sick with a disease (Type 1 diabetics, childhood cancer patients, paraplegics, etc).

Adult bullies target people who are well-liked, outgoing, confident and successful in their jobs, or have successful marriages and family life. Adult bullies target people who have what they themselves want but feel they can’t have because they feel those people outshine them and are a threat to them.

With that being said, this has prompted me to talk about the subject and how one can overcome a hostile work environment. I believe that knowledge is power and without it, you may not what to do when an adult bully comes calling. So I feel that it is incumbent upon me to share my own knowledge, experience, and the tools I used to overcome a hostile work environment and come out virtually unscathed.

There is no age limit on bullying. It does not stop after high school graduation, nor does it stop at age 18, 21, 40, or even 60. If it did, there would be no assaults, murders, robberies, home invasions, or the like. And there wouldn’t be corporate or government corruption either.

unhappy young sporty man showing throat with gun-like hands

guilt concept – unhappy young sporty man showing his throat with gun-like hands for sign of low self-esteem, textured effects

The majority of employees will have at least one encounter with a workplace bully in their lifetime. So if you have never been the target of an ultra dominating and overbearing boss or coworkers, chances are that you will sometime in the future

After high school, I was fortunate to have never suffered bullying in the workplace until just a few years ago. For years, in the places I worked, I was usually the one who was well-liked by my supervisors and coworkers because I worked hard and did my best to treat everyone with respect. This is not to say that I didn’t run into a few dirtbags – smart-alecs, gossips, and trouble makers because I did.

But these people usually treated EVERYONE like dirt, not only me. Also, they were only few and not liked by the rest of my coworkers. So these were NOT cases of bullying although I may have thought differently at the time. So how do we distinguish a case of bullying from incivility?

Target On Your Back

Target on your back metaphor as a person with a tattoo of a bulls eye symbol tattooed on the skin as an icon for being a victim of bullying and bullied or psychology of feeling vulnerable with 3D illustration elements.

BULLYING – involves singling one person out of the whole of an alumni, organization, company, or geographic population. It also involves repetition…repeated attacks against the same individual or group over a long period of time (usually from 3 weeks to several years). Also, others, even total strangers, are usually encouraged to join in.

Bullying is relentless. Bullying is a CAMPAIGN with a GOAL

It means to destroy the target’s good name and standing in a community, relationships, family, career, finances, businesses and to ruin the targets self esteem and sense of security and well-being, to eventually ruin his/her life.

INCIVILITY – does not have any certain target.

dreamstime_s_48003977

People such as these don’t care who you are or where you come from. They just have personalities that suck and treat everyone in general like dirt. And they only insult you because they don’t want to be bothered, whereas a bully or bullies will actively pursue you and make it their mission in life just to destroy you. A dirtbag, on the other hand, will never put in the effort to pursue anyone.

INCIVILITY – is sporadic and random mistreatment against random people. It does not involve repetition and is not directed at any certain person or group.

BULLYING – is personal and there is always an agenda and vendetta behind it.

INCIVILITY – is not personal and there is no agenda nor vendetta.

The person is just an asshole. Everyone will experience incivility at times in their lives, even popular kids. A dirtbag does not care who you are.

A dirtbag just doesn’t care…about anyone…period.

A dirtbag is afraid you might want something from him.

A bully wants something from YOU.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *