A few posts ago, I shared with you that I had been the victim of a workplace backstabber. This person is one of my direct reports and has been telling me what a great person I am and then sharing with everyone else how I have been screwing up and treating her bad. Honestly, despite having worked for most of my life since I was ten (starting with my family's business), I have never personally experienced this before - certainly not as the victim. We, the department at OSC, are in the midst of being outsourced to a management company. What does this mean? Well, we have all been transfered from being employees of OSC to employees of the management company. This company will be directing all of our operations and we bring new directives and change unlike this department or OSC has ever seen or really understands. Many of these changes are and have been long needed as years of mismanagement, favortism, waste, and unsafe conditions have simply been allowed to run crazy. It has left the most dysfunctional situation I have ever encountered. You may remember that I was originally hired to 'clean up' the department. I have learned the hard way that it is completely undoable without the support of those that hired you. That is an example of OSC current poor management. There is no communication for a new employee after hiring and general orientation to perform their assigned job.
As a result, the new employee is left to try to perform their job, seen by the organization as going out on a limb, too far, and having the limb cut from the trunk of the tree while the employee is out on it. I am no the only victim of this at OSC. As I have learned, others hired to help OSC grow have been victims as well. We are thinking about starting a support group, but we also feel as if we may all be sitting a limb that could be sawed off and where would that lead us?
The backstabber has compounded the situation for me, a wrinkle not encountered by some of my fellow limb climbers. I have decided to not do anything, confront the person or defend myself to the new management. I have decided to avoid the person and ignore her usual unfounded crying. It has paid off. The backstabber has proven to the new management that their efforts are disruptive and damaging for team morale. During their first week, the backstabber dug for information about the changes coming our way by asking about how things were at the college the transition team was from. We had been told that we were to be held in line with what OSC had as far as schedules, but the Backstabber spread numerous rumors and gossip. This sent shock waves up both organizations and she was proven to be corrected in front of the entire department and to the new management transition team.
The backstabber continues to cause problems and my strategy seems to be paving off. The other employees I work with know how the Backstabber works and have. Credibility is eroding away at the same time efforts are getting more direct and soon something should break. Call it giving enough rope to hang oneself or any of a number of cliche's, but it is coming. Remember, I had gone to bat for this person, defending them against what was shared as abusive treatment. I got additional compensation for the individual, having fought that battle all the way to the top of the OSC. Yes, this is a devious and dangerous person. In a way (a very small way), I am glad to have experienced this painful chapter and I hope to learn from it.
Interestingly enough, the more this backstabber is ignored, by others as well as myself, the angrier they have become. Our new manager has only spent one day each of the past two weeks here in our office as he transitions from another school. I understand that the backstabber waited to the end of the day after I left to stab me in the back yet again to him. The backstabber had done the same with the upper level management and the personnel director at OSC prior to the resulting outsourcing of the department. While I do not have concrete evidence to support this, I believe that this situation was one of the determining factors to go with outsourcing rather than trying to work things out internally. Too many things continue to add up and seem to pointing in that direction. See, that is another sad result of a toxic workplace: that so much time and energy is focused on matters that have no direct bearing on the actual work that needs to be done.
This is an ongoing chapter that cannot be covered in just one post, but I did want to bring you up to date. The cave is mumbling with rumors and gossip, lies - both white and black. For those of you in toxic work environments, be cautious and careful who you trust. It is an unfortunate and sad situation. I do not believe that it takes all kinds to make the world go around, but then again, how can we know what is good and beautiful if we do not know and experience what is bad, wrong, and ugly. I guess we must try and enjoy the images on the wall of the cave, but realize that they are not what they represent. It is hard when it is only images that we are exposed to, even if we are returning to the cave as opposed to never having left.
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