Joe worked at a state-run mental health facility.  One day as he lunched with friends, a facility security guard handed him an envelope.  He read the letter and found that the facility superintendent charged him with "staple abuse." Joe allegedly stapled a two-page document with five staples.

The facility attorney prosecuted Joe.  The personnel director heard the case. Joe called one witness. The witness admitted to stapling two documents together with five staples: "It is I sir," she said. "I am the staple abuser."

The personnel director got his marching orders directly from the superintendent of the facility. He ignored the testimony. He found Joe guilty of staple abuse. He recommended a five-day suspension without pay.  The superintendent approved and wrote this cover letter to Joe:  "You received a fair and impartial hearing. I am accepting the recommendation... . "  Negative memorandum about the event went to Joe's personnel file. Later, an arbitrator overturned the ruling, rebuked the superintendent, ordered the memorandum removed from Joe's file, and ordered that he receive his lost pay.

Joe's situation was not unique. The superintendent later faced the consequences of a history of his personnel abuse practices. When charged with perpetrating a pattern of lies and deceptions, and a failure to perform at the high level of efficiency and effectiveness expected of a senior manager, he resigned under fire.  Putting on his Mickey Mouse watch, he went to work as a school guidance counselor.

Lance was the executive director of a non-profit organization and fund-raising was a big part of his responsibilities. This revenue source had plummeted. The organization suffered from pervasive morale problems. Lance blamed Karen, the Director of Finances, for his fund-raising failures and the organization's morale problems.

In a phantasmagorical scene, Lance fabricated email messages under Karen's name and email address. The messages denigrated the organization. Under Lance's guidance, two trusted staff wrote to Lance and claimed to have received negative email from Karen. Using his staff's complaints, he charged Karen with publicly disparaging the organization and destroying staff morale.  Her emotional denials made Karen sound unstable, and Lance used this against her.

Lance reported the incident to his governing board. He said he needed to replace her with a competent and stable assistant. The organization's public reputation was at stake. They could lose good people because of Karen's personnel practices. Prior to that meeting, the trustees got an unmarked envelope with an unsigned note saying that Karen was wrecking the organization. 

The trustees asked me to investigate.  I uncovered a pattern of abusive personnel practices. I traced the email messages back to Lance. His collaborator's confessed to participating in the deception.  Staff came forward to give examples of Lance's dysfunctional management practices. Karen kept her job. The organization got a new executive director.

Protect Yourself

I hope you are not subject to abusive personnel practices. If you find yourself in that position, you may not control a pathological boss. You can document what you do. You can factually contest negative charges.  You can ease your inner tensions about untoward work situations. You are then in a stronger position to defend yourself against malicious actions.

Even in the best of organizations, you can find political shenanigans that harm morale and distract from productive performances.  These morale buster categories include:  1. Mind parasites that pilfer other's ideas and credit themselves. 2. Steamrollers who strive to dominate others. 3. Fawning syncopates who suck up to get the easier assignments. 4. Backstabbers who tarnish others' reputations.  5. Dilatory workers who blame others for delays. 6. Limelighters who make themselves the center of attention. 7. Bystanders who "go along to get along." When member of this group are in your department, you may have found a workplace from hell.

When dealing with difficult co-workers and bosses, you have the option of learning to act with confident composure. This starts with the idea that only you can directly command you.  Here are three introductory steps n this process: (1) identify and strip away self-defeating thinking; (2) practice your positive reasoning skills; (3) will yourself to persist.  Your positive psychological resources are now more available to meet challenges and handle conflicts.  (Protect Yourself from Anger expands on the concept of confident composure and describes how to handle hostility: https://my.psychologytoday.com/blog/science-and-sensibility/201104/protect-yourself-anger )

Working in a workplace from hell is bad enough. A bigger problem is often that of tormenting yourself over your work conditions. I call this double trouble because you give yourself a double dose of stress. A tendency to double-trouble yourself is a changeable event. 

You work under a tyrannical boss and with difficult coworkers and you consider that your workplace from hell. That's an understandable strain. Believing that you are helpless and can't stop feeling stressed is a doubly troubling thought.

In the theater of your mind, you are the playwright. You can revise double trouble scripts. Here are three revisions: (1) Acquire enlightened acceptance. You realize that you are not responsible for your human tendency to double trouble yourself.  You are, however, responsible for taking self-corrective actions if you intend to think, feel, and do better.  (2) Believe that you can change your mental script from helpless to coping thinking, and you are likely to act on this belief.   (3) Believe that you can work in a dysfunctional work setting and judge the setting accurately without judging yourself negatively, and you are on your way to lessening tension that goes over and beyond an aversive work situation.

For more information on double troubles, see chapter three in The Cognitive behavior Workbook for Anxiety:   http://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Behavioral-Workbook-Anxiety-Step-/dp/1572245727/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1302094812&sr=1-1

If you work in a workplace from hell, you are not stuck there. By managing yourself effectively, you won't feel forced into a precipitous retreat. Instead, you can position yourself to make a strategic retreat. You can use psychological and practical strategies for getting a new job and do so at your own time and pace.  See:  http://www.amazon.com/Fearless-Job-Hunting-Psychological-Strategies/dp/1572248343/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1302095024&sr=1-1

Dr. Bill Knaus