Re: Intimidation and Harassment

["Wing, Michael J" <mjwing -at- INGR -dot- COM>]

I can't say which approach will work the particular SME giving you grief
because I don't know the person.  I can, however, relay a similar story from
my own experience.

At my last job, I was the only writer in the company and was in the
Engineering department.  Most people in the department were type "B"
personalities except for the lead Engineer who was a type A and myself who
is halfway between the two.  The lead Engineer took turns almost monthly on
who he was going to ride.  I observed my office mate (a Mechanical designer)
when it was his month.  Rick (not his real name) the lead Engineer would
enter our office, tear up diagrams that my office mate drew, and drop them
in his wastebasket.  He would stop my office mate at the door and tell him,
"You're not going home until the design is correct!".  He demanded one
Friday that another Engineer come in on Saturday and Sunday to work on his
circuitry.  The Engineer said he couldn't because he was going on vacation
for his anniversary.  Rick told him to move the vacation.

Anyway, it was my turn.  I was writing these 300 page mil-spec test
procedures for his project.  For the life of me, I could not keep the
illustration numbers and the all text references synchronized when
additions/deletions/modifications were made (this was before
auto-referencing capabilities in WP).  Otherwise, the procedures were solid.
Rick would continually make a loud scene claiming, "I'll get the secretary
to do it.  She's more competent and gets half your pay".   At first, I
started an in-house lottery where the person who picked the date closes to
Rick's heart attack (he was 57 and a heavy smoker/drinker).  The director of
Engineering made me take down the calendar.

On a second occasion, I overheard Rick and a manufacturing Engineer griping
about all the mismatched illustrations.  They said that they were going to
consult my manager and the director first thing in the morning.  I stayed
late, found all the mistakes, and then replaced the pages in Rick's copy.
The next morning Rick called a conference to put me on the grill.  He said
that the document was rife with mistakes.  I challenged him to find them.
Rick shuffled page after page.  After a few minutes I asked the director if
I had more constructive things to do with my time.

On a third occasion, I'm having lunch in the break room.  Rick has a stack
of papers and says, "push your seat back".  I did, and drops the stack in my
lap and says, "what do you think of these?'.  I said, "they stink".  He
says, "so you agree?".  I said I did.  I then said, "Rick, you took those
procedures away from me 3 months ago, it's not my work."  he replied, "well,
you got them back".

Finally, I realized that this was going to continue.  One afternoon he stops
me trying to leave.  He rants on for 10 minutes about the quality of my
work.  I just stood there and took it.  he then says, "Well, what do you got
to say for yourself".  I said, "Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you
like the play?".  I expected Rick to explode.  Instead, he holds back a
snicker and then, no longer able to contain it, he laughs.  He told me to
come to his office.  He then said that I have backbone and that he knows
that he has a temper.  He says he can't be who he is around the others
because the crawl away and complain.  However, he says that at least I took
the heat and tried to improve and pushed back when needed.  He did say that
the heart attack pool was in bad taste and that he suspected that I changed
the wrong pages, but he couldn't prove it.

Mike

Michael Wing (mailto:mjwing -at- ingr -dot- com)
Staff Writer
Intergraph Corporation; Huntsville, Alabama
http://infranet.iss.ingr.com/govtrans/index.htm


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