Abuse Of Power
Unfortunately, abuse of power is more common than most people would suspect in workplaces across the world. Some people just aren’t meant to be in positions of power because it goes directly to their heads. The sad thing about these people is they know what they are doing is wrong, but no one ever checks them on their behavior, and they use this as validation to continue pushing the line to see what they can get away with.
Our friend, “Charlie,” worked out of Scotland for a “large global IT company.” Charlie was hardworking and his manager was always happy with his performance. He was “somewhat known in his extended team, but not so much in the divisional team.” Charlie preferred it this way, he would rather his work speak for itself as opposed to taking measures to draw extra attention to himself.
The manager of their divisional team, “Ryan,” was quite the opposite. Although Charlie’s interactions with Ryan were limited to weekly virtual meetings, Ryan immediately rubbed him the wrong way. According to Ryan’s boasts in the meetings, he was “in constant video chats with the CEO” and “has a lot of face-to-face interaction with him.” Ryan also appeared in “many of the division’s promotional emails and photographic material, so he was a company-wide recognized person.”
Although he was obnoxious, Charlie only considered Ryan “the poster boy definition of a corporate suck-up.” Charlie didn’t realize how far Ryan took his perceived power until his entire division was invited to a company collaboration event in the United States.
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“All Was Going Well Until It Was Time For Group Presentations”
The company collaboration event kicked off with some social events and meet and greets to break the ice between co-workers who had only interacted virtually. Ryan was amongst the group and “his general demeanor seemed appropriate for the reputation which followed him.”
Charlie initially only perceived Ryan as arrogant and a wannabe Patrick Bateman from American Psycho. Ryan made it a point to only interact with members of upper management and quickly brushed off lower-level employees when they would approach him to talk.
Charlie thought, “What a prick,” when he saw Ryan commit this move multiple times to lower-level employees. It was quite obvious Ryan felt like he was the most important person in the entire room.
The following morning, Charlie and the other employees went into the first day of the conference “bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.”
Charlie and his co-workers were allocated into groups of ten to solve coding problems. “All was going well until it came time to do group presentations.”
Ryan was in charge of overseeing group presentations. It wouldn’t be long before Charlie and everyone in the room would see how little he thought of his employees and how much he thought he could get away as a result of his “power.”
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“Performance Critiques”
When it came time to do their presentation, one of Charlie’s co-workers, “Callie,” volunteered to share their results. Everything seemed to go well with their presentation; however, Ryan asked to see Callie in the hall as soon as she was done presenting for their group.
Charlie, and every single other person in the group, could hear Ryan screaming at Callie at the top of his lungs. “Many, many offensive slurs were used and we could hear banging on the wall.”
Callie “returned to the room a sobbing mess, much to the shock of everyone.”
Ryan “returned as if nothing had happened.”
This same behavior continued over the course of the week. Ryan would single out whoever led the presentations for the day and other employees who seemed to be enjoying themselves a little too much then subject them to his “performance critiques” out in the hallway for everyone to hear. To make matters worse, Ryan would immediately flip his switch whenever another member of upper management would visit or when it was time to take photos for the department newsletters.
In their downtime, Charlie talked to other members of his department and quickly learned Ryan was rumored to behave like this; however, none of the international employees had ever witnessed it due to Ryan being on his best behavior during their company video calls.
Charlie thought to himself, “Genuine performance critiques are fine but ritualistic humiliation of your employees is ridiculous.”
Then a light bulb flashed in his head, “I bet no one has ever stood up to Ryan a day in his life,” and with that, Charlie spent the next few days trying to attract as much attention to himself as possible.
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“The Glasgow Kiss”
On the last day of the conference, the opportunity finally presented itself. Charlie’s group was asked to perform the last of the presentations and he quickly volunteered to lead. As expected, Ryan immediately asked Charlie to speak to him out in the hallway.
Before the door even closed, Ryan exploded, “You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, you pathetic bum!”
Unfazed and expecting this from Ryan, Charlie retorted, “Oh really? It’s probably been twenty years since you’ve ever done any technical work yourself.”
This further enraged Ryan, whose rant quickly turned vile as he was spitting and shouting in Charlie’s face.
Charlie quickly learned the source of the banging noises.
Ryan would slap his hands against the walls around his victim’s heads as if to intimidate them. Unfortunately for Ryan, Charlie knew it was all scare tactics aimed at making his victims feel small and inflating his own ego.
Instead of showing any fear, Charlie just smiled and nodded throughout the entire rant. He even threw in the occasional, “Oh, is that right?”
By the end of his rant, Charlie thought Ryan “was legitimately going to burst a blood vessel.”
As soon as he saw Ryan losing steam, Charlie asked, “Will that be all?”
Ryan screamed, “Get out of my sight,” and went to slam his hands against the wall near Charlie’s head again.
Unfortunately for Ryan, Charlie saw this coming and countered with something affectionately known in his hometown as the “Glasgow Kiss.” In America, this is commonly known as a headbutt.
Charlie had planted a few Glasgow Kisses on people during his teenage years and as a result, his forehead perfectly collided with Ryan’s nose as he went to slam his hands against the wall.
Ryan collapsed to the floor in shock holding his nose, looked up at Charlie, and whined, “HR will be hearing about this!”
Charlie leaned down and responded in his now alarmingly thick Scottish accent, “I don’t care. If you ever disrespect or try to intimidate me or my colleagues again, I’ll give you a beating like you’ve never experienced in your life.”
Without another word, Charlie stood back up and returned to the room as if nothing had happened. As he walked back into the room, Charlie heard Ryan get up and run down the hallway, presumably to HR.
~
Repercussions
As he expected, Charlie was called to HR shortly after the incident. As he walked into the HR office, he saw Ryan sitting in the other chair sporting two black eyes.
The HR representative asked Charlie to explain himself and he provided a very detailed account of the abuse he had witnessed Ryan put other employees through over the course of the week. However, when it came time to talk about the incident from earlier in the day, Charlie decided to tweak how he had handled the interaction with Ryan.
Charlie said, “Ryan called me out into the hallway and immediately began screaming at me as I had heard him do to other employees. However, he started slamming his hands against the wall around my head. It made me feel very intimidated as if he was going to hit me. I guess when he went to do it for the final time, I flinched because I genuinely thought he was going to hit me and our heads must have collided on accident,” then he cast Ryan a smirk as the HR representative was looking down at their paper copying down notes.
The HR representative sent both Charlie and Ryan away. When they returned to the rest of the team, Charlie saw everyone’s eyes light up with glee at the sight of Ryan sporting two fresh black eyes. To make matters even better or worse, depending on your perspective, they made it back just in time for the department photo.
Callie excitedly called out to Ryan, “You can stand next to me, sir,” and had the biggest grin possible next to their woozy-looking divisional manager in the department photo the entire company would see in the company recap of the event.
The following morning, Charlie was informed he had received a formal write-up for “accidentally” headbutting Ryan.
Ryan’s satisfaction was short-lived because the HR department conducted interviews with several witnesses of Ryan’s behavior over the week and they all matched up with Charlie’s recollection. Ryan was quickly terminated from the company and sent packing with two black eyes compliments of the first person to ever stand up to him.
Although no one actually saw what happened between Charlie and Ryan, many of his co-workers inferred what had happened and Charlie quickly became a company-wide legend. Needless to say, his department was free from any workplace bullying.
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Thoughts From The Author
Obviously, the moral of this story is not to headbutt the workplace bully. However, in this case, I think Ryan was completely asking for it. Screaming at employees is one level of workplace abuse but slapping the walls around their head is a psychotic move. There’s no valid reason to make employees fearful you’re going to hit them aside from just being a prick who needs to make other people feel small to inflate their own ego.
I’ve personally never been to Scotland, but you mean to tell me they’re just running around headbutting each other in Glasgow? A headbutt is such a wild move to pull, regardless of the situation. Charlie could have easily punched him and still claimed self-defense, but he decided to use his head as the weapon. Remind me to never get on the bad side of someone from Scotland.
I really hope they rescinded the formal write-up against Charlie after interviewing the other employees. Charlie doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy to misbehave in the workplace, and it was a situation where desperate times called for one specific desperate measure, a headbutt. If anything, Ryan getting away with his behavior for so long reflects negatively on the company. They should probably be taking measures to cover for themselves after allowing a high-level manager to terrorize their employees, not punishing the one employee who decided he wasn’t going to let it slide.
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