Working with Bitches

by Meredith Fuller

  But if you work with a bitch who has no interest in working well with you, and you don’t have power to deal with the problem organizationally, you need to understand what drives her. By understanding the dynamic that is operating, you are able to care for yourself with an approach that won’t escalate the problem or your safety, and that makes you comfortable.

  International executive Sonya Clancy told me, “Remember, these bitches rarely change, so you need to be vigilant in using the techniques provided in the book. I have been caught by dropping my guard on several occasions.”

  Fitting All the Pieces Together

  Here is an at-a-glance summary of all the tools you now have at your disposal to help you understand what drives the mean girl you work with. First of all, you can try to identify her type by using the eight personality profiles outlined in Chapters 1 through 8—these are based on her dominant behaviors. Then you can move on to evaluate which of the four archetypes informs her behavior (and yours) and finally to describe her thinking preferences (and yours). You can reflect on the generational differences between you and respect how these may contribute to your misunderstanding each other.

  Step 1: Identify Her Type

  There are eight types of mean girls. Think of them as running from cold to hot (Figure 1). The coldest type is the Excluder—she is icy toward you. The hottest type is the Screamer—she’ll raise the temperature of any room. In the middle of all this is the Not-a-Bitch. She might exhibit characteristics of all the different types from time to time, but she is not actually a mean girl.

  Step 2: Identify Her Archetype

  Sometimes you’ll get all you need from the advice that follows once you’ve identified your mean girl as one of the eight types or maybe a blend of types. But if your mean girl doesn’t neatly fit into one type, if you feel as if there’s more going on beneath the surface, or if you would like to know a bit more about personality types and behaviors, it’s time to consider the universal roles—or archetypes—that women inherit and that inform the way they behave. Imagine a wheel with four quadrants (the roles) (Figure 2). The wheel can turn clockwise when the roles are positive, or counterclockwise when the roles are negative. Any of these universal roles can have a positive or negative effect on your mean girl, regardless of what type she is.

  Step 3: Identify Her Decision-Making Preference

  The final piece of the personality puzzle is working out how your mean girl makes decisions. Does she use her head (thinking) or her heart (feeling) (Figure 3)? And how do you make your decisions? Often, the fact that you and a mean girl think differently will be causing you stress. By understanding more about how she thinks, you can be better prepared for discussions, which might in turn reduce your stress.

  PART THREE

  How Can You Help Yourself?

  Physically and emotionally, I couldn’t confront her. Work didn’t want to know about it, and I didn’t know how to find the right people to ask for help. When I resigned, I told the HR manager my reasons. She said, “Oh, she’s done that to me too!”

  —Elwin

  Take Stock of Yourself

  Often in our working lives, we’re so busy dealing with complex jobs and relationships while juggling home responsibilities that we neglect our self-care. If you add another layer of complexity in deflecting a bitch, it’s no wonder that it all gets to be too much sometimes. We promise that we’ll start looking after ourselves later—when we get through this year or finish this critical project, or when the restructure is completed. We don’t have time for illness, holidays, or job applications. We’re too afraid to take some time off, slow down, or get in touch with how we really feel. We lose our confidence and can’t believe we would ever earn a livelihood anywhere else. We assume that we can’t consider self-employment, return to study, or ever feel revitalized. We behave as if we don’t deserve a social life, good health, job satisfaction, or the opportunity to work in a functional environment with people we get along with. We worry that if we stop we’ll never be able to start again.

  We try to cope by becoming the purse-lipped professional worker, wearing a resigned mask of determination to somehow get through each day, despite a lack of passion and energy. We pretend that we’re not affected by a mean girl; nor are we tired, hurt, resentful, or angry; we’re not sad or frightened; and we don’t feel anxious or depressed. We pretend there’s nothing wrong. Until we fall apart.

  Many women say that they are afraid to take any leave in case the mean girl starts fires that they’re not there to put out. If you are too frightened to take a sick day in case the bitch sabotages your work, you are also probably reluctant to let anyone else see how strongly she is affecting you.

  People close to you will see through the mask. Listen to them when they tell you that they’re sick of your bitchy boss being ever present at every social situation because you can’t stop talking about how mean she is. Listen to your husband when he says she is not coming on your holiday—that her name is banned from conversation. And most of all, listen to your body when it’s yelling at you that’s it’s had enough. You need looking after, and the best person to do that at this point is you.

  If you become resigned to remaining robotic in the face of nastiness, it’s quite likely you’ll get sick. There are no prizes for stoicism. Your time starts now. There is hope. There are things that are under your control and that you can do. They include easy health-care strategies, support in staying at your position or leaving it, career advice, and further resources.

  The other important thing to remember is that if you’re overtired or stressed to the eyeballs, it’s unlikely you will make the wisest decision about your future. That’s why the chapter on dealing with stress (Chapter 12) is right before the chapter that talks you through whether to stay with or leave your job. Once you feel better physically and mentally, you’ll feel more confident to work through your choices and make a decision.

  Don’t leave it too late to look after yourself. If you feel healthy, you will have more energy to deal with the things that come your way. You’ll have a more positive outlook. But it takes time to go for a walk and to buy and cook healthy food rather than dive for the nearest sugar fix. You need to make that time.

  CHAPTER 12

  Managing Workplace Stress

  Women seem to feel they have to take on a tough male exterior in high positions, and coupled with balancing work, kids, home, and the stress of a high-powered position, they can sometimes get it very wrong!

  —Anskie

  You might have come across your mean girl at work fairly recently, but it is quite likely that you have been dealing with her type for a long time. Having spent a reasonable amount of time coping with bitchy behavior, you may find that stress becomes the determining factor in your decision about whether you stay in the job or leave to get away from the bitch at work. Or you may base your decision on her likely impact on your career.

  While some ideas and resources from this book will help you understand and manage the situation, the bottom line is that she does not want to change. Strategies will help you to deal with her by changing your own responses and feelings, but there is nothing to indicate that hers may be altered. The longer this has been going on, the less likely it is that you are in a healthy organization that has protocols for preventing bitchy behavior. Now it is time to consider your options—staying or going.

  To what extent is your well-being affected by staying? To what extent is your career affected by remaining? These are the most important questions when you are considering what to do.

  Your health and well-being are the most important concerns. Without good health, you cannot function properly or care for yourself and those you are responsible for—your dependents. Remember the instructions given on a plane when oxygen masks need to be fitted? Fit your own mask first, before you attend to your child. If you fail to secure your mask first, it is unlikely that you will be able to help your child. In this case, we are referring to the child wit
hin (where our hope and vitality resides) as well as your actual dependents. You can’t fulfill your career potential without hope and vitality.

  Your health and well-being are likely to be compromised by the impact of stress, so the first step is to understand whether you are actually under stress and which career and personal areas are affected. Next, you need to determine what level of stress you are experiencing. Deciding whether you need to stay or go is highly connected to how stressful it is for you to work in your particular organization. Coming up against the bitch at work may be a signal to stop and go in a different direction—perhaps that workplace is not the place for you, and you can take the opportunity to do an about-face and leave. Many women feel angry about having to leave to save themselves. Why should they have to go when they are not the problem? Why should they leave when they have studied and trained long and hard to get there? Why should they leave when they like the workplace, except for that bitch, and they don’t want to be forced out?

  Many bitches fly under the radar, and their nasty behavior is not considered a health and safety issue in the same way that bullying is. You are about to learn about self-trust for the survivor women—self-reliance. You might have to rescue yourself.

  Is It Me or Her?

  If you work with someone who is nasty, conniving, and manipulative, it can be the thing that tips you over the edge. It can be one more stress factor that you don’t need, and it might result in burnout. Before you can make a sensible decision about what’s best for you, it’s worth taking the time to consider all aspects of your workplace situation and to consider what’s going on at home. Look at what you can change and whether you can better manage your own responses to some things. It might not be all her fault.

  Stress

  Stress is the interaction of environmental demands upon a person, and the person’s coping skills to meet these demands. It is often considered a problem of overengagement.

  There are three main types of stress:

  •Underload: not enough stimulation, leading to boredom and apathy

  •Optimal: when stress is at a level where we function efficiently and effectively

  •Overload: too many tasks and responsibilities, leading to mistakes, poor concentration, and poor performance

  The main causes of workplace stress will no doubt sound familiar: long hours, heavy workload, changes within the organization, tight deadlines, changes to duties, uncertain job security, lack of autonomy, boring work, insufficient skills for the job, over-supervision, inadequate working environment, lack of proper resources, lack of equipment, few promotional opportunities, harassment, discrimination, and poor relationships with colleagues or bosses. The fact that this all sounds familiar shouldn’t detract from the effect these causes of stress can have on you. If you are working with a bitch, the things that cause stress are magnified.

  A range of issues may cause or exacerbate stress. Work-related stress may be connected to issues such as role overload (too much to do) and interpersonal strain. Your stress levels might be heightened by a bitch at work or how difficult you consider working in your organization to be. The less stressed you are, the easier it is to cope. Prolonged stress may lead to burnout or ill health, and you want to avoid both of these at all costs. The higher and more prolonged your stress, the longer it takes to recover. You need to explore your stress levels before you can gauge whether to stay or whether you need to go.

  You may well share some similarities with many of my clients—talented, clever, ethical, committed women who work long and hard for organizations that, in many cases, fail to acknowledge or even perceive their contribution. They are the invisible glue, adding their considerable creativity, sense of duty, responsibility, and integrity to ensure that work is completed properly despite—in some cases—a lack of adequate resources, staff, or time. Working with a bitch has placed them under considerable interpersonal strain, and they demonstrate work-related stress.

  Depending on your age and life stage, you may have yet to experience some of these scenarios, or you may be currently experiencing them or have already experienced them. Let’s look at the typical themes that women bring to me.

  Perhaps you approach your job determined to bring your best effort to every project, customer, client, report, problem, or other task. You may work extended hours in order to do so. You probably take some work home, and you might spend part of your weekend finishing something that could not be completed otherwise. If you have children, you may have a convoluted routine of after-school care, nannies, babysitters, grandparents, or friends to mastermind. You could be supporting children through stressful exams or their life traumas. If you are child-free, there may be similar contortions required for pets, nephews or nieces, regular air travel, or additional projects from an acting role (while you’re still expected to complete your current job tasks). Health problems requiring treatments have to fit around work calendars.

  If you’re in a partnership, you may be a dual-career couple, sharing child-rearing and work, or both working and studying part-time. Your relationship might be conducted long distance if one of you works in another state or overseas. Mostly, you work full-time; if you have negotiated vacation days or time in lieu of overtime, you’re rarely able to take it. At some stage, you will possibly care for elderly or ill parents, other relatives, step-relatives, or in-laws and handle unforeseen family dramas or health scares. You probably don’t have much time or energy for a social life; after the gym or when the children are in bed, you return to your computer. If you can squeeze them in, or you’re not too tired, you might see some friends on the weekend. You’ll probably be too distracted to listen to what’s going on in their lives.

  For single women interested in meeting a potential partner, there may be the difficulty of little free time and not knowing where to go. If you have met someone, finding a free evening that suits you both is a herculean effort. On the other hand, you may have a different lifestyle or have reached a life stage where many personal issues have been resolved, and you are not concerned with these themes.

  What we don’t know is what sort of stressors the bitch at work may be trying to cope with—she may have excessive stress or very little stress. If she is under excessive stress, she may be fighting for survival using the techniques she is most familiar with; if she is under too little stress, she may become mischievous at work due to boredom.

  The examples suggested here might not describe your situation as accurately as you would like. Perhaps most areas of your life have been proceeding well, and coming across a bitch at work is the only negative on your horizon. Whatever your lifestyle situation, you could be carrying a hurt the size of a pebble or a monolith, because of the antics of a bitch or two in the workplace.

  If you are having some problems with a mean girl, you may not yet have the associated stress symptoms. However, if the situation continues unabated, your stress response may rise. Eventually, you’ll find that stress is affecting your health and well-being.

  Let’s look at your current stress response and the likely ramification—burnout—of not putting some preventative or remedial steps in place. You wake up in the morning feeling sick to your stomach at the prospect of a meeting scheduled with the bitch at your work. Your hands shake, your heart pounds, and your mind replays recent conversations or subtle put-downs. But perhaps you don’t let on …

  Are You Stressed?

  These are symptoms described by women who work with a bitch. Do you relate to any of these?

  •I cry when I get home from the office, and I dread the end of the weekend.

  •I can’t find my words easily.

  •I can’t sleep, and I’m having disturbing dreams, more like nightmares.

  •I can’t concentrate; I can’t recall what I just read.

  •My head feels like it’s being squeezed by a contracting band of pressure.

  •I feel and show inappropriate irritation—tears or anger—in outbursts.

  •I
feel resentful—my work culture does not allow my input, they steal my ideas, they don’t value me.

  •My manager is risk-averse and avoids change, and I feel so unsupported I want to shake her.

  •I fear that everything delegated to me is really a poisoned chalice.

  •I have lost my confidence.

  •I have panic attacks.

  •I worry because I used to be able to make things happen, but now I feel like I’m in decline, with no autonomy or future.

  •I wish I was with like-minded people—I feel so alone at work.

  •I can’t focus and I have so much to do!

  •I long to feel passionate again about what I do.

  Burnout

  Burnout, first defined by American psychoanalyst Herbert Freudenberger in 1972, is a psychological response to “long-term exhaustion and diminished interest.” He explains that burnout has to do with “running on empty” and “a loss of equilibrium.” Burnout is characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and difficulties experiencing personal accomplishment. It may take months or years to emerge from burnout.

  Burnout usually comes from working long hours and having little restful or rejuvenating downtime; continual peer, customer, and supervisor interpersonal difficulties; being under surveillance; or micromanagement. Burnout is primarily about disengagement—that is, the woman loses all interest in not only the job but also her well-being. The term care worn is often used to describe her state.