Hanging out with a former colleague got me thinking about a lot of things. I do miss my old workplace, the friends I had left behind, the work that I do since I understand what I'm doing, but at the end of the day, with missing and recalling the best of those times, you also end up recalling the worst experiences you had encountered during your stay there.
More than hanging out with old friends, job hunting kinda brings very bad memories to the forefront. No matter how many times people advise you not to speak ill of your previous company, when the interviewer asked you why you left, the haunted look immediately follows. It's been three years and the bad things still haunts me, and hearing how the system remained unchanged bothered me more than ever.
People say that abuse happens everywhere, it's no big deal. But isn't that in a way shows that we, as people, passively accepts the fact that anyone can step on us and our right to fair and humane treatment? Instead of asking why people had not done anything about it, shouldn't we start asking ourselves why we hadn't done anything ourselves?
I had been a victim of an abuse in workplace and I had been witness to countless of incidences. People would say why are you just speaking out now, why not then? But the thing is, I did, I just didn't write it down and immortalized it on the internet. I shared my experiences with friends, I shared it with acquaintances, I even shared it to a number of HR personnel that I had encountered in my journey in search of greener pastures. But this is probably the first time I'm sharing it personally in the web because I just really need to feel that I had done something in behalf of the friends I had left behind who are still subject to some form of abuse or another.
I don't plan to name the company if that's what you're looking for. That would be a tad distasteful since its products are not at fault, it's the management who needs to rethink their approach. Personally, I had experience being physically manhandled. It was just having the front of my shirt pulled, and to the fresh grad me, it was too much of a shock to react in protest. I'm just lucky a supervisor colleague was there to react on my behalf and had prevented any more physical sort of abuse to befall me. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same thing to my other colleagues. I had been witness to seeing her abused on a near daily basis. She would be manhandled at times, get water thrown in her face, kicked and even had things thrown at her. If she's not being abused because she made a mistake, she's being abused for fun by having her attach s bull clip at various parts of her body, including her face (If you're not aware of how painful that is, try attaching a bull clip to your nose for a minute, then get back to me of how that felt). I also encountered seeing one of the bosses with a stapler and pretending to staple her on the forehead, and the stapler is loaded with staple wires. I've also seen her being fired and dragged back more times than I dare to count, her things thrown here and there, I've seen her cry and work her butt off, often having work take over her personal life.
I can still recall my first day at the company, I was trying to learn my way around the place and take a bite out of my workload, when it wasn't even lunch yet when the boss came flying out of nowhere towards the pile of files next to me and threw everything to the ground in rage. He was fuming mad at something that had gone wrong and since work started, he was in his cubicle with my colleague, alternating between screaming at her and insulting her in low tones, as well as slamming his fists on the table. I'm not sure if there were any physical abuse being done as well, since I wasn't in the cubicle with them to witness that. He sent her packing, telling her she's fired. She was pleading then, and they were arguing, they went back to the cubicle and fought some more. I can't recall much of what happened after, but I do recall wanting to quit then and there and I was persuaded to stick it out for at least a year.
More than the physical abuse, there's definitely a lot of emotional abuse happening in that place as well. Insults being thrown left and right can work at your insides until you completely lose any self-respect or self-worth. I've seen it happen and I can still remember feeling helpless as it happens. Trying to intervene whenever I can, providing encouraging words, a shoulder to cry on, an assessment of what she can do, unfortunately, I think it was too late. She can't function without the abuse, she had become dependent on being abuse.
People had grown indifferent to it over time, and that, I think is the saddest thing of all. People had become okay with that scenario. They had gone numb and it had become the norm in that workplace, like its no longer a big deal to them. People had lost their sense of compassion and had started fearing being the focus of that abuse. Everyone had simply became onlookers, turning a blind eye to what is clearly a violation of the one's basic human right. Sad to say, I had slowly became one of those people. The only difference is, before I lost my heart and the ability to feel compassion, I had been able to leave that kind of environment. Unfortunately, my friends hadn't been quite as lucky.
Why not report the abuse to HR? How can you when the HR is pro-management. Why not report the abuse to the labor court? They're a big company, you're only an individual, you're not going to accomplish anything. Or, reporting that will consequently black list you on other companies and would not help you land a new job.
It's such a sad thing when you can't do anything because of the consequences that you're not privy to. How one act of rebellion can affect those you leave behind will remained unmeasured. The possible destruction you leave behind in your wake can make even the bravest rethink whether its worth changing the system if it meant many would lose their job. Is there anyway to report abusive companies without having to call attention to yourself and risk being black listed everywhere else?
