If I Did It: Confessions Of The Workplace Bully

Forbes

28-04-2025

Burnout, sad and anxiety corporate worker with problem, bad mental health or depression from office ... More staff gossip. Woman employee feeling fail, tired and thinking of mistake, life and stress at work
You know them. They're the one who smiles at the team meeting while cutting your legs out from under you back at your desk. They're the one who 'forgets' to cc you on the critical email. The one who jokes about your 'mistakes' just loud enough for everyone else to hear — then shrugs when you flinch. They are the workplace bully. And if you're honest, you've probably worked with someone like them. They're not rare. They're part of your day to day work life.
About fifty million American workers have experienced bullying at work in the past six months - that's a huge number. That number is not a typo nor a rounding error — it's an epidemic. Here's the kicker - bullying behaviors at work aren't just about outdated stereotypes of temper tantrums and emotional blowouts. It is all about polished and strategic acts to harm you, veiled in dark empathy, and embedded deep within organizational culture.
What's also mind blowing is that bullies don't just survive in corporate America; they thrive. Why? Simple, because organizations still mistake aggression for leadership, sabotage for competitiveness and fear for respect. When companies are busy rewarding results over ethics, confusing ruthlessness with drive and looking in the other direction when collateral damage piles up - the bully wins.
This isn't an accident. It's the system working exactly as designed.
A system built to protect results over people.
Forget the Hollywood version — the red-faced screamer, the open aggression bully. The real bully plays a different game. They are like ninjas—rarely the loudest person in the room, and always ruthless - they're so good at harming others, you often don't realize you're under attack until it's too late.
They often appear charming, articulate, and outwardly professional, yet beneath the surface, their devious methods are conducted with surgical precision: isolating the target, gaslighting colleagues, sabotaging projects, and undermining reputations one whisper at a time.
Dr. Sherri Gordon explains in Psychology Today, 'Workplace bullying is often hidden under a cloak of professionalism. It's emotional abuse engineered to discredit and isolate — without raising alarms.'
Bullies crave admiration, control, and power — not friendship - and in a world where organizations confuse fear for respect and sabotage for competitiveness, they don't just survive. They thrive.
To truly understand who the workplace bully is, you have to go beyond the surface behavior and think dark. A dangerous constellation of traits common exist among bullies known as the Dark Triad: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Want to spot a workplace bully? Look for the person who makes success feel dangerous.
Here's the playbook:
They don't need to yell to dominate you. All they have to do is erode your confidence slowly, until you start doing it for them. They exploit ambiguity, weaponize other's perception, and maintain control not through talent — but through fear. They don't win because they're more talented. They win because they're willing to do what decent people won't.
Think you're safe because you're not the direct target? Think again. Toxic workplaces don't just break individuals — they break everything. Trust collapses. Innovation dies. Sick leave skyrockets. Turnover bleeds out your best people.
What should trouble you even more is that research shows, prolonged exposure to workplace bullying triples the risk of developing clinical depression. Targets often suffer from chronic anxiety, sleep disturbances, and PTSD-like symptoms. In the most tragic instances, workplace bullying has been linked to suicide — a horrifying but very real outcome when abuse goes unchecked.
Companies love to talk about 'zero tolerance.' They love posters. They love workshops. But when it's time to actually take action?
Colleagues stay silent, hoping they're not next. Bullies continue to thrive for one reason: organizations allow them to. The Workplace Bullying Institute notes that when bullying is reported, 62% of targets (that's right the complainants) either lose their jobs or are pushed out.
Why? Leadership teams often tolerate bullies if they deliver the results. HR departments, tasked more with risk management than employee welfare, usually fail to investigate properly. As Dr. David Yamada, workplace bullying scholar at Suffolk University, has said, 'Our structures too often protect the perpetrator, not the victim. Reporting mechanisms are weak, and retaliation is common.'
So what happens? Bullied employees quietly leave, high performers exit out of frustration, and the bully consolidates power — until the cycle begins again. You don't stop bullies with slogans. You stop them with consequences.
Ending workplace bullying requires more than lip service. It requires organizations to rethink what success looks like — valuing emotional intelligence, collaboration, and decency on equal footing with performance.
Real culture change isn't about branding. It's about choosing courage over comfort.
If they did it — and they did — it's because your system let them. Because fear got a bigger bonus than decency. Because nobody had the guts to say enough. Bullies don't thrive because they're unstoppable. They thrive because you made it easy.
Shine a light, and they scatter.
Your move.