I told her I understood and we returned to our desks where I wrote up every single detail of the entire meeting and interaction and sent it to the head of HR with the explanation that as bullying was very serious and may not be reported by the victim, I felt duty-bound to report myself. I also laid it on pretty thick about being appalled by my unprofessional behavior and the fact that my career was likely at risk and I clearly had a desperate need for training and discipline to fix my dangerous ways.
I also copied in my union rep and within a day, me, my union rep and my boss were with the head of HR who, being by the book professional, could find no indication of bullying or justification for my fears of being an unprofessional bully in need of education. I was asked to leave the meeting, my union rep stayed in and I don’t know what was said, but within six weeks my boss was gone and that same week my weak and effective but likeable big boss called me in to thank me as he had wanted to get rid of her but had not known how.
When I had my beautiful baby girl, I was basically stuck in the house for the following seven weeks. A long C-section recovery had me dying to get out of the house. I decided to go for a walk in a nearby park with my baby. I could not find a very comfortable way to keep her on me without the weight hurting my incision, so I chose to just push her in an infant stroller.
My husband was at work anyway and it was an amazing looking day outside. If I knew what I did now, I might have waited an extra day or two before venturing out. Now, Karen was not a stranger and she was known around the neighborhood. This person was big into those pyramid schemes and when she would come around asking people to join, she seemed personally offended when we would tell her no. Like she was so entitled, she expected us to just hand over money because she said so.
Her doing something petty would not be a far reach by any means. Sadly, she was at the park that day and felt the need to approach me. “Do you need to be here disturbing everybody trying to enjoy the weather?” I had zero clue what she was talking about and just looked at her with that what-the-hell face. I had no idea what I was possibly doing that could be offensive to her or anybody else though.
“You came out here with that baby making noises and ruining the environment.” “But she has not cried once since we got here.” “Well, she is making sounds still and you’re just as bad with your noises.” Me quietly singing to her? She expected the park to be silent for her? I was not singing loudly by any means, just a quiet little lullaby that nobody would hear unless they were right next to me.
Karen could have moved slightly and it would be quiet. She just wanted to cause problems though. I don’t deal with these types of people and their crap and choose to just ignore them. That changed when Karen decided to fix the problem on her own and demanded to hold my baby to shut her up.
I was very protective and nobody but me and my husband were holding the baby yet. If I was not letting close friends or family hold her, there was no way Karen was getting her dirty hands on my daughter. I did not think to hold the stroller tighter, but I wish I had because the next thing I knew, she had pushed me aside and started to run down the path with my baby.