The Workplace Cancer

I once worked 7.5 years at a college in a department that had that one person. You know, that one person that everyone needs to be warned about. I had been teaching at the high school level for 7.5 years and was tired of the parental over-reach and general lack of support from the administration for my career-tech program. I felt it was time to move up to the college level. I saw an ad placed in a major newspaper for a lecturer position in communication and to address the cover letter to a certain person....let's call her Lisa. Lisa has been at this college for a number of years. Her qualifications for her role I found out later were a little sketchy as she never talked about her own experiences "in the field." 

Anyway, I applied for this position. Lisa called me and invited me to campus for an interview. I travelled to the college, was given a tour, taught a lesson to the faculty, had lunch with the department, and met the department chair. It was a great interview!

I told the department chair that I needed to know whether or not I was going to get the job within two weeks because otherwise, I would have to ask to be released from my high school teaching contract if it got past July 9th. THIS is one instance where HR did a fantastic job! Because on July 8th, I got a phone call from the department chair to verbally offer me the job, which I accepted! The next day, I drove my resignation in to my high school job. 

Once at my new job, I got settled in quickly. I got my classes and was excited to teach! Lisa and I and 3 others were part of a group of people who you could say taught hands-on or applied classes while the other faculty taught more theoretical classes. 

Not too long into my employment, Lisa started having discussions with me about others in the department, the politics, allegiances, who's screwed up, and how she liked things, etc. It was a little unusual to get that kind of lowdown on so many issues but whatever. It made me wonder at times what did I get into? 

A couple years in to my time at this school, our department chair moved to a different area of the school. We had to form a search committee to find a new chair. In the hiring process and Lisa was destined to draw battle lines to find a new department chair who was "on our side." Yes, our applied side was important but we shouldn't create a divide amongst our faculty.

****Before I go further, I should put it out there that I joined the faculty as a lecturer and Lisa was a tenured faculty member. I was starting to work on my Ph.D. So, that's a delicate area to work in. Who's the more senior faculty member and is it safe to speak up? 

We ended up finding a great candidate named "Fred" who everyone seemed to like. However, it didn't take long for Lisa to start to backstab the department chair. Constant nit-picking about decisions Fred was making was the norm. If Lisa did not get her way with curricular and or departmental decisions, it was a problem. Lisa taught a class where a student assistant was needed. Over the years that Lisa taught her class, it was almost always a white blonde female, at least the entire time I was at the same school. 

Our college formed a nice partnership with ESPN to air or stream volleyball, baseball, softball, basketball, and pretty much every sport on campus. Our department chair, Fred, realized this was a big opportunity to ramp up a sports communication program. I have experience in that area. Fred came to me and asked if I could teach a "pilot" class of sports journalism. Many colleges call pilot classes a "280" or some similar number. It goes on the catalog as a 280 and after a certain number of times that the class runs (3), the class either goes away entirely or it has to get approved to be permanently on the books. 

So, I taught this class. It was basically live blogging from sporting events and capturing postgame video and uploading it to a blog. I loved it. I thought it was cutting edge. So did Fred. 

Who didn't like it? 

Lisa. 

Lisa thought I was and flat out told me and accused me of poaching her class (for students), which was not even offered at the same time. Lisa taught a broadcast journalism class. I was teaching sports journalism. I taught the class in the spring of 2015 and did well with it. I had fun. However, when it came time to plan what classes to teach for the fall semester, Lisa sent me an email asking what I was planning on teaching. She said, "you will not be teaching any class called sports journalism. If you do, we are going to have issues." 

Yes. Lisa threatened me in email. It was in writing! 

I forwarded the email to my department chair (Fred) and to the Dean of my college. I met with the Dean and she said I had a legitimate right of file a formal complaint. 

****As this was going on, I was in the final stages of my dissertation. I was overstressed. I was exercising and eating ok for some mental benefit but still my sleep was shitty because of the stress from my Ph.D. and from Lisa. I was beginning to suffer from alopecia from the stress as my hair was falling out in weird spots on my head. I couldn't hide it. 

So, I filed a formal complaint and walked it to the faculty mediator's office along with my department chair (Fred). Like how cool is that...that a supervisor had my back? 

We met with the faculty mediator (Keith). Fred told Keith that Lisa has been a problem for a couple of years undermining him and that this threat had to be dealt with. 

Keith said to me, "why don't you move your office?" 

Absolutely bewildered like I had a third eye or something I said, "Why me? I'm not the problem! Besides, this was an email threat! You could put me in the engineering building and she could still threaten me in email." 

The mediator said, "I'm just concerned. You said you were working on your Ph.D. That's important. Try having your office hours at a different time than Lisa." 

Realizing that the college wasn't going to do shit about Lisa, Fred and I figured that's what we'll have to do. I taught class and had office hours at opposite times than Lisa. 

While this might read like an isolated incident, consider the following about Lisa during my time at the same workplace:

Although not fireable, whenever the department and faculty tried to change anything, Lisa was the first to say 'no' and only 'no' instead of offering any alternative plans.

• We had two sections of tv journalism to teach one semester. I had one section and she had another. Lisa divided up the students into Tuesday (her) and Thursday (my) sections. Her class almost all white from what I recall. I had a diverse group. On our section days, we did our newscast live. On Wednesdays, we met as one large group and Lisa would critique and give feedback to the group as a whole. On one particular Wednesday, she really hammered my group, telling us how bad we were, etc. And for her class, it was sunshine and rainbows. She did not tell me in advance she was going to do this. I was mad. I could see it in my students' eyes that they felt badly. I told her not to do that again. Or if she was, we should at least talk about it. 
• She once tried to defraud the college by arranging to go on a trip to Canada for a conference. The conference was cancelled but she still went anyway with her boyfriend. The college found out and made her pay back expenses. 
• We had a longtime employee tragically pass away on a weekend, Lisa put the spotlight on her in a disgusting display of "look at me" while the spotlight should have been on the longtime employee who meant a lot to the school. This deceased employee had a community service streamed online at the basketball arena! Lisa was in charge of producing a video from our department about the colleague. First, she made it a "Don and I built this program" video and told stories about her and Don. Second, she didn't interview anyone on camera who had worked with Don since he had been there for the many, many years. She interviewed a couple of really, really close people in our applied area of the faculty. This ended up pissing off many people. 
• When department chair Fred had to go to Florida to visit his ailing father, he left Pete, a senior faculty member, in charge. Lisa blasted Fred for doing this in a group text to me and the others in our applied faculty area. "My God. How can we trust (Fred)?" But when Lisa's father was sick and she had to go out of state to visit her dad, she pissed and moaned because Fred didn't offer her any well-wishes. By this time in Fred's reign as department chair, there had been enough confrontations initiated by Lisa in and out of department meetings that things were very rocky.
• Lisa, at another time, in the middle of teaching my Sports Journalism class, threatened me in her office by telling me that by teaching my class that I was "messing with my (her) curriculum." Like what the hell? I told her I was not by simply teaching the class and that by starting this partnership with ESPN, we needed to do something to beef up a sports broadcasting curriculum. To which, Lisa wanted no part of. 
• Working at this school with Lisa was a constant day-to-day stressor. At nights and on the weekends, I would get texts from Lisa about how to vote on issues at the department meetings and complaints about other department faculty. I just stopped answering them. How do you tell your immediate supervisor to stop? And that she's over the top...especially considering how vindictive she is? 
• For summer classes, Lisa would often "bump" lower ranked faculty from teaching a summer class because her classes didn't "take" or have enough enrollment. Even though student reviews of her summer classes were not positive, Lisa still had the contractual "right" to bump lower ranked faculty from their summer class. Imagine that surprise on the student. A student signs up for a summer class with one instructor and finds out they get Lisa. 
• I had a couple of discussions with our faculty union rep and he told me that "Yes, we've had a lot of complaints about Lisa. But she's tenured." I don't give a shit about whether or not she's tenured. That doesn't give you free reign to a workplace terror. 
• Unbeknown to my Department Chair (Fred), I met with the interim provost about Lisa. I knew it wasn't going to go well when when the interim provost Mike walked in and sat down with his arms crossed and closed off body language. When I told Mike about Lisa's behavior and the email threat, he said Lisa is tenured and we can't really do much to her. And if we did, she has earned the right to an arduous process (to discipline her). 

I ended up leaving this school after I graduated with my Ph.D. to move to the other side of the state. I couldn't stay at a job where it was adversely impacting my health. 

I still stay in touch with some of the people at my former workplace. And it has only gotten worse with Lisa. Before I left, I told the Dean that since nothing has been done to Lisa, there's a "culture of permissiveness." She can do whatever she wants because she knows she won't get punished. 

So, Lisa has been at the same school for about two decades and the school still has not done anything to her. 

#hostileworkenvrionment  #harrassment  #threat   #tenure