change

When I interviewed for my job years ago, my soon-to-be boss asked me, "How do you bring about change in a workplace?"
"Simple," I responded, "You don't make it all at once. You take your time, you bring it up in a meeting and then you wait. Let them think about it. Then you bring it up again. And maybe again. Once it becomes their idea, you're ready to make it happen."

Five months later, I was surprised to learn my boss was now my boss's boss and everything was changing. It was not a popular change. In fact, it caused half the team to quit. I almost quit. I decided to stick it out. I barely knew the new guy, maybe my first impressions were wrong. Maybe the new culture caused by a 50% staff change could be used to fix some of the already extant issues. Plus: the hell of jobsearch just ended. Did I really want that again?

It turns out the guy was a bully. Worse yet, as far as I can tell--I still hardly know the guy--he's an unintentional bully. Completely oblivious to it. So ingrained in him is a way of life (this is me supposing) that it does not clock as causing harm. Like a hoarder, an addict, a fish: he cannot see the wet for it simply is, cannot remove themselves from the harm for the security it brings. Yet I still persisted.

I have a sense in me. A timer, a calculation of environmental variables, a spiritual web, a connection to God; call it what you will--this sense told me I wasn't done yet. I haven't left the place cleaner than when I came; I'm not yet rootbound in this pot; my skills have not yet been made sharp enough on this grindstone. So I started planted ideas. I hadn't fully figured out where I was going and I knew the first step had to be simple so I chose the seed given to me in one of my own awakenings: "it doesn't have to be this way." I started with my boss and my peers. I had probably the most stressful year in my life since the one I almost died in. I pushed forward and faded back, resisted and pivoted, tried to find the beam to balance on; all the while sowing: it doesn't have to be this way.

I broke. I burnt out, wax gone, wick extinguished. So I took my own advice: it doesn't have to be this way. It felt like breaking a Rule, like giving up and selling out but it didn't have to be this way, but I skipped a chainlink and trusted the guy who hired me and sent him an email: "please help". I just looked it up again; at the time I was worried about coming off weird or too strong or not ""professional"". I write good stuff, I did good. This started a period of growth and rest. Maybe rest isn't right. Does a chrysalis rest while her insides reform? I started to see some seeds sprout--not in my boss--and bullying reigned in (against me, at least). My boss's boss worked for me. There was a reason I hired under him. While I'm not better, I'm feeling refreshed, I told him. I was able to start opening my eyes wider. Looking at what others saw instead of just my own two feet. Asking myself how secure i felt in my job. Checking in on those sprouts I planted, watering here, weeding there. I don't know what kind of fruit grows from the it-doesn't-have-to-be-this-way seed, but they were growing well and I figured I should start thinking about whether they needed trelises or pruning or something and started writing little notes to myself. What do I want? Where does it hurt the most? What do I wish management could see? Plans for the future, new seeds to plant.

Somewhere in here my boss fired another admin. I can't prove it but I'm confident he was bullied out. The system was used to excise him. My boss seemed sad when he did it. Put out, regretful. I don't think he understands what he did to this day. How he set the guy up to fail, pulled the net out from underneath the trapeze while grinding glass into the ropes he would swing upon. When the butterfly emerged, skin bursting for the final time, she was born with knives.

Somewhere around here--probably before the firing honestly--I started jokingly calling what I was doing "my Evil Machinations". Behind closed doors I became explicit: my boss, while maybe not the root of our many, many cultural problems, was a perpetrater of wrong and one so stuck in the culture it became an indiscriminate sword in his hands. I didn't have an answer to the problem (hindsight says I did but couldn't look it in the face without Trembling) but my plants were growing and ideas need food and I had knives for hands. I was afraid my blades would be as harmful as the sword, but what I found instead is people noticed my ears. I've always had good ears--literal me, not this butterfly I'm hiding behind--and people often spill the beans to me. So I listened! What I kept hearing was more cuts from the bully's sword; My knives didn't need to let blood for the ideas to feed on, for wounds already wept freely. Even so I felt impotent. I Saw the problems, a seer peering into this tiny world, patterns emerging clear as day, but could only say "take your troubles up the chain, bypass the issue" and hope they listened--and hoped my former boss would not only listen but hear what we were all afraid to say: our boss is a bully

Small changes were made, here and there. Some behaviors were reigned in, one by one. But we were still essentially in a holding pattern--holding onto a merry-go-round as a v8 drove it round and round. Someone caught another job and left. I'm proud of them: escape is hard.

Then Something happened last week. It was a terrible kind of perfect, reader. I don't want you to read into it so far as to say I was the one who fixed things. I was, in fact, a small role and have only a sliver of keyhole to look through at this event--I wasn't even there! But do not misunderstand either: my work bore fruit.

Last week my boss was--once again--swinging the bully's sword. But this time, I am told, multiple people were present. And then his boss walked in mid swipe. Piecing together shards, I gather he was not entirely pleased, but did not view it as unfixable--merely a teachable moment, if you will. He only saw the tail end of a coversation. I wasn't there at all. But my ear is always bent, and a coworker--understandably!--needed help afterwards because my boss swung directly at him, and not just once. It was shit. The kind you have to carry home to share the burden as long as possible. In fact, I carried it back to work the next day: I had to ask: "friend, are you able to do something about this?"
"no"
"Can I?"
"yes"

I had knives for hands and their purpose was clear and I hated it. I hated the pit we were in, I hated the way out, I felt terrible, I felt like it was a risk, I felt everything was outside of my control and I called my boss's boss with my little knife apendages and I slipped them between ribs and I said "my boss is a bully and you've seen it"

After that I don't know much. I know hard questions were asked and harder answers came out. I know i felt an increase in gravity, cosmic rays battering me, the summer sun's glaring eye. I haven't gone to work without a deep feeling of dread for probably two years but this was that burden tenfold. I looked my plans in the eye and saw their logical conclusion fully: either my boss was ousted or this workplace aided and abetted abuse. I wanted justice but I also can't bear to see a guy lose his livelihood; I wanted the idea of what he had done ground into him and yet he is more horribly trapped than all of us as far as these eyes can pierce: to cause so much harm without an ounce of understanding!

It was out of my terrified hands. The weekend was long. Monday a piercing thought struck me, a knell deep and sure: my boss was not my boss. There wasn't really any reason for the thought. I guess there were some clues I could've poirot'd if you wanna be a skeptic but i feel as if it struck me the same moment a pact was sealed in another room in another building. Minutes before I left for the day it was made official in a all hands meeting: the bullying would end. My boss is gonna be my coworker. I've got my old boss back. How do you bring about change? Simple. Bleed and claw, meditate and tend, bide and build. metamorphose.