Franke James is Editor/Founder of Office-Politics.com and Inventor of the Office-Politics® Game.

Peter R. Garber has worked as an HR professional for over 25 years and is the author of many business books including: Winning the Rat Race at Work and 100 Ways to Get on the Wrong Side of your Boss.

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Arnie Herz, is a lawyer, mediator, speaker, author and consultant nationally recognized for his practical and inspired approach to conflict resolution and client counseling.

Dr. John Burton LL.B. M.B.A. M.Div. Ph.D. is an ethicist, mediator, lawyer and theologian. John is currently located in Prince Rupert, B.C., Canada, working with Canada's aboriginal communities.

When does office politics turn into illegal behavior? She put a rear view mirror on her PC monitor and angled it toward me to watch every move I made...

May 2005, Article 6

Dear Office-Politics,

I want your opinion on something --- when does office politics turn into out and out illegal behavior? I'll start with the basics, as I could go on and on for VOLUMES. (If it matters or not, I'm in the USA.)

The basics (and I do mean basics, as there's SOOOO much that happened in between):

I came back from vacation in October and was told that a person who ranked below me, "Elaine" was to be my boss. Elaine, who was basically a nice person and with whom I got along, told me that it was a move that 'Molly', the department head did in order to take out her (Molly's) personal vendetta against me. Elaine, who was Hispanic, was given the task of trying to get me to quit AT ALL COSTS...even being given the incentive of a promotion and a salary increase if she could get me to quit by the end of the year. After all, a white man would not have any chance fighting against a Hispanic female supervisor.

Elaine stopped at nothing ---

1. She asked me to leave, then told me to leave. She told me to leave before the end of the year or that I would regret the fact that I showed up for work beyond the first of the year (I later found out that this was true).
2. She went around the office and told people how much money I made (which was more than her because I technically outranked her), and told them that I wasn’t even worth half of that.
3. Along with Molly, she fudged my 3rd quarter appraisal and eventually blared the conversation of them planning it over a speaker phone with a lot of people listening (including me).
4. She would insult me by telling me things like "the only reason you still have a job around here is because I'm too BUSY to fill out the paperwork to fire you!"
5. She purposely left my name off of the recipients of a project in which the whole team (sans moi) got recognized and rewarded at the annual holiday party.
6. She conspired with other managers in the department so that they would write bad things about me to go into my annual appraisal in return for her writing good things about their direct reports, even when they didn’t deserve good appraisals.
7. She would go to meetings and badmouth me to the point that people would come up to me afterward and tell me that she was soliciting any negative feedback she could during the meetings and just feeding on it.
8. She would arrange to have projects taken from other individuals in the department and pile them onto my workload just to get me to miss deadlines. She even went to managers in other departments and told them that she had this guy in her group who was just sitting there with no work and got a few projects that way --- of course, things couldn't get done and I got blamed for the clients' projects falling through.
9. She went to our vendors/suppliers and badmouthed me to the point that they wouldn't want to work with me.
10. She insisted to know every move I made and would have pre-meeting conversations with my clients to tell them what to say to me and post-meeting conversations to find out everything I said.
11. She insisted that all correspondence to/from me would be blind-copied to her (she screwed up a couple of times and, not realizing it, forwarded these to me with comments and insults).
12. On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, she assigned me a 12-week project that had to be completed the following Tuesday. Twelve weeks of work in 4 business days...nice. I actually got it done and she was pissed because I did.
13. She had all of my work secretly audited by other members in the group (who told me about it), then would get annoyed because it was done correctly, but would get blamed for mistakes on the project that occurred when SHE sabotaged it.
14. She filled out an annual performance appraisal that made me look like I was too incompetent to even tie my own shoes. It was so fraudulent that SHE wouldn't even sign it!!!
15. She put me on a "performance improvement plan" that included getting with her before 8am each day to review my workload for the day, we were both to sign it, and then at the end of the day, review it with her again before I was allowed to leave, and get her signature before I could leave.
16. Our desks were in cubicles opposite one another. She put a rear view mirror on her PC monitor and angled it toward me to watch every move I made.
17. She kept a journal of every move I made --- (e.g.) 8:23am, Arrives; 8:27-8:40 coffee; 8:42-8:54 Bathroom? (yes, later confirmed by Gregory).
18. She went around the office and told several people that she was going to "wring my neck when my back was turned" and that she told me once that she should just bring in a knife to take out the people who didn\'t get along with her.
19. She told me once that "taping conversations is legal as long as at least ONE person actively engaged in the conversation knows it's being taped."
20. She filled out all of the paperwork that prevented me from transferring to any other supervisor in the company so that she could have me all to herself for torturing. I even overheard her telling someone on the phone that “the purpose of this is NOT to fire him --- the purpose of this is to F*ing TORTURE him so F*ing bad he F*ing ups and F*ing quits!!” (yes, she used the word torture)

Those were just the first 20 things that come to mind! Like I said, I could go on for VOLUMES. Maybe I'm overreacting, but I don't think that this is normal.... What should I do????

At-wits-end

Dear At-wits-end,

Since we are not lawyers, we won't attempt to answer your question "when does office politics turn into out and out illegal behavior".

Two things we will comment on.

(1) Why does Molly have a personal vendetta against you?  Understanding this probably won't help you in your current situation, but it may prevent you from making mistakes in the future.

(2) When, in this sequence of events, did you contact a lawyer?  As soon as you understood Molly and Elaine's intentions and saw that they were targeting you unfairly, it is important to protect yourself.  In some organizations Human Resources will provide that, but it doesn't sound like contacting them would help in your current situation.

The next step is to contact a lawyer and probably start documenting what is happening to you. Thanks for writing to Office-Politics.

Regards,

Rick Brandon, Ph.D. and Marty Seldman, Ph.D., Co-authors
Survival of the Savvy: High-Integrity Political Tactics for Career and Company Success
www.survivalofthesavvy.com

Feedback from Franke James, Creator, The Office-Politics Game

My 'two cents' on this is that the tremendous stress you are experiencing must be very tough on you physically and mentally. Whatever you decide about your work situation, you need to take steps to protect your emotional health. Good luck. Let us know how things work out.