Job Harassment By An Employer-How To Deal With It

There are many kinds of on-the-job harassment, many of which have been the subject of thorough discussion. But did you know that shy people can be a frequent target? Yes, shy people may be an easy mark for job harassment by employers.
This should not be interpreted as saying that employers are just waiting to treat certain people unfairly. However, shy people, because of their quiet and seemingly timid demeanor, can be seen as lacking in self confidence. If a shy person has trouble making good eye contact, this can be viewed as dishonesty, or at least a failure to believe in oneself.
Further, shy people often have a harder time making friends on the job and building strong relationships. This can make a shy person an easy target for unreasonable or unnecessary criticism.
In recent years, the lid has been pulled off of "mobbing," a form of harassment participated in by multiple employees. It's a form of singling out one employee to pick on or bully.
Sometimes the harassment takes the form of unreasonable or contradictory criticism. This is a sneaky form of harassing, because criticism is often a valuable and necessary part of improving work performance. Unlike sexual harassment, which is always and universally recognized as being wrong, criticism can serve valid purposes, and it usually does.
However, the term "constructive criticism" implies a corollary: that criticism can also be unhelpful or unreasonable or downright destructive. It can also create a negative climate in the workplace, can damage someone's work reputation, and can lead to someone losing a job.
Can an employer engage in job harassment? Yes. It seems hard to believe, since unnecessary criticism or harassment is counterproductive and can lead to a high turnover among employees, but people do not always behave rationally.
One young man who took a janitorial and floor waxing position to help with school expenses found that he was a frequent butt of jokes and criticism by his employer (who also happened to be the owner of the company).
The criticism was contradictory: sometimes the young man would be told to do a job one way and a few minutes later criticized and told to do it quite differently. Needless to say, being the victim of this kind of constant faultfinding can be quite draining and over the long run it can lead to depression.
As author Sidney B. Simon wrote in his book, Negative Criticism, "thousands upon thousands of us... [fail] to recognize that the knives of negative criticism which people stick in us are just as sharp and deadly as those made of steel and borne by assassins."
The author of this article describes many more ways to deal with difficult people effectively in his new course, "Break out of your Shell! How To Overcome Shyness So You Can Get On With Your Life!" In it, he discusses how to deal with many types of difficult people such as constant interrupters, people who go on and on and on and on, snobs, bossy coworkers, constant critics and argumentative know-it-alls.