If it had been, I would draw a picture of a windowless brick wall - the outside wall of the plant. Protruding through the brick wall my imagination places pairs of arms reaching out. No faces. No bodies. Just arms reaching out.
This is how I see in my mind what was happening to me at that time, in that place.
The coworkers were reaching outside the walls of the workplace to continue their onslaught against me.
This time it was through cyberspace.
Through the social media of Facebook.
Something I did not expect.
Therefore, it blindsided me.
Again.
Even though I knew that it was not invasion of privacy because Facebook is public, I still felt violated. It was something that I did not expect.
I was naive.
I internalized from this incident that it was OK for these people to do whatever in the workplace. At the same time, it was definitely not OK for me to say anything.
And they had management backing them up every step of the way and believing every accusation they made. Our supervisor didn't seem to realize that when these people sought out my profile on Facebook, a deliberate action on their part as not one of them was a Facebook friend, that it amounted to cyberstalking. No one seemed to realize that if they saw themselves in that rather terse statement and complained about the posting, they were basically recognizing themselves in that post and admitting that they were bullying me.
Everything was stacked in their favour.
Maybe I should have been aware that something like this might occur. After all, the best defence is a good offence and these people had shown quite clearly how good they were at going on the offensive.
But why should they bother? Why should it be that important to them? After all, I was totally down for the count and in the process of deciding that going back to this toxic workplace was not in my best interest.
Too bad, I didn't share this with anyone at that point.
Going back to why those remaining in the workplace might want to go on the offensive while I'm down for the count and away from the workplace, somewhere in those seven last shifts between breakdowns, I had done something that they would not like.
I had exercised my right in the binding union contract to file a grievance against E, the coworker who had run to management causing the first breakdown. I wanted to make it for safety but the union representative said that I could not. I could only use grounds in the binding union contract. (I discovered later when reading the binding union agreement cover to cover that she was wrong.)
How would these people know that I had filed a grievance? These things are supposed to be confidential. At least I thought they were. That question troubled my mind for a very long time but then recently years after all had been said and done I vaguely remembered one coworker whom I label A for reasons yet to be explained standing behind us in the cafeteria as the union rep and I talked about and filed the grievance. I thought she was waiting to speak to the union rep so I said nothing. When we were done, I turned to A and said "You're turn." Instead of talking to the union representative, she turned away and went back into the office. The union rep never seemed to notice A's presence.
I was naive in the extreme. It didn't occur to me until years later that A was listening in to a private conversation which was being held in a very public place, a place A had every right to be.
According to the binding union agreement, there are three stages to a grievance. The first one is a general meeting in which the person, management and the union are all together which I never got to as I had breakdown number two before it could happen. It was scheduled and I was asked if I wanted to proceed with it by my supervisor. I declined saying I was in no condition for this meeting and reminding the supervisor that I was off on leave and asked her to respect that. I thought in declining the meeting that I was dropping the grievance entirely.
As far as I was concerned, I was not going to pursue the grievance. It was over. I had no intention of going back to the workplace. They had won. I had lost. I hadn't quit yet. I hadn't told anyone as my focus at that time was on recovering. I wasn't at that point yet. I was barely functioning at that point. Definitely not at a point where I could make decisions.
I knew that if I did attempt to go back, I would not survive.
I'd spent too much time (and money) in pursuing recovery that I had no intention of putting myself in a position where committing suicidal was inevitable. I was simply too fragile.
*****
If this were the end, it would still be pretty bleak. Unfortunately, it's not the end of my story of workplace abuse. While I'm at home trying to recover, trying to survive, the coworkers were busy at the workplace binding together, making more accusations this time in writing which I was not to find about about for more than a month.
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