Working in North America: What is mobbing?

Hi, there.

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I am offering private lessons online to help you improve your English speaking.

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that I learned from my wonderful student, and many wonderful students that I have, about

something that I think is a very serious issue concerning people today.

Cyril, thank you for telling me all this information.

It's amazing.

So, if you want to tell me wonderful information, take lessons with me, and let's get into this.

My student told me something about something called "mobbing", and, you know, I was thinking,

"Oh, mobbing.

What's that?

What's that?

What's mobbing?

Is it mopping?

What's mobbing?"

So, eventually, we got to the fact that mobbing is like bullying in a workplace, so a lot

of people, we say "burn out" at work, or they have a nervous breakdown, but burning out

is from doing too much work, but having a nervous breakdown is something completely

different that needs to be addressed, and this happens a lot in workplaces.

It happens in school, and the bullying continues to the workplace, and it's called "mobbing".

This makes people stressed out beyond belief, it causes them a lot of mental issues, and

makes them basically unable to work, and it's something that people shouldn't do.

People are different, and that should be accepted.

What it isn't, so, mobbing is workplace bullying, psychological harassment of employees.

It can be from people who are in a higher position, so maybe your manager or your boss

is always insulting you, telling you you're stupid, you can't do your job, hey guess what?

This is illegal.

They can't do that to you, and you should seek some legal counseling.

Anybody know a good lawyer?

But it's a very serious thing, and we have to understand that it's different from sexual

harassment, it's different from racial, okay?

So, it has nothing to do with your race or your gender.

You could be the same race, different race, you could be the same gender, different gender,

it has to do with just people and power.

So, we want to look at why people do this.

Maybe they're jealous, maybe you're different, maybe you have something that is a disability,

and people, we say, make fun of you, but it goes way beyond that, because it causes some

very bad effects.

So, exactly what is mobbing?

How do you know if someone's actually doing this to you?

Well, their verbal comments, "Oh, you're stupid, you can't do this, whoa, what's going on?"

Actions or gestures, so maybe you roll their eyes at you.

Or maybe you come into the lunchroom and nobody talks to you, and you have to eat your lunch

alone in the corner, like in high school.

Or maybe people are all talking, "Oh, what are you doing the weekend, oh, let's get together

for a party", but one person isn't included.

This is called ostracization, so people ostracize you from the group, it means they don't include

you or they exclude you.

They can insult you verbally, "Oh, you're stupid, oh, the boss didn't give you this

job because you can't do it because of your ability."

So, it's only at work, and it's usually a group of people.

If it's one person, yeah, you can - no, it's terrible, but it's a group of people that

kind of gang up on you and do this.

What happens to you?

You can get some serious psychological health issues.

They've been known to cause - mobbing has been known to cause anxiety, clinical depression,

and PTSD.

PTSD is post-traumatic stress disorder.

This is what soldiers get when they come out of combat, and this happens in a workplace,

which could be seen as war.

So, this is a very, very serious thing that has been in the courts recently.

There was a woman who sold a big corporation called Walmart because her boss was constantly

insulting her, and she won a court case against him.

She didn't win as much money as she wanted, it was 1.4 million.

She got 400,000.

Walmart, I think you can cough up a bit much more money.

It also has psychosomatic ailments that are involved in it.

Psychosomatic means physical illnesses caused by stress or internal conflict.

So, maybe you shake, and you can't stop shaking, you just shake because you're just so fried,

and you just - you can't stop the physical illnesses.

And it's really noticeable, and then people would make fun of you more, and it would snowball,

which means get bigger.

So, what does all this say for companies?

Companies now, for example, in some provinces of Ontario - Canada, and some countries actually

have clear-set rules and policies against mobbing, and if they don't, they can get into

a lot of trouble.

Legal persecution, that means you can take your company to court, okay?

Take the lady to Walmart, based on discrimination in the workplace.

So, if this is happening at your workplace, you have to tell people, and you have to get

involved, and you have to get help, because it is now a legal matter, and it's not a healthy

environment.

Why people do this, again, at the beginning I said about jealousy, it could be that you're

actually a very good worker, and the boss favours you, it could be that you're different

from the other people, and they make fun of you.

But regardless of the reason, if this is happening to you, please put an end to this, and get

some advice, and get well.

All right.

Let's all do this together.

Bye-bye.