Jerks on the Job

Interesting article in today's Red Eye Chicago...what to do when the bully in the next cubicle is a 9 to 5 nightmare?  http://www.redeyechicago.com/news/ct-red-workplace-bullying-20120408,0,4181707.story

Katherine Streeter/New York Times

It reminds me of another article that appeared in the New York Times in 2009...about women who bully women in the workplace...  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/business/10women.html?pagewanted=all Yelling, scheming and sabotaging: all are tell-tale signs that a bully is at work, laying traps for employees at every pass.  'It’s probably no surprise that most of these bullies are men, as a survey by the Workplace Bullying Institute, an advocacy group, makes clear. But a good 40 percent of bullies are women. And at least the male bullies take an egalitarian approach, mowing down men and women pretty much in equal measure. The women appear to prefer their own kind, choosing other women as targets more than 70 percent of the time.' (New York Times)

The technical term for workplace bullying and ganging up is MOBBING: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobbing
Mobbing in the context of human beings means bullying of an individual by a group in any context. Identified as emotional abuse in the workplace, such as "ganging up" by co-workers, subordinates or superiors, to force someone out of the workplace through rumor, innuendo, intimidation, humiliation, discrediting, and isolation, it is also referred to as malicious, nonsexual, nonracial, general harassment.