Morning! Where you going? I'm picking up the propane heaters. Is it left or right?
What do I look like, dispatch? Don't they tell you guys anything? Yeah, they gave me the location.
And you're here.
I think it truly often starts as innocent teasing.
Okay, seriously, is it left or right? Oh look at that! It's break time.
It gets bigger and the comments get harsher
and it gets more personal and at some point the line is crossed.
They call you an idiot, they call you stupid.
Kind of get bumped around like you're not the person on the crew that anybody wants and everybody jokes about it and it kind of
gets to a point where it now you're getting bullied and harassed by the whole crew.
It's just a nightmare because they don't—it's not that they don't want you there—
it's that they want to have some fun at your expense. They want you to sweat, they want to see you
make mistakes. They want to see all of that stuff happen, and it's for their entertainment.
What's said escalates each time and each worker tries to outdo what the last guy said to whoever the target is.
And pretty soon the crew are doing things and saying things that they would never dream of doing or saying, you know, in a normal setting.
It's a toxic environment to be in if there's bullying and harassment going on all the time.
It poisons everything. It affects everyone.
It's not just the construction site.
It's you're gonna take it home, and now it's you're driving in traffic, and you might get in a traffic accident because you're
distracted, or you're going home and you yell at your kids, and then your kids think you don't love them,
and it's just that ripple effect where it absolutely affects
everyone when bullying harassment happens. It just, it's not
insular and it's not just the people involved. It is literally that ripple effect where it affects everything.
You know I can remember days where
I didn't really want to pick up the phone and call to see if I was working because I really didn't want to go in.
But the pile of bills on the end table said I had to pick up the phone.
I really wonder how many really good employees I've lost because of bullying. I'll never know.
You feel lonely, you feel depressed.
You feel extreme states of sadness.
You feel confused, you feel angry.
You feel completely emotional.
I used to go off in the bathroom and lock myself in cry
because I was so angry
that I was either gonna hit somebody, or I'd cry, and I wasn't about to hit people so I would just go off in a corner and cry.
And then wash my face and go right back to work because I needed to provide for my son.
There's nothing worse than walking in a room and everybody's giving you a bad time.
There's no positive feelings that arise out of that. If you don't feel like you belong there, you start to believe what they're telling you
You may not like the people that you work with, but you have to maintain a certain type of professionalism.
I teach the girls to look at these guys and say: Would you like it if somebody said that to your daughter?
Would you like it if somebody said that to your wife?
And it tends to change the guys' perspective because all of a sudden there's
this young woman who's standing in front of them saying: Wait a minute.
That's not okay with me. Stop it.
And would you say that, and would you like your wife to know that that's what you're saying to a young woman?
That's harassment, really, because you know the next person beside them they'll treat completely different,
because of the gender, right?
When I was a young foreman, we had a really good young apprentice our crew.
No matter what he did, he was picked on for it.
He was nitpicked on the crew, nothing was ever good enough.
I found myself saying stuff to the young apprentice
that was said to me when I was a young apprentice.
And it was when I heard myself saying that stuff
when I realized that the culture had to change in our crew.
I think I wasted a lot of energy on being the wrong type of leader.
Who wants to go beyond the call of duty for someone that screams and rants and raves at you all day long?
Who says that you don't know what you're doing,
and you don't have the skill set, and you're a loser.
How does that motivate you to work hard and to be committed? It doesn't.
Was it bullying to me? No, I don't think I've thought about it that way,
but when you think of how much you really yell and drive guys, there is bullying in there.
The supervisor can't be the problem.
If the supervisor and our supervision remain to be the problem,
then nothing is going to change.
If you stand by, you're saying that it's acceptable for what's happening. And to me, if you're saying it's acceptable for that to happen,
then you're just as culpable for what's happening as the person who's doing it.
It's about being professional, having a professionalism in your workplace. If we want to teach people now.
We want to make sure everybody's working safely. Everybody's comfortable in what they're doing.
We want zero accidents, and if bullying or being harassed is getting into somebody's head,
they're gonna make a mistake sooner or later, and that's something we don't want.
Our jobs are dangerous enough. You cannot bring that extra level
of distrust into a job—you cannot.
Bullying is something that has to stop. Every smart CEO knows that.
Every smart CEO has to ensure that it doesn't happen in their company, and they have to lead by example.
I've had, you know, people say to me before, you know, if we can't bully and harass people on the jobsite, you know,
all that's gonna be left to do is put buildings up.
Bullying and harassment
it's not part of the job