ABSTRACT
Case study Robert Taylor is a self-confessed workplace bully. He has a middle-management position in the food distribution industry with about forty to fifty people reporting to him. He has a great deal of insight into what he does and why he does it but has no real intention of changing his ways. ‘I’ve always been a bully, even during my days at school. A lot of it has to do with the violent upbringing I had at my father’s hands-he used to beat me and I would take it out on someone at school. So if he came home from work and found that I hadn’t done something he’d expected me to do then he would take down a cane from the top of the cupboard and thrash me. I’ve still got scars on my buttocks to prove it; these days he would have been done for physical abuse but back then people used to think “Spare the rod and spoil the child” and they never would interfere. Whenever he beat me, the very next day at school I would get somebody; it would usually be a kid out of the same half-dozen or so that I generally picked on. They snivelled and cried and it made me feel good to see their red blotchy faces, streaming tears and snotty running noses. A bit of blood mixed in with it all made me feel even better. No one stopped me; most of the other kids were scared of me even though some of them were bigger, and the teachers didn’t like the kids I was picking on anyway. They thought these kids were wimps and probably believed I was doing a public service by beating the shit out of them.
