Hostile work environment/harrassment by proxy

[james100]

What is the name of your state? North Carolina.

Brief: Can anyone offer advice regarding the following.

" a female co-worker of mine took to the habit of provoking "customers, commissioned sales agents, and end-users for my company's products" into harrassing me over approximately a 15 month period. This harrassment was of a very serious nature including threats of violence. It included "anonymous" death threats left for me over my company voice mail system. In all over 16 face to face confrontations occurred and several "voice mail" threats.
What was "unique" was that none of the people I was harrassed by "knew" me nor did I work with them in any capacity. I managed the female co-worker who in turn worked with this group of people who harrassed me.

The last such confrontation took place in a Minneapolis Hotel on a Sunday in the evening. This "last" event was carried out by two of my supervisors ( Zone Manager and VP of sales). These two managers were new to the company and barely knew me. I had had no direct confrontation with them at any time previous.
I worked for this company for 11 years without a single confrontation of any kind inside or outside of the company.

This last event took place outside the company headquarters, took place on a Sunday evening and there was no representative from Human Resources present. My only break was that the VP of Sales told me that a 3rd party was responsible for motivating his actions toward me. And he refused to reveal the persons name. In all this "interogation" lasted over 2 hours. I demanded that they stop. They in turn threatened me if I did not continue. Both superiors were in a highly emotional state. This was exactly the emotional state that all my previous attackers had exhibited. All these attacks were identical to each other. Only the players were interchangeable.
[The one single connection to all these players was the female co-worker who by the way "never said a word" during this entire period. This female "knows" that I know and has made many many post manuvers in an attempt to extricate herself from it.]

The next morning these two supervisors came to their senses, and realizing what they had done the night before they went into the corporate headquarters and "doctored" up an "agenda" of "performance issues" and copied Human Resources. They had a ficticious meeting occur on Monday and not Sunday.

The problem was that "no meeting like this ever took place"! The actual event occurred the night before at this Mpls hotel and had "nothing" to do with performance. Anyone from my company who looked into the matter 'read" this false document and said "looks okay to me, your just a bad guy who had to go".

I was fired for "insubordination" and my company refuses to investigate the matter. They keep refering to the "fake memorandum" that was written the morning after. It is a fraud written to "cover up" for two supervisors who did something on angry impusle and rage that they should not have done.

It was only after this last event occurred when I started to realize how similiar "all these unprovoked attacks" had been.

This is the worst case of harrassment I have ever seen. The fact that it was done by "proxy" made it more complex to detect or even understand as it was happening.
My industry was/is one of great turmoil and is ripe for someone to "push" the right buttons and get an extreme response.

Recently a major customer Royal Ahold has been under SEC investigation for ENRON type accounting fraud. This was the environment that my co-worker used to provoke the players. There is alot of corruption and collusion between suppliers, brokers and distributors. Hence the field is ripe for someone to single out another person within this context.

What can I do? What lawyer would help? It is a great case with a large potential judgement. It doesnt however fit with the typical "sex, race, age" . It would also take work but the VP who carried out the last attack is the key person. He would tell the truth under pressure. Once he told the truth about my female co-worker the rest would flow.

Jim H.

 

[Beth3]

What I can't quite figure out is why all these people who didn't know you could be manipulated by a co-worker of yours to harass you, leave death threats, and so forth. No business professional in their right mind would allow someone to manipulate them into doing that. It just doesn't make any sense.

When you met with the Zone Manager and VP of Sales on that Sunday evening, what exactly were they questioning you about?

 

[james100]

attempt to answer

Beth:

Ever remember or read about the time when a Southern Bell could get an African American male lynched by a mob simply by "ripping" her clothes and mussing her hair during the days of Jim Crow?
Pretty unbeleivable but it did happen. Appeal to people's prejudice and weakness and you can create the kind of mess that was heaped on me.

While this is a slight overstatement, as I tried to allude in my first post there is "ALOT OF CORRUPTION" going on in food production and distribution. In fact if you are in the legal profession just read a few recent stories on Royal Ahold in the financial news. You cannot understand the level of corruption and cheating unless you worked in this environment. People who 10 years ago would never think of cheating or stealing are now doing it as a matter of company policy.

With the situation between "suppliers" and distributors is so adversarial to begin with it is relatively easy to povide enough "bait" to start a fight between any number of people in the industry. This female co-worker said things so "provocative" and was so manipulative that it had the effect of causing people to go into a rage and suspend their judgement. Not a day went by when she wasnt working on somebody. And all of these folks involved were "corrupt" people who were looking for any pretext to squeeze you for money.

Also my Company's and the culture there was in chaos as new people came in and old people were downsized. There was alot of political manuvering and the head didnt know what the feet were doing. All this led and contributed to what happened. It could have never happened even 3 yrs earlier.

And just as your questions "implies" no one believes this whole thing possible. That this could actually happen. This is why it worked so well.

Nobody beleives me and they brush it off. The facts of what happened to me however are a matter of record. The attacks and the people who did this are all known. I have their names and their titles and the times that these events occurred. Nothing factual is missing. Only motive is missing and I have that too.

Now what did my ZManager and VP of Sales question me about? Nothing tangible. They kept ordering me to confess. Confess to all the things that happened in the carolina market.
Thats it. Thats all.I refused to admit anything unless and until I knew the exact charges and by whom. I then said that I wanted to know who this 3rd party was. They refused on the grounds of "confidentiality". I finally just shouted that I had had enough and I intended to do something about this.

It was a difficult situation for me because I hadnt done anything and so any claims were difficult for me to even indentify with. I was just confused, angry and scared. In short I hadnt a clue what they were talking and yelling about.

I suspect ( dont know) that this female co-worker led the VP to beleive that I had made fun of him. This was "his button" or weak spot. He wasnt very bright and he knew people knew this.
Otherwise he never would have attempted this "macho" fight in the middle of nowhere that chould have caused him to get in trouble. In short it had nothing to do with business. IT WAS PERSONAL. The rest is window dressing.

What is ironic is if I had been a stranger in this hotel and these two employees did to me what they did I could probably sue them in court or had them thrown in jail for assault. But because I was employed by the same company I have no rights. Their behavior is the key in this thing. There isnt anything in business that causes this kind of response. Only when it's personal do you see this kind of behavior. How would they explain their presence in a hotel on a Sunday nite verbally attacking an employee with Marriott hotel employees watching the whole thing. What could I have done? Why would they expose themselves to reprimand or termination?

In fact the "doctored" agenda letter they constructed in haste the next morning in the early AM is so bad and transparent that it is written in the 1st person, 2nd person, 3rd person. It is so bad that it boggles the mind. It breaks my heart that no body will even look into this. I am absolutely right on this.

Again if anyone made even a small stink they would see just how touchy this situation is. It would take only one or two depositions with the right questions and not allowing any avenue of escape by these people to get the truth out. There is no other reason except the one I write here.

Jim H