Three Posted June 19, 2013 Posted June 19, 2013 How would you recommend intervening at work? I've asked a women not to spank her child in front of me as I was ringing her up at the register. Afterwards, I recieved a lot of passive agresive remarks from my coworkers. It was difficult hearing most of my coworkers make fun of me for doing something so difficult, although one guy was supportive. I no longer work there, but there was an instance the other day at my recent job where I saw a child being yelled at and decided not to intervene because, however irrational, I fear being in the same kind of situation. I feel really guilty for not saying anything though, because whatever i'll recieve from my coworkers is nothing compared to what the child had to go through. I'm wondering why I still fear these kind of attacks from others? Should I address this to the store manager to see what he thinks? I'd really like to hear what the community thinks.
STer Posted June 19, 2013 Posted June 19, 2013 How would you recommend intervening at work? I've asked a women not to spank her child in front of me as I was ringing her up at the register. Afterwards, I recieved a lot of passive agresive remarks from my coworkers. It was difficult hearing most of my coworkers make fun of me for doing something so difficult, although one guy was supportive. I no longer work there, but there was an instance the other day at my recent job where I saw a child being yelled at and decided not to intervene because, however irrational, I fear being in the same kind of situation. I feel really guilty for not saying anything though, because whatever i'll recieve from my coworkers is nothing compared to what the child had to go through. I'm wondering why I still fear these kind of attacks from others? Should I address this to the store manager to see what he thinks? I'd really like to hear what the community thinks. This is a really interesting scenario and what I think puts you in such a difficult situation is that when you're in a structured environment like that you are supposed to follow policies. Yet there probably is no policy one way or the other in writing on such a situation. Perhaps you could do even more good than intervening in a few cases by raising this as a policy issue. Perhaps some companies would take a stance that it isn't their place or the place of their employees to intervene unless the abuse is severe. But, even if so, then you could at least know that before choosing to work there and educate the public on which places take which stands. This could, with advocacy, become a corporate responsibility issue.
Three Posted June 19, 2013 Author Posted June 19, 2013 Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. I think that addressing the issue of taking a stance on such matters to a member of higher managment at the place I work at now might be a good thing because I work for a small business, rather than a corporation, and so you'd think I would have more influence. It is hard though, one of the things the mother I mentioned earlier asked my manager after I intervened was if it ws policy to tell people how to child rear, to which he heplied "no". After she left she called back and complained to him until he eventually gave me the phone and told me to apologize to her. As you could imaginedthis really angered me. I was still as gentle and firm as I could be and said to her that I was sorry she was upset. Then she said felt harrassed and accused me of being racist. It wasn't pleasant. I did get anxious when she asked me if I wanted her to call the cops or the corporate office, so I just nervously said "home office" and got off the phone with her.
STer Posted June 19, 2013 Posted June 19, 2013 Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. I think that addressing the issue of taking a stance on such matters to a member of higher managment at the place I work at now might be a good thing because I work for a small business, rather than a corporation, and so you'd think I would have more influence. It is hard though, one of the things the mother I mentioned earlier asked my manager after I intervened was if it ws policy to tell people how to child rear, to which he heplied "no". After she left she called back and complained to him until he eventually gave me the phone and told me to apologize to her. As you could imaginedthis really angered me. I was still as gentle and firm as I could be and said to her that I was sorry she was upset. Then she said felt harrassed and accused me of being racist. It wasn't pleasant. I did get anxious when she asked me if I wanted her to call the cops or the corporate office, so I just nervously said "home office" and got off the phone with her. Yeah this is the problem of acting in this way in a situation where no policy is set. Of course your boss said it's not policy to do what you did. But what he really means is there is no policy in any direction on it. So if I were you I'd work to get a policy put in place. I also think you might be able to reconcile this by finding an organization that works for child welfare and would be sympathetic to your views and approaching them to discuss this issue as an overall business issue. Then you could feel that you're being responsible by acting on this by calling in people who are in a better position to apply pressure where employees who are dependent on the company cannot (unless they have a lot of leverage at the company). Like I said, you may not be able to get some businesses to agree to a policy of intervening. But at least if you can push them to take a stance one way or another then activists have something to target and to try to reward those who take a healthy stance and call out those who don't. Right now they kind of have no stance so there is nowhere to apply pressure.
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