Brown Crayon in the Workplace

Evil in the Workplace ▼

“Telling my story what I experienced in the workplace.”

Is your workplace toxic? What about your executive management staff or your co-workers? How do you know? Answer the following questions to see if you're in a toxic workplace.

• Do you hate going to work every day? • Have you been discriminated against because of race, gender, age, religion, or sexual orientation ? • Are you doing the work of two or more people but paid one salary? • Do you get little or no appreciation? • Is someone yelling at you or others? • Have you asked for help but nothing changes? • Have you been asked to lie for someone and then got blamed? • Have you been asked to falsify documents? • Have you been sexually harassed? • Has there ever been workplace violence or anyone been threatened or assaulted?

If you answered yes to just one of these questions, you are working in a toxic workplace, which happens because people in positions of authority operate through abuse of power, ego, distrust, paranoia, cruelty, unfairness, inequality, pressure, greed, ruthless ambition and disrespect that negatively affects everyone around them. We each have the capability for good OR evil. Toxic people and organizations make negative and dysfunctional choices.

Always remember that Human Resources (HR) is paid to protect the interests of the company. You need to be assertive, use proven communication techniques and refer to existing laws and guidelines to transform a toxic workplace. You can get an attorney to write a letter to HR, and the legal department, stating if the situation doesn't change, you will file a lawsuit for hostile work environment, sexual harassment, or unsafe conditions. Contact the local and/or national media – investigative reporters, TV and radio stations, newspapers, magazines and the Internet – who do "Problem Solvers" or "Crime Busters" exposes.

Working with people is one of the hardest things we have to do. Especially when they don’t look like you. All workplaces have people in them. More often than not, the greatest challenge is getting along with people in normal, daily life. Broken relationships and difficult people are evidence of sin in the world. Conflict gives us opportunities to reveal the power of the gospel. The natural response when someone does something to us is to push back in the same way. If they discredit our work, we try to discredit theirs. But we must not resist evil. Our task is to allow the higher power to overcome the sin we encounter.

Before leaving my nonprofit job in Washington, DC, the Director of Finance was just blatantly evil to me with his nasty sneaky acts. There is no kind way to put it. He was mean, devious, deliberate, bullying, told lies about me and my work and treated me like a piece of dirt. He made himself so believable within the organization (smooth operator). My stress level was straight through the roof! Experiencing racial discrimination can be enough to cause a significant spike in chronic emotional stress on the job. There were so many “warning signs.” The Executive Co-Director was not strong enough to challenge the Director of Finance and let him continue to operate through abuse of power.

The path to overcoming evil is through doing good. Only the gospel can overcome evil. We can be certain that, though suffering may continue in this age, the gospel will overcome evil in the end. This should encourage us to live justly in this life, be gracious with others, and long for the complete restoration that is to come.

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