People often ask me what result I expected when I started writing about mobbing in the workplace? Sometimes I answered this question verbose but not convincingly; sometimes I was succinct and more convincing. But I have always been aware that there is a gap in my argument that needs to be patched up. And now the missing “puzzle” of my argument has been discovered!
And where would you think? That's where everyone came from, and as it turned out, even me with my idea for mobbingu.net. And how could I not have guessed to use this episode from Nikolai Gogol's novel “The Overcoat” (1839-1842) in my articles on the site before? Miracles, that's all! Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, as philologists say, is “my author”. I “taught” it to students and researched it; I know and love this work very well, but for some reason only now did I come up with the idea that Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin's suffering in the department was the first fact of workplace bullying described in Russian fiction and the first mention of overcoming the “mobber syndrome”. This, in fact, is what the site was created for: “one young man suddenly stops as if pierced, and since then everything has changed in front of him and appeared in a different form.” And now, when asked by skeptics about the site, I will answer this way: “My dream is that after reading articles on mobbingu.net, some young official, young manager or young scientist suddenly recoils from his comrades involved in bullying a colleague and makes an independent decision how to vote and whether to go to the dark side.” After reading the stories of our readers, I can count on young people to understand “how much inhumanity there is in a person, how much is hidden in savage rudeness in refined, educated secularism, and oh my God! even in a man whom the world recognizes as noble and honest.” Realizing this, they did not follow the lead of their informal leaders or executives, who often involve young and naive people, or those who pretend to be so, subordinate to their dirty games under the guise of fighting for justice. I really hope that one day “one young man” suddenly realizes that he is not just one of us who is humiliated at our workplaces and got used to it, but that he is also “our brother” and one of those who can break the links in the “boss-mobber-persecuted” chain to free his “brothers” from victimization and remain a free person with a clear conscience.
“The department did not show him any respect. Not only did the guards not get up when he passed, but they didn't even look at him, as if a simple fly had passed through the waiting room. His superiors were kind of cold-despotic to him. Some assistant table manager put papers right under his breath without even saying: “Write it down” or: “This is an interesting, pretty business” or something pleasant, as used in well-behaved services. And he took it without looking only at the paper, not looking at who gave it to him or whether he had the right to do it. He took it and immediately got used to writing it. The young officials laughed and cut their hair at him, as far as they could use their clerical wit; they immediately told him various stories compiled about him, about his mistress, a seventy-year-old woman, saying that she was hitting him, asking him when their wedding would take place, and threw pieces of paper over his head, calling it snow. But Akaki Akakievich did not answer a single word to this, as if no one was in front of him; this had no effect on his studies: among all these docuks, he did not make a single writing mistake. Only if the joke was too intolerable, when they pushed him by the arm to prevent him from doing his business, he would say: “Leave me, why are you offending me? “And there was something odd about the words and the voice with which they were uttered. There was something so pity in him that a young man, who had recently decided, who, like others, had allowed himself to laugh at him, suddenly stopped as if pierced, and since then everything had changed to him and seemed different. Some unnatural force pushed him away from his comrades he met, mistaking them for decent, socialite people. And long later, in the midst of the funniest moments, he introduced himself to be a short official with a bald head on his forehead, with his penetrating words: “Leave me, why are you offending me” — and these penetrating words rang other words: “I am your brother.” And the poor young man covered himself with his hand, and he shuddered many times later, seeing how many man is inhumane, so much is hidden in savage rudeness in refined, educated secularism, and oh my God! even in a man whom the world recognizes as noble and honest.”
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