Diary 2nd And 3rd August 2019

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Friday 2nd August 2019 - running into unpleasant conflict with the volunteering group I help out at the university, relating to events mostly taking place in / around May this year. As I mentioned at about that time I was invited to a workshop event where the volunteers were split into teams with assignments to list ways to improve our course and service approaches. One member of the team I was in hogged the limelight to herself, actually willfully blocking me from being able to co-operate in the project during our table activity. When I raised points, she simply ignored me and continued adding only her own thoughts, the rest of us genuinely worked as a team. There were other activities too, we had to go round adding suggestions to the lists made by other teams (working on separate aspects of the project) and later there were individual projects too. The only part of the project I was ostracized from was the table-team work activity. I wrote to the paid staff handling the volunteers and got a reply stating that it would be looked into when the main boss returned from leave which was not to be for three months. No one was officially taking charge in her absence. However later in that May afternoon, one staff member phoned me to get a few more details. He claimed that I should have a/. just done more of the walkaround the other tables and boards exercises, in effect abandoning the bully to her own devises, and b/. submit further suggestions on my on as homework (effectively having to go solo on a team project I was denied full involvement in on the Narcissistic whims of one person. I disagreed with both suggestions, which effectively left the bully unchallenged and added to my status as a social pariah cut off from the group. No one else was expected to give in to such indignities and privations, only me. To my surprise the caller referred to the earlier, more serious bullying I faced from the same ignorant egotistical diva. We had both been assigned to present a paper together to some social work students but she refused to let me share in the activity, presenting everything herself (I know I can do the project I had done it that morning with another volunteer who was much more co-operative. I hadn’t mentioned this event as I took it as a possible one-off and that I would always find excuses never to work with this colleague in a class again. That my caller knew of it meant that the actual course tutor had witnessed what went on and he had reported it herself, despite which no action appears to have been taken. No one, especially the diva behind all this, has made any effort to apologize to me. As the lady responsible for the investigation has returned to work, I sent her a message indicating my remaining unhappiness with the case. She replied by e-mail that the case had been wrapped up in the phone call I had received (described above) even though that had not solved anything and in fact opened the case even wider than before. The claim is that this was all sorted, though no one has approached the bully herself at all, and that I am being somehow unreasonable in re-opening it all. That is sadly entirely bogus. The man who initially wrote to me and phoned me seems to have a few immature attitude petty issues of his own with me. When we were picking films for last October’s film festival, I was loudly critical of including the movie The Greatest Showman, for its inaccuracies, poor plotting and extensive historic revisionism (making a hero of a misogynistic racist, P T Barnum who exploited disabled people as circus freaks(. Others, including the man handling my bullying concerns, voted for the movie and they won by two votes so it was screened. I just took this in my stride, but he was hell bent on rubbing in his worthless hollow victory over me at every opportunity proving poor winners are worse than poor losers. At the post-screening Questions and Answers session itself some of the audience (not me) raised criticism very much like my own but they were quickly shut down. The man in charge of my case then demanded that the closing questions he had were exclusively for the attending social work student (shutting the public audience out) and targeted an unfortunate girl with some question which she could not answer, and drawing groans from the audience at her ordeal as he ranted about the importance of the students knowing what he knew. There is nothing worse for any student than to be put on the spot like this in front of the class. It can be very humiliating and nasty. In July, 9 to 10 months after the screening, along with other volunteers, I was invited so a post-wedding party, the bride being the lady now seemingly helping to quash my case. During the otherwise lovely party, the champion of the Barnum movie walked the whole length of the hall to ask the DJ to play a song from the film, and then all the way back across the length of the room and walked up to me to notify me that he had requested it especially for me. Yet another rub my face in his delusional victory and need to keep gloating at me, proving in effect that he is as much a bully as the lady he is supposed to be dealing with for me. I have no issue with the song being played. It often comes up on the radio. What was disturbing was it being selected just for the sake of trying to interfere with my feelings, especially at a wedding, so many months on from the film screening. Just why this individual is so pathologically obsessed with using the film and its songs against me at every opportunity is a mystery to me. That he is in a position to control people with mental health issues and students setting out to handle mental health cases in their future careers is a cause for alarm. It really opens some trust issues for me. Given that his job involves dealing with mental health service users who are often easily pushed into depression by the slightest downbeat note, and the petty-minded pathological nature of his obsession with scoring points off me over a simple movie screening, he really needs to consider alternative career trajectories. A truly bizarre element is the vague promise that the only course of action planned is to revise procedures and terms of service so members have more respect for one another in future, which a/. acknowledges there are existing problems, b/. treats me and other volunteers including the bully as too dumb not to already know right from wrong and c/. is about as useful as the police learning you were burgled and coming round to paint your windows rather than trying to catch the felons responsible. My bully is getting a free pass and immunity from being challenged for her contempt for me. I am not prepared to settle for that. It is beyond disgusting. Now that the main boss is back in work, I drew her attention to the case which she berates me for re-opening (though it was never closed and the bully never questioned). Both of the volunteer co-ordinators plan to talk to me on Thursday, the tone seems to intent to crush my concerns rather than addressing them. Saturday 3rd August 2019 – writing this up and job searching all day. Arthur Chappell