The Bully at Work

June 30, 2008
Brink's latest novel—essentially a collection of three novellas—is a vividly imagined if claustrophobic chronicle of the lives of three subtly connected men living in contemporary South Africa. The first story is the dreamlike tale of a white painter named David le Roux who one day returns to his studio and finds a black woman named Sarah and her two children waiting for him. He quickly surmises that the woman believes he is her husband and the father of the children, but he has never seen any of them before. The second story revolves around a white architect (and acquaintance of David) named Steve, who looks into the mirror one day and discovers he is black. The third story is that of Derek Hugo, a celebrated pianist infatuated with singer Nina Rousseau. Despite years of womanizing (including an affair with Steve's wife), Derek cannot bring himself to touch Nina, and the night he finally makes his move, their date is violently interrupted. An enervating awkwardness suffuses the pieces, though the conceit is a little too thin to carry a whole book.

April 3, 2000
Bullies on the job can cause irreparable harm to their colleagues, contend the authors, founders of the Campaign Against Workplace Bullying. While violent or vengeful workers occasionally make the news, there are insidious bullies in nearly every workplace, whether co-worker, boss or junior colleague. Their behavior causes other people to suffer shame, humiliation and fear--all of which can affect their nonwork life as well as their job performance. The Namies recommend that "targets" act quickly to dismantle a bullying dynamic once they recognize it, and they also urge government and judicial recognition that "bullying" is an endemic workplace issue that deserves to be taken seriously. The last 100 pages of the book are the most useful; one chapter, "Control Destructive Mind Games," analyzes how people let their emotions color their actions. Subsequent chapters offer concrete strategies that "targets" can take to alleviate their workplace distress (including using humor to deflect a bully's tactics and finding support among colleagues and friends). Overall, this volume presents an intriguing concept that is rarely given such detailed analysis. However, the notion of "bullying" as a crime seems farfetched; the book would be even more effective if it focused on interpersonal skills and tools that could be used to fight back, rather than on trying to initiate change in public policy.