Experiencing Exclusion

I don't know if there is anyone who needs to hear this, but I definitely needed to hear it earlier. It would have saved me a lot of precious time.

If you have been silently pushed out of things you had invested time and effort in -- if you were forgotten for meetings, if you were left out of conversations and collaborations.

If, when speaking up about it, you were met with silence and defensiveness instead of with a direct discussion. If your reaction was made the problem instead of what had repeatedly happened.

If speaking up was used against you to further remove you from collaborations.

If, when you raised the issue to a supervisor, this supervisor was expected to remain neutral but did not. If your contributions and experience have been repeatedly minimized.

If your health, sleep, work and personal life were affected to the point that you could no longer bear being there and had to quit your job to take care of yourself.

If, when you raised the issue to HR, they smiled at you and assured you they would conduct an investigation, but then delayed the processing for a long time, and never commented directly on the issues you raised.

If you wanted a discussion, but they cut you off and told you that there was no problem, everything was a misunderstanding, the case is closed and will no longer be discussed...

... Then you have had a pretty standard experience.

Workplace exclusion is a well-known and well-studied phenomenon that develops in a surprisingly repeatable way. And one that is surprisingly minimized by the people involved, and by the people who are supposed to intervene and address it.

Since I started writing about these things, I have talked to many people. 

Some who are experiencing being treated as a second-class employee, but do not speak up, because they want to keep their jobs. 

Some who have gone through similar processes and ended up more disappointed than before they spoke up. 

And others, senior people, with many years in their institution, who said that this is exactly how things work, and the only thing you can do is let it go and take care of yourself.

I wish this had been discussed more openly, as what hurts the most is the disappointment from the discrepancy between the written values and what happens in practice. The shock would have been much smaller if it had been clear that this is simply how things work.