Let’s indulge in a little mathematics. Say you work a normal 9-5.30pm shift five days a week, minus an hour for lunch (we’re imagining a utopian society here with no overtime, obviously). If you sleep the suggested eight hours a night, that means you spend a touch under half your waking workday hours at the office – that’s a considerable chunk of your life.

So for people who suffer bullying at work, the impact on their self-esteem and psyche is major, such as in the horrific case of 19-year-old Melbourne waitress Brodie Panlock, who killed herself in 2006 after enduring physical and mental bullying at the cafe where she worked.

Joanne*, 25, discovered the mental anguish firsthand when, in her early twenties, she was the victim of bullying from her boss. “I was pretty self-conscious at the time as I had gained a bit of weight. The jokes just started as office banter, things like, ‘You’re so ugly no-one would ever want to marry you’. I’d laugh it off since he was my boss, but I didn’t like it and it started to make me even more self-conscious.

“This kept going on for months – I didn’t know how to confront him about it. Even worse, he tormented me in situations where everyone else could hear it, but no-one stood up for me.

He’d say things like, ‘No-one as fat as you could ever be loved’, and things that were way more hurtful than usual jokes. Sometimes he’d say nasty things to the point where I’d go in the toilets and cry because I didn’t want anyone to see me.”

Why it happens

Workplace bullying can encompass a wide range of behaviour, from insults and exclusion to spreading rumours, but it can generally be defined as repeated, unreasonable behaviours that cause, or can cause, harm. And, what’s more, the psychological effects of being bullied can be devastating to victims.

“The first thing is that people are really caught by surprise because it’s not logical that you’re suddenly excluded or told off,” says Evelyn Field, author of Bully Blocking At Work (Australian Academic Press, $29.95). “Then what happens is, concentration is affected, people can have emotional difficulty, stress, depression, anger, and some of them become quite traumatised.”

With the perpetrator of the bullying, it can either be intentional behaviour designed to hurt the victim, or, in many cases, it can actually be unintentional and the aggressor might be unaware that they’re upsetting the person.

“You’re always going to have some people who are psychopathic bullies, it’s only a small percentage by definition. The rest of those who play foul are ordinary people who are bullying. They think it’s fun and they don’t realise what they’re doing is harmful, and they would be shocked to be called a bully,” says Field.

“The sooner we accept the fact that all of us can bully, be bullied, and watch someone else being verbally attacked, the better off we’ll all be. I think we all have to be aware of bullying behaviours and of abusing one’s power. It’s really due to ignorance and a lack of responsibility. Most companies don’t realise that workplace bullying actually injures the whole organisation.”