Even Managers Say They're Getting Bullied At Work

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Back To The Future

Across the board, people report being bullied at work.

If you've ever been bullied at work, you can take solace in the fact that you're not alone.

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A new study from jobs website CareerBuilder found that 28% of the 3,372 full-time workers surveyed said they had been bullied at the office, with 5% saying a bully had caused them to leave a job.

But what's perhaps most surprising is that the feeling of being bullied was felt by people throughout the office hierarchy. In fact, people in management were more likely to say they had been bullied (27%) than people in entry-level, administrative and clerical jobs (26%). Professional and technical workers reported being bullied 21% of the time.

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"One of the most surprising takeaways from the study was that bullying impacts workers of all backgrounds regardless of race, education, income and level of authority within an organization," Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources at CareerBuilder, says in a statement.

In fact, white men reported being bullied 24% of the time, only a little bit less than African American workers (27%) and Hispanic workers (25%).

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Three groups that did report significantly higher levels of workplace bullying were physically disabled employees (44%), women (34%), and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender workers (30%).

Those surveyed reported that the most common form of abuse they experienced was being unfairly accused of making mistakes they didn't make, followed by having their comments ignored, and being held to a different standard than their fellow coworkers.

Just shy of half of the workers who reported abuse confronted their bullies, with 45% saying the confrontation helped, 44% saying it made no difference, and 11% saying it made things worse.