Workplace VS. Mental Health

Workplace mental health guide sets national standard:
Canadian employers and unions wishing to promote mental health in the workplace can now turn to a new national standard to help boost the well-being of employees.

I admire the efforts put into this 'voluntary standard', but am inclined to think that there will not be many non-unionized companies who will be volunteering. I do hope that there will be some kind of metric gathered with this, where companies are actually named and not lumped into region and industry. I doubt that my company would dare to dream of implementing such a thing, but let's have some fun with that anyway...

"The guidance document aims to get employers to pledge to:

• Consider the mental well-being of employees and identify hazards.

Actual words out of my manager's mouth (I don't know what language he thinks he speaks, but his French is just as bad as his English):

• "I control you!"
• "Don't say to me your idiot ideas."
• "Are you stupid?"
• "I don't hire you for think, I hire you for tell you what you are doing"

• Assess workplace hazards such as stressors from job demands.

See above references

• Strive for work/life balance.

20 minutes before the end of the day one Friday, the following conversation occurs:
Boss: I need you to stay tonight and migrate the network to the new IP structure.
Me: But my son is already waiting for me in the reception area.
Boss: I told you, you'd have to stay late to do this months ago.
Me: Months ago, you told me I'd have to stay late to do this, when you decide we are going to do it. You never notified me we were going to do it until 30 seconds ago.
Boss: So you are not going to stay and do your job?
Me: Not today, I'm not.
Boss: Don't worry, I'll find somebody to replace you.
Me: Best of luck in your search.
At the time, I was wondering if that was my '2 weeks notice' but since it happened in October 2012 I suppose that it couldn't have been. 

• Help workers feel they are treated with fairness, respect and rewarded for their contributions.

I have made many suggestions and submit many ideas which have always been rejected (often under the context that I am a complete moron) just long enough for my manager to figure out how to say it using different words than I did, and not credit me for having had the idea in the first place. Needless to say, I have not had many 'out-loud' ideas lately.

There are witnesses to most of these events, and others in the company who have had similar problems with the same person. It would seem that his sense of humour is such that you have to be the butt of his jokes. I suspect there is some kind of inferiority disorder involved which is why I have not stabbed him in the near 5 years of endured abuse. I suppose, were a doctor to examine me, I'd be put on pills to 'cope' and would likely be in jail shortly afterwards.

The saddest part of my story is that half of the management team here seems to have the same 'abuse as an authoritative illusion' strategy when it comes to showing you who's boss. It might be nice to think that this company has rounded up all the bandits under one roof, but when I eavesdrop on public transit, or read my many sources of NEWS, I find that highly unlikely. Add to that, this is not the first company where there seemed to be a hazing ritual carried out by 'management' at the expense of employee morale, and we seem to be approaching an epidemic.

As they say: tyrants and psychopaths are easier seduced by power than regular people... Perhaps we could weed them all out using a job interview process?

-DIrtyKID©