Posts Tagged ‘Frye’

Video: Women Bullies, Women Targets – GMA

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009

By Anna Wild and Jonann Brady, ABC-TV Good Morning America,
February 24, 2009

Joan Frye, featured in the clip below, is the Tennessee State Coordinator for the WBI-Legislative Campaign.

The bullying magazine executive played by Meryl Streep in the film “The Devil Wears Prada” is played for laughs, but women bullying other female employees in the real world is no laughing matter.

Joan Frye, who worked in a hospital in Nashville, Tenn., said she endured nearly two years of bullying at the hands of her female boss, which led her to a mental breakdown and a long court battle.

Just four months into her job, Frye, 62, said she knew there was going to be trouble with her boss.

“She had me come into her office for my 90-day review, and she started, ‘We don’t click. … What are you going to do about it?’ Not what are we going to do, but what are you going to do about it,” Frye said. “I knew then that we were going to have a serious problem.”

Frye said her boss undermined her in front of employees, isolated her from senior management, gave her impossible deadlines and humiliated her. She dreaded going to work.

“One day she would be nice, and the next day she would attack,” Frye said. “She would glare at me. She would make noise like ‘haaa’ if I was talking to somebody. She would walk between us and turn her back on me.”

After she complained to human resources and senior management, she said, she was transferred to another department. After six months in her new position, Frye said the problems with her previous boss led to a mental breakdown, forcing her to take a medical leave of absence.

Frye filed a lawsuit against the company. Four years later, after exhausting her savings, the case was dismissed. The court did, however, describe her old boss as “an equal opportunity oppressor,” calling her management style “abrasive” and declaring that the difficult relationship contributed to “disabling problems” for Frye.

(more…)