I made an account on reddit just to share this story. I live and work in southern Sweden, so I want to apologise for any linguistic mistakes I may make in english.
In june last year I began working as a welder at company that (not sure how detailed I am allowed to be) makes things out of aluminum. I've been working my ass off since then, working extra hours as often as I could and at the same time delivering good quality product. Got praised by my manager on many occasions.
At the welding department we work in teams of 3-4, one team per shift. When the time of summer vacation came last year, our manager rearranged our teams and shifts so that we would not be understaffed while some of the empoyees went on the vacation. THIS IS WHERE THE STORY BEGINS! I ended up on a night shift with guys i didn't usually work with, but were friends with 2 of them. The third guy, let's just call him The third guy, was a guy I only have seen at work but never really talked with him. He was rumored to be “a little weird and slow”, but as far I was concerned, people talk shit about other people all the time at workplaces like this, so my attitude towards the third guy was still neutral.
Sometime, at the beginning of the second week of the new arrangement I got called by my manager while I was at home sleeping after work. He informed that “something has happend” at work the night I was working and that I was involved, and it was serious. He didn't want to talk about it on the phone, so he asked me to come to work to his office to discuss it. When I arrived, I found out that I was accused of being a bully! I was fucking shocked! I tried my best to remember what tf has happend last night at work, but as far as I remembered everything went smoothly as always. My manager then told me that it was The third guy, that reported me. Apparently, he felt like I was bullying him because… and this is good… HE HEARD ME LAUGHING AND JOKING WITH ANOTHER TEAMMATE AND ASSUMED, (YES, FUCKING ASSUMED), THAT WE WERE LAUGHING AT HIM!
I've explained to my manager that we were not laughing at him, that we were just fooling around with eachother. Let me tell you something about my manager, he is rumored to be THE BEST manager of all managers at my workplace… NOT (lol)! So my manager, being himself, starts to dig deeper, asking questions such as:
-Why did you laugh with your teammate?
-Why did you even talk to your teammate?
-You gotta admit that, if you hadn't been talking with your teammate, this would never happend. The third guy would have not felt this way…
And so on..
I was fucking speechles. How do I even respond to accusations like this? So I got upset and said
– Am I not allowed to talk and joke with other people at work, 'cause some over-sensitive guy may take it wrong??
I said that we could talk with the teammate, that it would prove that we did nothing wrong, but my boss was like a broken record and went on about how the company won't tolerate bullying other employees. I tried to tell him that there was no case of me bullying anyone and it can be proved, but he just didn't listened and kept on repeating same shit. Finally he got little upset and said that I must've done something, otherwise the third guy would not felt it that way.
Let's end it here for now…
Even though I'm suspended I got other things to do and it's easter!
Plus, I get mad when I rethink all of those situations. More of the story will come ASAP.