Tribal techniques used in Corporate America.

Soon after the "high" period, the harassment increased to generate a low. On one occasion I walked up to Hun Wong, a scientist from a sister research group and asked him a question. Hun just ignored me. I Thought that he hadn't heard me, and I repeated the question. Again Hun ignored me. This time I positioned myself directly in front of Hun so he was looking right at me, and in a loud voice I repeated the question. Again I got the same response. I started yelling trying to get any response from him, but Hun never acknowledged my presence. I walked away feeling totally frustrated and angery. If I had any thoughts that Hun's actions were of his own volition, those those thoughts were quickly removed when an identical incident occurred with another coworker.

I is ironic that I learned several years later in an RAM professional development course that some African tribes us non-communication as a form of punishment. If a tribe member commits a serious crime, no one will talk to the criminal, and eventually he goes insane, leaves the tribe and in many cases, kills himself. I found it ironic that in the so-called civilized corporate world the same technique was being used to make me mentally ill.

As with many of the torture techniques used on me, I would confirm my beliefs and reactions by testing the technique out on someone else. In this case, I used Anita as the victim. We were riding in the car when she started a conversation and asked a question. I ignored her. She did as I had done in that situation, she move over towards me and repeated the question. Again I ignored her. Now she was screaming the question at me in a hope to get a response. Again I ignored her. She became angery, agitated and didn't know what to do. I quickly put an end to her frustration by explaining why I hadn't answered her and that I wanted to if see her reaction was similar or the same as mine had been. She was not pleased, but it did confirm as usual that the techniques being used on me were designed to generate strong negative emotional reactions and make me "act" crazy.

In April, there was a management change and I was given a performance review by my former manager. I approached the review with great apprehension even though I had done an excellent job on the project I had been working on. In fact, a Senior Engineer and several coworkers had told me that I should have been given at least an inform award for the work I had done in solving a very major problem for the manufacturing site. Part of my anger stemmed from the fact that I was making a major contribution to RAM manufacturing, and I was still receiving such horrendous treatment. As at Gamma Supplies, my treatment in no way related to my job performance. Despite my excellent job performance, I was unsure as to what my performance rating would be. In the insane world I was living in anything was possible if it served to create stress.

My actual review was neither the good rating I felt I deserved, nor the poor rating I feared. But rather, the rating was in the middle of the road evaluation. I was just relieved that on a normal legitimate basis, I was safe for another year. The threat and suggestion made at Gamma Supplies that I would never work again were always in the back of my mind.