Dalekboy

It is incredibly hard, when part of you has been taught to respect the bully. I am a Library Technician, 32 years working in libraries, which are pyramid like hierachical structures(well the bigger ones like Uni libraries are and repect for higher ups is part of the deal--they are usually better qualified and more experienced and we send the tough questions we cannot answer to them). Even now 7 years later, if someone asks me something contentious I tend to duck and cover ("Do you know where Y has been put?" gets an answer like, Umm, let me think, maybe I saw it ...) and I still wait a little if asked a question on the loans desk for my boss to answer for me--she used to do that, even if they were questions about something I was holding in my hand. Yep Psychopath, they tend to rise up certain management structures, although sometimes other managers know about them and try to move them sideways. I remain proud of the staff survey where the staff at my branch rated moral and zero and forced the next survey to group two other branches with ours. Then there was the time we were nominated for an award for our work on overdues--we won as the most efficent service--having a boss who would ALWAYS enforce rules helped when dealing with borrowers who didn't want to bring back some resources.