My Driver’s Review was held 3days later, during that meeting, Helen asked me if I could help her with the dates that I had been ‘off work sick,’ ‘worked assisted’ or ‘non-assisted’ etc. (because she knew I kept a record in my phone diary) apparently, they had not kept a record for themselves! We also went through a series of form’s where Helen was ‘catching up’ on paperwork that needed to be done.

At the end of that meeting, Helen asked me if I would be willing to speak with someone about the allegations I had made, I told her, “I would.” I waited 2weeks to be approached by Management which didn’t materialise before speaking to Helen in Costa Coffee (I like my Coffee- can you see a theme?) and asking her to pass on the message to Sally, “I’m not a threat- I’m not looking to cause trouble.” However, I never heard anything back. Whilst working, I then hurt my Back again and was off work for around a week (mentioned earlier- when I went to the Doctors and was referred to Physio and put on ‘Nerve’ Pain Killers).

A week after returning to work, I arrived at the Store to find I had not been allocated on the Drivers Route plan (without notice or explanation) which turned out to be for a ‘return to work’ meeting and (unknown to me) for me to work in the Store afterwards, filling shelves with Toilet Rolls (no-one had asked me if I felt It was a job, I was capable of doing with my Back and no-one spoke to me about being taken off driving- my normal work duties). This had clearly been pre-planned during the day- after the Meeting I had with Helen, I was walking through the Store and came across Jeff (Manager) who decided to ‘tell me off’ in a ‘brash manor’ in front of Customers for being late- he had expected me to arrive at the ‘beginning’ of the shift to fill the Shelves with Toilet Rolls (I had no idea, no-one had told me anything).

At this point, I had a sense that the situation was about to escalate (although I had no idea who was behind it) It was obvious to me that Babs was involved with the meetings I was having with Helen (the same Manager I had accused of Bullying) but I had no way of knowing if Babs and Mary were carrying out these meetings under their own esteem (to force me to leave) or if Sally was over seeing them from above. If it was Sally, the question still remained- was she acting under false pretences? Babs and Mary are Senior Managers and were ‘well placed’ to lie to Sally in order to protect themselves and were in a position to say ‘whatever they liked’ to do so.

I decided to ‘sit back and ride out the storm,’ and deal with whatever was thrown at me, knowing at the end of it, I would be making sure that Sally would know the truth about the extent of their behaviour (It was at this point, I decided to keep everything ‘off the Record,’ I felt sure, Sally had no idea of the truth and when I eventually told her, she would not accept ‘Bullying’ in her store and she would deal with the situation- and by keeping everything ‘off the Record’ it would allow her to deal with things quietly and also show her that I wasn’t looking for ‘trouble,’ (or a Compensation claim).

I already had so much going on in my life, I really didn’t want to dealing with anything else, I just wanted to be left alone to do my work and get on with my Recovery process- I hoped that when I told Sally about the extent of her Managers behaviour, that would be the end of it, (If Sally told me she would deal with them, I would have been more than happy to ‘step back’ and give her all the space she needed to do so) but at the same time, if  Sally decided to ‘protect her friends,’ I knew these Managers needed to be stopped and I was not going to give up until that had been achieved (it really got to me watching those Managers Bully the ‘younger’ staff members, knowing they did not have enough ‘about them’ to defend themselves). Also, for myself- with the issues I have had with Bully’s throughout my life, I was never going to allow a Bully to make me their ‘Victim.’

Since the Meeting with Babs and Sally, it was obvious, Babs had been told to avoid me- if I entered a room, Babs would turn around and leave and we also hadn’t spoken since the meeting. A few weeks went past (end of July) I arrived at work to find the routes were ‘heavy’ (AM- 583kg / PM- 623kg) and despite the ‘agreement’ we had in place, Babs refused to provide me with assistance, telling me “I don’t have anyone to help you,” despite at least 4 of the people who would usually be sent out to help me, standing around at the back of the room watching. I was forced to return home and take the day off as ‘Holiday.’ (when I had arrived at work, Babs saw me and started whispering to Scott (Driver Liaison) it was clear that Babs and Scott were ‘Bitchin’ about me (I was only stood about 5ft from them) and it was obvious to me, Babs was taking the opportunity to ‘punish me’ for challenging her authority.

The following day, there were no deliveries, all of the Drivers were expected to attend an Annual meeting for Driver Training with Joe & Mac (I believe they are Head Office based Trainers/Assessors) ‘Turnaround’ was converted for the meeting with seating and Projector etc. we were given handouts of paperwork which had a separate A4 sheet of paper asking questions about ‘what we like the most about working for this company’ and ‘what we dislike the most’ etc. while answering these questions, I began to realise this sheet of questions seemed to be different from the rest of the stuff we were going to be doing in the meeting and soon realised that this was a ‘paper exercise’ directed at me, so I put a line through the first Negative answer I was in the process of answering and changed it to a Positive-Negative answer.

At the end of the meeting, whilst the paperwork was being collected, I walked towards the doors to leave the ‘Turnaround’ area, I noticed Joe and Mac had started searching through the forms and pulling out my sheet of answers (Mac- holding it at an angle between a finger & Thumb- as though it was ‘diseased’), I stopped by the doors and stood there until they looked up at me (it took a few minutes) and I gave them a look that let them know, I knew what they were doing- Mac eventually nodded and acknowledged back at me.